Our Father, John Wesley

Samuel Wesley's grandfather and father were short, sharp, brilliant, and emotional men. They were eloquent, independent non conformist preachers. Each was about five feet four and each weighed about 120 pounds and had auburn hair. These were to be John Wesley's characteristics as well.

Samuel Wesley, father of our John, left the non-conforming community of his parents and rejoined the Church of England. Even in this independent act he was in the spirit of his fathers. The Acts of Uniformity dispossessed all of these nonconformist ministers of their churches. "The Wesleys were exiled from their parishes or put in prison because of their obstinacy and the logic and their vigor but not the Annesleys. Samuel Annesley was round and stout and jovial and happy, and people don't put those kind of men in prison. They love them and nature treats them differently too."(Edwin Prince Booth)

Samuel Wesley and Susannah Annesley were married. But before she determined to love him, she determined to follow his lead in theology. His was a higher christology than hers. After their long married life full of love and suffering, she had written on his tombstone a tribute to his high doctrine of the Trinity. Samuel Wesley was already 34 when he and Susanna with their four children came to Epworth in 1697.

We are all greatly influenced by our environments. The Wesleys had been shaped in London. In some ways Samuel and Susannah were both misplaced in their assignment to Epworth. By temperament they were meant to serve in London. She had promise as a writer. Both had fine literary minds. Epworth was desolate in comparison. One writer described it: "The flat, melancholy fenlands pricked with thin lines of pollard willows and alders, and seamed with dikes through which the sluggish waters crept--dikes which in winter became mere ribbons of ice--all this made a desolate landscape, over which, in winter, the bitter south-east winds raged." (Fitchett, 25)

Samuel was a Calvinist. His theology was of God's sovereign power, God's elective grace, God's unbelievable mercy, our obedience. "Oh God, what shall I do? What shall I do? This is grave Calvinism" (Booth) It was too strong and sturdy a religion for these fensman. They scarcely hid their dislike of their rector. Their rectory was a story and a half building with a thatched roof overhead, lighted with a small peat fire and cold, cold, cold in the winter. In their Epworth home with poverty all around them, there was nothing to do in the long nights but their own love for each other and so 19 children were born to them.

They fought over loyalty to the king and could not reconcile their politics. If there were two sovereigns, Samuel told her, their would be two beds. So, he packed himself off to London. The love child of their reunion, John Wesley, our Methodist father, was born on June 17, 1703.

John was five at the time of the Rectory fire and when he was miraculously saved from the flames after being given up for lost, thereafter regarded himself as "a brand plucked from the burning."  Susannah gave her life to the education of her children. Susanna Ansley was, to use her phrase, a "nun for the redemption of the souls of her children."  Never did a mother pray more for her children or call them more into the presence of God.

Her methodology was relentless and loving and her ability to awaken their curiosity and intellect almost unparalleled.  Her children were taught that when it was necessary to cry that they should cry softly. On the fifth birthday they mastered the whole alphabet. And they learned how to pray and the necessity of undergoing weekly spiritual examination in the faith. Once a week the children as they came of age were asked how it was going with their souls and were required to give an account of their spiritual journey. The origins of Methodism are here.

John grew up in a world heavily influenced by his mother and by the presence of 5 elder sisters plus female servants. But his father was an important presence as well. Even if the family was always in debt, further sacrifices were made that the sons would be educated. It was Samuel's dream that John would attend Oxford which he came in time to do. There John was well liked. He loved the Oxford years. Early on he developed fast friends with whom he carried on much correspondence. And he read widely of literature. One of the volumes found after his death was the complete works of Shakespeare completely annotated in Wesley's handwriting. His studies took him to the Christian classics. And he held his own firm opinions. He disagreed with Thomas a' Kempis believing that God did not send us into the world to be "perpetually miserable."  And he parted with Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Dying by believing that we can in fact know we are forgiven in this life. "I began to see," wrote Wesley,

          "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 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...So that now doing so much and living so good a life I doubted not that I was a good Christian."

John kept a diary begun when he was 21 in which he was constantly reminding himself of Satan's snares and his own entanglement in them. Here is his diary from Good Friday, March 26, 1725: "I found a great many unclean thoughts arising in Chapel, and discovered these temptations to it:

a. Too much addicting myself to light behaviour at all times.

b. Listening too much to idle talk, and reading vain plays and books

c. Idleness; and lastly

d. Want of due consideration in whose presence I am.

