WHAT was the state of things about the time of Wesley’s ordination? Wesley entered the Charterhouse in the year Queen Anne died. George I., Elector of Hanover, took her place. Endless intrigues in favour of the Pretender sprung up; and Bolingbroke fled to him on the Continent, and became his Secretary of State. Ormond gave magnificent fêtes at Richmond, and gathered around him the most fiery of the Jacobites, and the most intolerant of the high church party, till he also found it expedient to follow Bolingbroke’s example, and secretly escape to France. The clergy, in many instances, preached sermons and published pamphlets in which the temper, orthodoxy, and religion of King George were not painted in the brightest colours, and in which they hesitated not to say that England would soon be eaten up by Hanoverian rats and other foreign vermin. Rumours of invasion and of insurrection became general, and, about a year after George’s coronation, the Chevalier landed in Scotland, to take possession of what he called his kingdom.

The history of this adventure is too well known to be repeated here. Suffice it to observe, that Parliament set a price on the Pretender’s head, by offering a reward of £100,000 for his arrest. In Scotland, King George’s troops were put to live in free quarters, in the houses and upon the estates of Jacobites. In England, gaols were crowded with nonjuring Protestants, high church divines, and Popish squires, monks, and priests; while the Chevalier, like his poltroon father, fled from danger, and left thousands of his hot-headed followers to pay a fearful penalty for their rash adherence to him. Plotters, however, still plotted; among the chief of whom was Bishop Atterbury, the friend and patron of Wesley’s brother Samuel. The prelate was arrested, was tried in the House of Lords, was deprived of his bishopric, was banished from his country, entered the service of the Pretender, and became his confidential agent.

These were times of terrible upheaving, and, surrounded by such commotions, young Wesley quietly pursued his scholastic studies, first in the Charterhouse, London, and afterwards in Christ Church College, Oxford. In the year in which Wesley went to Oxford, the South Sea bubble burst, and, by its gambling, knavish madness, the nation was involved in the most disgraceful kind of bankruptcy. About the same period, Parliament were discussing bills to authorize bishops and county magistrates to summon Dissenting ministers to quarter sessions to subscribe to a declaration of the Christian faith; and, upon their refusal, to deprive them of the benefit of the Act of Toleration; while, oddly enough, at the same time, Walpole, the prime minister, was endeavouring to satisfy the squeamish demand to omit from the “affirmation” of the Quakers the words,—“In the presence of Almighty God”—a demand which Atterbury resisted to the uttermost, insisting that such an indulgence was not due to “a set of people who were hardly Christians.”

Wesley was ordained a deacon by Bishop Potter, the son of a Yorkshire linen-draper; a man of great talent, and immense learning,—somewhat haughty and morose, and yet highly esteemed by a great portion of his contemporaries,—a high churchman, who maintained that episcopacy was of Divine institution, and yet one who cherished a friendly feeling towards the first Methodists, saying concerning them, “These gentlemen are irregular; but they have done good; and I pray God to bless them.” To the day of his death, Wesley held Potter in high esteem, calling him “a great and good man”; and, in a sermon written as late as the year 1787, mentioning an advice which the bishop had given him half a century before, and for which he had often thanked Almighty God, namely, “That if he wished to be extensively useful, he must not spend his time in contending for or against things of a disputable nature, but in testifying against notorious vice, and in promoting real, essential holiness.”[40]