From which I perceive it necessary

a. To labour for a grave and modest carriage;

b. To avoid vain and light company; and

c. To entertain awful apprehensions of the presence of God;

d. To avoid idleness, freedom with women, and high-seasoned meats;

e. To resist the very beginnings of lust, not by arguing with, but by thinking no more of it or by immediately going into company; and lastly,

f. To use frequent and fervent prayer.

John and his brother, Charles, were both at Oxford at the same time. Charles was to become a great preacher and a prodigious hymn writer, composing more than 6500 hymns.  One historian wrote: "His more masterful brother dominated men; Charles Wesley drew them as the magnet draws steel."(Fetched, 74)

The Holy Club took form as a small group of Oxford students who agreed to meet frequently for study, mutual spiritual correction and acts of service. So devoutly sincere and serious were they that they were labeled "Bible moths," and "Sacramentarians."  Finally they were called "Methodists." 

The Holy Club was rigorous in its demands upon its members. They visited the prisoners in the castle prison and some of the destitute poor in the city. They fasted two days a week in order to buy necessities for the poor. They attempted to rescue prostitutes, "and in general imagined they could not be 'saved' unless they spent every minute of their lives in God's service." (46)

I have been to England and to Oxford and to Lincoln College of which Wesley was Fellow. I well remember how beautiful the English country side is and can imagine what it is like to be in England at springtime and in love. Much of John's life he agonized over whether it was best for him to remain celibate or to marry. He fell in love but while he debated whether he should marry, she married another and his heart was broken. Later in his life his sister wrote to him that perhaps if he had married her there would be no Methodist Church.

To Georgia

Willing now to leave Oxford, and listening to the call for missionaries to America, John and Charles offered themselves and left for Georgia in October of 1729.   John saw himself as a missionary to the Indians. The colony itself was conceived as "...a land of refuge and fresh opportunity for British debtors and physically able unemployed, for Highland Scots, and for oppressed European Protestants." (Ayling, John Wesley, 62)

Still preoccupied with his own salvation Wesley wrote:

          "My chief motive is the hope of saving my own soul.  I hope to learn the true sense of the Gospel of Christ by preaching it to the heathen....I cannot hope to attain to the same degree of holiness here which I may there."

(October 10) A terrible storm broke over them at sea and Wesley and most of the people on board were terrified. There were, however, a group of religious people whose devotion and piety gave them complete assurance. Wesley longed for this in his own life. He described them:

          "In the midst of the Psalm wherewith their service began, the sea broke over, split the mainsail in pieces, covered the ship, and poured in between the decks as if the great deep had already swallowed us up.  A terrible screaming began amongst the English. The Germans calmly sang on.   

          I asked one of them afterwards, 'Was you not afraid?" He answered, 'I thank God, no.' I asked, 'But where not your women and children afraid?' He replied mildly, 'No; our women and children are not afraid to die.'" 

What Wesley brought to America was his heavy theology and his high churchly ways which were not well received by so diverse a people and so dissimilar to the constituency of a London Church. He refused to baptize except in church and then by the proper formula. No communion would be offered unless they had first come to confession on a Saturday. His rigorous disciplines went unappreciated in this relaxed new world. Never did a missionary labor with greater energy. All the while it seemed that Wesley was trying to coerce the kingdom to come by his discipline and piety. He was trying to both prove and earn his salvation by pouring himself out in heroic efforts of faith for he did not yet know that love is not earned or proved but received and accepted.

It is in Georgia that John falls in love once more. He becomes tutor to the young and lovely Sophie Hopkey. He was so eligible and her uncle so eager to marry her off that he arranged for John and Sophie to have a long canoe trip together. They were accompanied by oarsmen as they went. The environment was most romantic. They camped on an island and rested on a blanket with their faces toward the Georgia moon. Sophie wanted to speak of love. Wesley admitted that he wanted to talk to her about love but resisted and spoke to her instead about the psalms. He was unclear about whether he should marry and Sophie was impatient for him to make up his mind. Finally he cast lots to get an answer but lacked even the courage to draw his own lot. The lot drawn said he should not pursue the matter further.  Sophie retaliated by marrying a Mr. Williamson.

After that time Wesley denied her communion because she had not first come to confession. This caused charges to be brought against him for defamation of her character. Wesley left Georgia to return to England. Feeling like a total failure which he was not, he penned these words on his way back to England on January 24, 1738: "I went to America to convert the Indians; but, O! who shall convert me?...It is now two years and almost four months since I left my native country in order to teach the Georgian Indians the nature of Christianity; but what have I learned myself in the meantime? Why, what I the least of all suspected; that I who went to America to convert others was never myself converted to God."  This idealistic, sensitive, gifted, but heartbroken man was already a Christian but what he lacked was a deep assurance that could release and empower him in ministry.  He turned again to the Moravians and in particular to Peter Bohler who convinced him that salvation came through faith alone and that he should preach faith until he had it and then preach it because he had it.  In this period he was lonely, discouraged, and heartbroken but also very open to the word of God for his life. 

Aldersgate

On Wednesday, May 24, 1738, John Wesley, troubled and open to the leading of the spirit, found this verse of the Bible spoke to his condition: "Thou are not far from the Kingdom of God."  Still in the pit of depression, in the afternoon he was asked to go to St. Paul's where the great choir sang the De Profundis: "Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice..."

With these experiences and feelings in the background, he went in the evening very unwillingly to a society at Nettleton Court off Aldersgate Street where someone was reading Luther's preface to St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. As John recorded it:

          "about a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."

Now Paul knew what faith meant. Paul had given up a life of utter frustration and moved into a glorious life of unparalled apostleship to faith, and he wasn't afraid to live or die.  And Luther knew the same thing.  Luther has broken open the thousand monastary doors and ripped apart the ancient church and set modern freedom upon its highway.  "As this greatly prepared and deeply disturbed, brilliant young son in his middle 30's, son of Susanna Wesley, heard Luther explain what Paul meant, it became clear as day"(Booth)

We can make too much of this occasion. It was not the end of Wesley's spiritual struggle and the assurance he publicly advertized did not always eclipse his doubts. Listen:

          "After my return home, I was much buffeted with temptations; but cried out, and they fled away. They returned again and again. I as often lifted up my eyes, and He 'sent me help from his holy place.' And herein I found the difference between this and my former state chiefly consisted. I was striving, yea, fighting with all my might under the law as under grace. But then I was sometimes, if not often, conquered; now I was always conqueror."

With new found assurance Wesley becomes a zealot for salvation, not his own any longer, but for others.

Salvation

He did not speak of sin in generalities but made it immediate and actual. People saw and felt clearly the sins they were committing and "because he made sin so terribly personal, he set on foot in England a moral revolution."Luckock The Story Of Methodism, 208,9)

Salvation, he preached, was available to all and at once. It could not be earned but was the free gift of God. Eternal punishment was the consequence for rejecting the gift.  Conversion left ample room to grow and converts were to labor on toward sanctification and Christian perfection.  A young lady among the Methodists asked him to explain the meaning of Christian Perfection and he told her to: "Read andmeditate upon the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. That is the true picture of Christian perfection." Luccock 201)

Field preaching

It was about a year later, Wesley found the work that would claim his energies from then on.  George Whitfield, then only 25 years of age, was a fiery preacher "who used words of fire in the pulpit; who wept over his hearers in a passion of pity, and somehow set their tears running too."(Fitchett, Wesley and His Century, 159)

Whitfield preached his first open air sermon outside Bristol to 200 persons. His next occasion drew 3000 and his third 5000. Soon it was up to 20,000. As he was bound for Georgia, Whitfield prevailed upon Wesley to continue the work which he did some six weeks later. The churches were closing to him with his criticism of Calvinism, his proclamation of the assurance of salvation,and his enthusiasm. Thus it was that Wesley preached his first open field sermon April 2, 1739. In a letter to a friend he wrote: "Suffer me now to tell you my principles in this matter. I look upon all the world as my parish...."

The Methodist people were expected to attend a regular church in the morning and then to come to a Methodist class meeting in the afternoon for spiritual examination, study and prayer.  Whitfield was the more powerful preacher but he acknowledged:

          "My brother Wesley acted wisely, the souls that were awakened under his ministry he joined in class and thus preserved the fruits of his labours. This I neglected and my people are a rope of sand."

Not all of the common people heard Wesley gladly. He was regarded as a meddling outsider by some. Great theological controversy arose where the Methodists were planted and sometimes mobs were organized to drive them out.

Persecution

His Journal records this happening at Wednesbury in 1744.