It is a somewhat remarkable circumstance that, just about the time of Wesley’s ordination, Voltaire was expelled from France, and fled to England, where he published his celebrated “Henriade,” a work which was patronized by George I., and which yielded a profit that laid the foundation of the infidels future fortune. During a long life, he and Wesley were contemporaneous, and, perhaps, of all the men then living, none exercised so great an influence as the restless philosopher and the unwearied minister of Christ. No men, however, could be more dissimilar. Wesley, in person, was beautiful; Voltaire was of a physiognomy so strange, and lighted up with fire so half-hellish and half-heavenly, that it was hard to say whether it was the face of a satyr or a man. Wesley’s heart was filled with a world-wide benevolence; Voltaire, though of gigantic mind, scarcely had a heart at all,—an incarnation of avaricious meanness, and a victim to petty passions. Wesley was the friend of all and the enemy of none; Voltaire was too selfish to love, and when forced to pay the scanty and ill-tempered homage which he sometimes rendered, it was always offered at the shrine of rank and wealth. Wesley had myriads who loved him; Voltaire had numerous admirers, but probably not a friend. Both were men of ceaseless labour, and almost unequalled authors; but while the one filled the land with blessings, the other, by his sneering and mendacious attacks against revealed religion, inflicted a greater curse than has been inflicted by the writings of any other author either before or since. The evangelist is now esteemed by all whose good opinions are worth having; the philosopher is only remembered to be branded with well-merited reproach and shame.

Wesley’s first sermon was preached at South Leigh, a small village three miles from Witney. Forty-six years afterwards he preached in the same place, when there was one man present who had been a member of his first congregation.[41]

Another of his early sermons was delivered at Epworth, January 11, 1726, at the funeral of John Griffith, a hopeful young man, son of one of the Epworth parishioners. The text was 2 Samuel xii. 23, and the subject of the brief sermon was the folly of indulging grief, except on account of sin. Funeral sermons, in the common acceptation of the word, the young preacher denounces, for they had been so often prostituted to a mere flattery of the dead that now they were no longer capable of serving good purposes. “It is of no service to the dead,” says he, “to celebrate his actions, since he has the applause of God and His holy angels, and his own conscience. And it is of little use to the living, since he who desires a pattern may find enough proposed as such in the sacred writings.” For such reasons, Wesley, already laconic, reduces all that he has to say of John Griffith into a single sentence. “To his parents he was an affectionate, dutiful son; to his acquaintance an ingenuous, cheerful, good-natured companion; and to me a well-tried, sincere friend.”[42]

In a little more than two months after the delivery of this sermon, Wesley was elected fellow of Lincoln College.[43] The election took place March 17th, 1726. In this affair, his brother Samuel rendered him considerable assistance; his mother, with a full heart, thanked Almighty God for his “good success;”[44] and his father wrote him as follows:—

Writing to his brother Samuel, Wesley says:—

The following, which was also addressed to his brother Samuel, is amusing. Wesley was so poor that he could ill afford to employ a barber to cut and dress his hair, even when his mother wished it, and when he himself thought it might improve his personal appearance.

Charles Wesley had just removed from Westminster School to the university, being elected to the same college as that in which his brother had spent the last six years. John obtained leave of absence from Lincoln College, and spent the summer at Epworth and Wroote with his venerated parents. Here he usually read prayers and preached twice every sabbath; pursued his studies with the greatest diligence; and conversed with his father and mother on many of the chief topics of practical religion, noting in his diary such of their rules and maxims as appeared to him important.[49] While here, he wrote his paraphrase on the 104th Psalm,—a production of genius fully showing that if Wesley had cultivated his poetic talents he might easily have attained to no inferior position among the bards of Britain. The following is an extract:—

“Make poetry your diversion,”[51] said Wesley’s mother, “but not your business;” and because he acted on this advice his poetical pieces are comparatively few. It is well known, however, that some of the noblest hymns in the Wesleyan hymn-book were written by John Wesley’s pen. What can exceed, in poetic grandeur, the three hymns beginning with the line:—

“Father of all, whose powerful voice,” etc.

Or the two hymns commencing with:—

“O God, Thou bottomless abyss,” etc.

Or the hymn beginning:—

“O God, of good the’ unfathomed sea,” etc.

Or again:—

“O God the Son, in whom combine,” etc.

Or again:—

Or again, the two hymns commencing with:—

“Commit thou all thy griefs,” etc.

Or again:—

“Thou hidden love of God, whose height,” etc.

Let it be granted that these and others were translations; but still it must be ceded that the words, if not the thoughts, are Wesley’s; and that never, in uninspired language, is God adored and praised in loftier or more sacred strains than in the singing of the hymns above mentioned. Apart from his numerous hymn-books, Wesley, at different times, published five volumes of poetry, and, to the day of his death, read it with the richest relish.

Wesley returned to Oxford on the 21st of September, 1726, and resumed his studies. His literary character was now established at the university. All parties acknowledged him to be a man of talents and of learning; while his skill in logic was known to be remarkable. The result was, though he was only in the twenty-third year of his age, and had not yet taken a master’s degree, he was, within two months after his return from Epworth, on November 7th, elected Greek lecturer and moderator of the classes.

At the commencement of the year 1727, Wesley, in a letter,[52] tells his mother that he had drawn up for himself a scheme of studies, and had “perfectly come over to her opinion, that there are many truths it is not worth while to know. If we had a dozen centuries of life allowed us, we might, perhaps, be pardoned for spending a little time upon such curious trifles; but, with the small pittance of life we have, it would be great ill husbandry to spend a considerable part of it in what makes neither a quick nor a sure return.” Wesley adds, that, about the time of his ordination, he had, while watching with a college friend a young lady’s funeral, attempted to make his friend a Christian. From that time this youth was exceedingly serious; and a fortnight ago had died of consumption. Wesley was with him three days before his decease, and on the Sunday following, in accordance with his friend’s desire while living, he did him the last good office that he could by preaching his funeral sermon. Here was Wesley’s first convert.

Another friend must be introduced, not so serious as the sight of a funeral has a tendency to make us, but a sprightly young collegian, more vivacious than religious, who, in 1729, became one of the first four Methodists that met together to read the Greek Testament,[53] and whose portrait occupies a place in the large and beautiful engraving of “The Rev. John Wesley and his Friends at Oxford.” The following letter is valuable only as it tends to show that Wesley, and some of his college friends, were not yet so intensely religious as they became soon after.

The above somewhat frothy epistle indicates an important fact, that Wesley was in love with Miss Betty, Kirkham’s sister, or, at all events, that Kirkham wished to have him for a brother. Nothing more is known of this incipient courtship, except that in a letter to Wesley, dated five days after Kirkham’s, and written by Martha Wesley, it is said, “When I knew that you were just returned from Worcestershire, where I suppose you saw your Varanese, I then ceased to wonder at your silence, for the sight of such a woman, ‘so known, so loved,’ might well make you forget me. I really have myself a vast respect for her, as I must necessarily have for one that is so dear to you.” Wesley soon became far too much immersed in more serious things to have time to think of wooing. He writes:—

“Removing to another (Lincoln) college, I began to see more and more the value of time. I applied myself closer to study. I watched more carefully against actual sins. I advised others to be religious, according to that scheme of religion by which I modelled my own life. But meeting now with Mr. Law’s ‘Christian Perfection’ and ‘Serious Call,’ although I was much offended at many parts of both, yet they convinced me more than ever of the exceeding height and breadth and depth of the law of God. The light flowed in so mightily upon my soul, that everything appeared in a new view. I cried to God for help, resolved, as I had never done before, not to prolong the time of obeying Him. And by my continued endeavour to keep His whole law, inward and outward, to the utmost of my power, I was persuaded that I should be accepted of Him, and that I was even then in a state of salvation.”[55]

William Law will have to be noticed hereafter. Suffice it to remark now, that, after obtaining a fellowship at Emanuel College, Cambridge, and officiating as a curate in the metropolis, he refused to take the oaths prescribed by parliament on the accession of George I., lost his fellowship, left the pulpit, and became tutor to Edward Gibbon, father of the renowned historian. He was now resident at Putney, and is described as rather above the middle size, stout but not corpulent, with broad shoulders, grey eyes, round visage, well-proportioned features, an open countenance, and rather inclined to be merry than mournful. His “Christian Perfection” was first published in 1726, just before Wesley read it; and, in strong, clear, racy language, maintains that Christianity requires a change of nature, a renunciation of the world and worldly tempers, self-denial and mortification, in short, a life perfectly devoted to the service of God. Clergymen are reminded that it is far more important to visit the poor and sick, and to be wholly occupied in the cure of souls, than in studying the old grammarians. Vain books and stage entertainments are denounced in the strongest terms; and a close imitation of the life and example of Christ Jesus is enforced with the utmost earnestness. The work throughout is one of the most intensely religious books in the English language; and had it shown the way of attaining holiness as clearly as it enforces the practice of it, it would in all respects have been unequalled. The “Serious Call” is a kindred book, and written in the same earnest and pungent style. “It is,” wrote Wesley, within eighteen months of his decease,—“It is a treatise which will hardly be excelled, if it be equalled, in the English tongue, either for beauty of expression, or for justness and depth of thought.”[56]