Besieged by mobs before five he found:

          "To attempt speaking was vain, for the noise on every side was like the roaring of the sea.... However, I stood at the door and asked, ' Are you willing to hear me speak?' Many cried out, 'No, no! knock his brains out; down with him; kill him at once.' Others said, 'Nay but we will hear him first.' I began asking, 'What evil have I done? Which of you all have I wronged in word or deed? And continued speaking for above a quarter of an hour, till my voice suddenly failed. Then the floods began to lift up the voice again, many crying out, 'Bring him away! Bring him away!"

Five hours later he recounts his deliverance when

          "....a little before ten, God brought me safe to Wednesbury, have lost only one flap of my waistcoat and a little skin from one of my hands.  I never saw such a chain of providences before--so many convincing proofs that the hand of God is on every personand thing, overruling all it seemeth Him good."

In spite of persecution, the work prospered and so many converts were added that it was necessary to appoint lay persons as Methodist Preachers. Their duties were: "...preaching at least twice a day; spending from six in the morning until noon, daily, in reading, writing, and prayer; from noon until five in visiting; from five until six in private communion with God. There seems to have been no time specified for eating..."

Lay workers were examined: "Have they grace, gifts and fruit?" Wesley's rules for his preachers have become famous:

"Never be unemployed a moment. Never be triflingly employed. Never while away time; neither spend any more time at any place than is strictly necessary" (and there are eleven more) Luccock, TSM, 123.

Race

Wesley hated slavery and in a letter of encouragement to William Wilberforce wrote:

          "Go on, in the name of God, and in the power of his might, till even American slavery, the vilest that ever saw the sun, shall vanish before it."

His Message

He sometimes simply summed up as:

"Do all the good you can,

By all the means you can,

In all the ways you can,

In all the places you can,

At all the times you can,

To all the people you can,

As long as ever you can."

Money

          "Money must needs pass through my hands but I will take care (God being my helper) that the mammon of unrighteousness shall only pass through; it shall not rest there. None of the accursed thing shall be found in my tents when the Lord calleth me hence. And hear ye this, all you who have discovered the treasure which I am to live behind me; if I leave behind me ten pounds (above my debts and the little arrears of my fellowship, you and all mankind bear witness against me that I lived and died a thief and a robber."(Lucckock 195)

His boundless energy

Historian Lecky rated him as one of the most powerful and active intellects in England.  I marvel at the output of this man who kept clarity of mind in the midst of so exhausting a schedule and could stick to his commitments and hold to his faith day in and day out in so successful a way. He published 400 books and booklets. His collected prose filled 34 volumes. He rode more than 4000 miles a year for 50 years, preached 40,000 times. It is likely that Wesley preached more sermons, rode more miles, worked more hours, printed more books, and influenced more lives than any other Englishman of his age, and some have said "of any age."
The performance did not even tire him! In 1773 he wrote:

          "I am seventy-three years old, and far abler to preach than when I was at twenty-three."

Ten years later this amazing old man writes,

           "I have entered into the eighty-third year of my age. I am a wonder to myself. I am never tired, either with preaching, writing, or traveling."

The Gentleman's Magazine for March 1791 summed him up:

           "The great point in which his name and mission will be honored is this:  he directed his labours towards those who had no instructor; to the highways and hedges; to the miners in Cornwall, and the colliers in Kingswood. These unhappy creatures married and buried amongst themself, and often committed murders with impunity, before the Methodists sprang up. By the humane and active endeavours of him and his brother Charles, a sense of decency, morals, and religion, was introduced into the lowest classes of mankind; the ignorant were instructed; the wretched relieved; and the abandoned reclaimed...He was...one of the few characters who outlived enmity and prejudice, and received, in his latter years, every mark of respect from every denomination."

He was born in 1703 and he died in 1791, his life span of 88 years comprising most of a century preaching and witness. This is our spiritual father, John Wesley!

His death

As he weakened, he gathered friends around him. Wanting to compose a message, he called for a pen and ink but discovered he could no longer write. Elizabeth Ritchie, attending him, pled: "let me write for you, sir; tell me what you would say." "Nothing, he answered, 'But that God is with us.'". Then he astonished all by singing:

         " I'll praise my Maker while I've breath, And when my voice is lost in death, Praise shall employ my nobler powers.  My days of praise shall ne'er be past, ne'er be past, While life, and thought, and being last, Or immortality endures."

Later he formed the words, "The best of all is, God is with us!" and finally, with life slipping away and with consciousness intermittent his words were: 'I'll praise--I'll praise--"