The effect produced upon Wesley,[57] by reading these two invaluable books, was immense. “I was convinced,” says he “more than ever of the impossibility of being half a Christian, and determined to be all devoted to God, to give Him all my soul, my body, and my substance.”[58]

Wesley’s intentions were as sincere and pure as grace could make them; but his ideas of Christian truth were confused, misty, erroneous. He was spending several hours every day in reading the Scripture in the original tongues; and yet he tells us that it was not until years after this that he became convinced of the great truths, which, above all other truths, gave rise to the societies of the people called Methodists. These truths he himself has specified in the following terms:—“The justification, whereof our articles and homilies speak, means present forgiveness, pardon of sins, and consequently acceptance with God. I believe the condition of this is faith; I mean, not only that without faith we cannot be justified, but also that, as soon as any one has true faith, in that moment he is justified. Good works follow this faith, but cannot go before it; much less can sanctification, which implies a continued course of good works, springing from holiness of heart.

“Repentance must go before faith, and fruits meet for it, if there be opportunity. By repentance, I mean conviction of sin, producing real desires and sincere resolutions of amendment; and by ‘fruits meet for repentance,’ I mean forgiving our brother, ceasing from evil and doing good, using the ordinances of God, and in general obeying Him according to the measure of grace which we have received. But these I cannot as yet term good works; because they do not spring from faith and the love of God.

“By salvation I mean, not barely deliverance from hell, or going to heaven, but a present deliverance from sin, a restoration of the soul to its primitive health, its original purity; a recovery of the Divine nature; the renewal of our souls after the image of God, in righteousness and true holiness, in justice, mercy, and truth. This implies all holy and heavenly tempers, and by consequence, all holiness of conversation.

“Faith is the sole condition of this salvation. Without faith we cannot thus be saved; for we cannot rightly serve God unless we love Him. And we cannot love Him unless we know Him; neither can we know Him unless by faith.

“Faith, in general, is a Divine, supernatural evidence, or conviction of things not seen; that is, of things past, future, or spiritual. Justifying faith implies, not only a Divine evidence, or conviction, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself; but a sure trust and confidence that Christ died for my sins; that He loved me and gave Himself for me. And the moment a penitent sinner believes this, God pardons and absolves him.

“And as soon as his pardon or justification is witnessed to him by the Holy Ghost, he is saved. He loves God and all mankind. He has the mind that was in Christ, and power to walk as He also walked. From that time (unless he makes shipwreck of the faith) salvation gradually increases in his soul.

“The Author of faith and salvation is God alone. He is the sole Giver of every good gift, and the sole Author of every good work. There is no more of power than of merit in man; but as all merit is in the Son of God, in what He has done and suffered for us, so all power is in the Spirit of God. And therefore every man, in order to believe unto salvation, must receive the Holy Ghost. This is essentially necessary to every Christian, in order to have faith, peace, joy, and love. Whoever has these fruits of the Spirit cannot but know and feel that God has wrought them in his heart.”

The reader has here, in Wesley’s own words, a summary of all the doctrines which technically may be termed the doctrines of the first Methodists. It was the preaching of these doctrines, and of these only, that created Methodism in 1739. And, to be faithful to the principles of their founder, the Methodists of this, and of every age succeeding, must, MUST make these the chief doctrines of their ministry. Wesley preached other truths besides these: but these were the truths which distinguished him from his fellows; which gave birth to the system that bears his name; and which he always made prominent in his sermons and in his books, to the end of life. Methodism will sink and deservedly become extinct, when it ceases to proclaim, as its greatest dogmas, the above summary of Methodistic doctrines, drawn up by Wesley himself in 1744.

This summary is introduced here because, notwithstanding his deep religious feeling, his pure intentions, and his strict morality, the doctrines it embraces were doctrines of which Wesley remained strangely ignorant for nearly thirteen years after his ordination, in 1725. He writes: “It was many years after I was ordained deacon, before I was convinced of the great truths above recited. During all that time, I was utterly ignorant of the nature and condition of justification. Sometimes I confounded it with sanctification (particularly when I was in Georgia); at other times I had some confused notion about the forgiveness of sins; but then I took it for granted the time of this must be either the hour of death, or the day of judgment. I was equally ignorant of the nature of saving faith; apprehending it to mean no more than a ‘firm assent to all the propositions contained in the Old and New Testaments.’”[59]

Such, at this period, were Wesley’s views of Christian truth, principally derived from his mother, from Thomas à Kempis, Jeremy Taylor, and William Law. Some have charged him with embracing the mystic divinity, but, except so far as the mystic writers denied the doctrine of justification by faith, the charge is unfounded. In reply to this accusation, Wesley writes: “It is true that, for a while, I admired the mystic writers. But I dropped them, even before I went to Georgia; long before I knew or suspected anything as to justification by faith. Therefore all that follows of my ‘making my system of divinity more commodious for general use,’ having no foundation, falls to the ground at once. I never was ‘in the way of mysticism’ at all.”[60]

Wesley took his degree of Master of Arts, on February 14, 1727. In his disputation for this he acquired considerable reputation; delivering three lectures on the occasion, one “De Anima Brutorum;” a second, “De Julio Cæsare;” and a third, “De Amore Dei.” These early orations seem to be entirely lost.

Another step taken by Wesley, about the same period, was to rid himself of unprofitable friends. He writes: “When it pleased God to give me a settled resolution to be not a nominal, but a real Christian (being then about twenty-two years of age), my acquaintance were as ignorant of God as myself. But there was this difference: I knew my own ignorance; they did not know theirs. I faintly endeavoured to help them, but in vain. Meantime, I found, by sad experience, that even their harmless conversation, so called, damped all my good resolutions. I saw no possible way of getting rid of them, unless it should please God to remove me to another college. He did so, in a manner utterly contrary to all human probability. I was elected fellow of a college where I knew not one person. I foresaw abundance of people would come to see me, either out of friendship, civility, or curiosity; and that I should have offers of acquaintance new and old: but I had now fixed my plan. I resolved to have no acquaintance by chance, but by choice; and to choose such only as would help me on my way to heaven. In consequence of this, I narrowly observed the temper and behaviour of all that visited me. I saw no reason to think that the greater part of these truly loved or feared God: therefore, when any of them came to see me, I behaved as courteously as I could; but to the question, ‘When will you come to see me?’ I returned no answer. When they had come a few times, and found I still declined returning the visit, I saw them no more. And, I bless God, this has been my invariable rule for about three-score years. I knew many reflections would follow; but that did not move me, as I knew full well it was my calling to go through evil report and good report.”[61]

Thus did Wesley free himself from trifling companions. About the same time, some one proposed to him a well endowed school in Yorkshire, and suggested, as an inducement for him to accept it, that it was situated “in a little vale, so pent up between two hills” that it was scarcely accessible; a place where he could “expect little company from without, and within none at all.”[62] This school was either never offered, or, if it was, the offer was declined.

Wesley now laid down a plan of study, and closely followed it. Mondays and Tuesdays he devoted to the Greek and Roman classics, historians and poets; Wednesdays, to logic and ethics; Thursdays to Hebrew and Arabic; Fridays to metaphysics and natural philosophy; Saturdays to oratory and poetry, chiefly composing; and Sundays, to divinity. In intermediate hours, he perfected himself in the French language, which he had begun to learn two or three years before; sometimes amused himself with experiments in optics; and in mathematics studied Euclid, Keil, and Sir Isaac Newton. First, he read an author regularly through, and then transcribed into a commonplace book such passages as he thought important or beautiful. In this way he greatly increased his stock of knowledge and inured himself to hard working.

His father was now sixty-five years of age, and was already palsied; his mother also was in exceedingly ill health; and hence, in August, 1727, he removed to Lincolnshire, for the purpose of officiating as his father’s curate at Epworth and at Wroote; and here, with the exception of about three months, he remained until November, 1729.

The details of this period of two years and a quarter in Wesley’s history are few. His life at Epworth and Wroote was doubtless the ordinary every-day sort of life of an earnest country parish clergyman. Fortunately, one of his sermons, preached during the time that he was his father’s curate, has been preserved, and is important as showing how, from the very commencement of his ministry, he rigidly adhered to the principle of preaching the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The text is 2 Corinthians ii. 17, and the subject of the sermon is that of “corrupting the word of God.” Among corrupters he notices:—1. Those who introduce “into it human mixtures, and blend with the oracles of God impure dreams, fit only for the mouth of the devil.” 2. Those who mix it “with false interpretations.” 3. Those who do not add to it but take from it, “washing their hands of stubborn texts, that will not bend to their purposes, or that too plainly touch upon the reigning vices of the places where they live.” Those who do not corrupt the word of God “preach it genuine and unmixed,” unimpaired and in all its fulness. “They speak with plainness and boldness, and are not concerned to palliate their doctrine to reconcile it to the tastes of men. They will not, they dare not, soften a threatening so as to prejudice its strength; neither represent sin in such mild colours as to impair its native blackness.”[63]

Here we have Wesley, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, displaying the same conscientious fidelity and unflinching boldness, which so strikingly characterized the whole of his future ministry.

In July, 1728, Wesley repaired to Oxford, where, on Sunday, September 22, he was ordained priest by Dr. Potter, who had ordained him deacon in 1725. Nine days afterwards, he returned to his curacy at Wroote, where, as already stated, he continued preaching and fulfilling other ministerial duties until November 22, 1729.

What were the results of Wesley’s preaching? Wesley himself shall tell us. He writes: “I preached much, but saw no fruit of my labour. Indeed, it could not be that I should; for I neither laid the foundation of repentance, nor of believing the gospel; taking it for granted that all to whom I preached were believers, and that many of them needed no repentance.”[64] Let Christian ministers be admonished. Is it not a fact—a general, if not universal fact—that where these doctrines are not preached all other preaching is almost, if not altogether, useless? Christ’s ministry throughout was in perfect accordance with its commencement, when following John the Baptist, as His high herald, He cried, “Repent ye, and believe the gospel.” This kind of preaching is always useful. Would to God we had more of it at the present day!

Wroote was a wretched place. Wesley says it was “surrounded with bogs;”[65] and, according to Samuel, his brother, the parsonage was roofed with thatch and made lively by the mingled music of “kittens and whelps,” “pigs and porkets,” “bellowing kine and bleating lambs, quacking ducks and fluttering hens.” Describing his father’s presence there, he writes:—

The church was a small brick building, and the population, even as late as 1821, was under three hundred. The people were, says Mehetabel Wesley, “unpolished wights,” as “dull as asses,” and with heads “as impervious as stones.”

Such were Wesley’s parish and parishioners—not exactly the place where a poetical genius and classic scholar was likely to luxuriate; and yet there is no reason to entertain a doubt that Wesley was happy in his new sphere of labour. He loved retirement, and here he had it. It is not improbable that, for many a long year, Wroote would have been his residence, had not the rector of Lincoln College wished to have him back to Oxford. This gentleman had rendered such service to the Wesley family that the venerable father used to say, “I can refuse him nothing.”[67] Accordingly, the following letter, by Dr. Morley, was irresistible.

And so, because Fenton had a perpetual curacy, too good to be given up; and because Robinson, in his two parishes, had as much work as he could do, Wesley was forcibly removed from Wroote, and brought back to Oxford to fulfil his functions as a fellow. No time was lost. He returned to Oxford on November 22, 1729, and here continued until he embarked for Georgia on the 14th of October, 1735.