The English Church in the Eighteenth Century

by Charles J. Abbey; John Henry Overton

As an illustration let us take the somewhat complicated question of John Wesley's Churchmanship. That he was most sincerely and heartily attached to the Church of England is undeniable. In the language of one of his most ardent but not undiscriminating admirers, 'he was a Church of England man even in circumstantials; there was not a service or a ceremony, a gesture or a habit, for which he had not an unfeigned predilection.'[710] He was, in fact, a distinctly High Churchman, but a High Churchman in a far nobler sense than that in which the term was generally used in the eighteenth century. Indeed, in this latter sense John Wesley hardly falls under the denomination at all. As a staunch supporter of the British Constitution, both in Church and State, he was no doubt in favour of the establishment of the National Church as an essential part of that Constitution. But it was not this view of the Church which was uppermost in his mind. On several occasions he spoke and wrote of the Church as a national establishment in terms which would have shocked the political High Churchmen of his day. He 'can find no trace of a national Church in the New Testament;'—it is 'a mere political institution;'[711] the establishment by Constantine was a gigantic evil:' 'the King and the Parliament have no right to prescribe to him what pastor he shall use;'[712] he does not care to discuss the question as to whether all outward establishments are a Babel. But does it follow from this and similar language that he taught, as the historians of the Dissenters contend, the principles and language of Dissent?[713] Very far from it. The fact is, John Wesley in his conception of the Church was both before and behind his age. He would have found abundance of sympathisers with his views in the seventeenth, and abundance after the first thirty years of the nineteenth, century. But in the eighteenth century they were quite out of date. Here and there a man like Jones of Nayland or Bishop Horsley[714] might express High Church views of the same kind as those of John Wesley, but they were quite out of harmony with the general spirit of the times. Wesley's idea of the Church was not like that of high and dry Churchmen of his day; that Church which was always 'in danger' was not what he meant; neither was it, like that of the later Evangelical school, the Church of the Reformation period. He went back to far earlier times, and took for his model in doctrine and worship the Primitive Church before its divisions into East and West. Thus we find him recording with evident satisfaction at Christmastide, 1774, 'During the twelve festival days we had the Lord's Supper daily—a little emblem of the Primitive Church.'[715] When he first appointed district visitors he looked with great satisfaction upon the arrangement, because it reminded him of the deaconesses of the Primitive Church. In the very act which tended most of all to the separation of Wesley's followers from the Church he was still led—or, as some will think, misled—by his desire to follow in what he conceived to be the steps of the Primitive Church. His ideas of worship are strictly in accordance with what would now be called High Church usages. He would have no pews, but open benches alike for all; he would have the men and the women separated, as they were in the Primitive Church;[716] he would have a hearty congregational service. When it was seasonable to sing praise to God, they were to do it with the spirit and the understanding also; 'not in the miserable, scandalous doggerel of Sternhold and Hopkins, but in psalms and hymns which are both sense and poetry, such as would sooner provoke a critic to turn Christian than a Christian to turn critic;' they were to sing 'not lolling at their ease, or in the indecent posture of sitting, but all standing before God, praising Him lustily and with a good courage;' there was to be 'no repetition of words, no dwelling on disjointed syllables.'[717] Wesley was much struck with the remarkable decorum with which public worship was conducted by the Scotch Episcopal Church, which has always been more inclined to High Church usages than her English sister.[718] The Fasts and Festivals of the Church Wesley desired to observe most scrupulously: every Friday was to be kept as a day of abstinence; the very children at Kingswood school were, if healthy, to fast every Friday till 3 P.M. All Saints' Day was his favourite festival, and he made it his constant practice on that day to preach on the Communion of Saints. He distinctly implies that he considers the celebration of the Holy Communion an essential part of the public service at least on every Lord's Day, and adduces this as a proof that the service at his own meetings must necessarily be imperfect. From his private memoranda, quoted by Mr. Urlin,[719] we find that he believed it to be a duty to observe so far as he could the following rules:—(1) to baptize by immersion; (2) to use the mixed chalice; (3) to pray for the faithful departed; (4) to pray standing on the Sunday in Pentecost. He thought it prudent (1) to observe the stations [Wednesday and Friday], (2) to keep Lent and especially Holy Week, (3) to turn to the east at the Creed. It is useless to speculate upon what might have been; but can it be doubted that if John Wesley's lot had been cast in the nineteenth instead of the eighteenth century, he would have found much to fascinate him in another revival, which, like his own, began at Oxford?

But how was it that if John Wesley showed this strong appreciation of the æsthetic and the symbolical in public worship, this desire to bring everything to the model of the Primitive Church, he never impressed these views upon his followers? How is it that so few traces of these predilections are to be found in his printed sermons? John Wesley had so immense an influence over his disciples that he could have led them to almost anything. How was it that he infused into them nothing whatever of that spirit which was in him?

The answer to these questions is to be found in the fact which, it may be remembered, led to these remarks. There is but one clue to the right understanding of Wesley's career. It is this: that his one great object was to promote the love of God and the love of man for God's sake. Everything must give way to this object of paramount importance. His tastes led him in one direction, but it was a direction in which very few could follow him. Not only was there absolutely nothing congenial to this taste either inside or outside the Church in the eighteenth century, but it would have been simply unintelligible. If he had followed out this taste, he would have been isolated.

Moreover, it is fully admitted that Wesley was essentially a many-sided man. Look at him from another point of view, and he stands in precisely the same attitude in which his contemporaries and successors of the Evangelical school stood—as the homo unius libri, referring everything to Scripture, and to Scripture alone. There would be in his mind no inconsistency whatever between the one position and the other; but he felt he could do more practical good by simply standing upon Scriptural ground, and therefore he was quite content to rest there.

It was precisely the same motive which led Wesley to the various separations which, to his sorrow, he was obliged to make from those who had been his fellow-workers. He has been accused of being a quarrelsome man, a man with whom it was not easy to be on good terms. The accusation is unjust. Never was a man more ready to forgive injuries, more ready to own his failings, more firm to his friends, and more patient with his foes.

Nevertheless it is an undoubted fact that he was frequently brought into collision with men whom he would have been the first to own as God's faithful servants—with William Law, with the Moravians, with Whitefield and the Calvinists, and with several of the Evangelical parish clergymen. It also cannot be denied that he showed some abruptness—nay, rudeness—in his communications with some of these.

But in each and all of these cases the clue to his conduct is still the same; his one desire was to do all the good he could to the souls of men, and to that great object friends, united action, and even common politeness must give way. To come to details. In 1738 he wrote an angry letter, and in 1756 an angry pamphlet, to William Law. Both these effusions were hasty and indiscreet; but, in spite of his indiscretion and discourtesy, it is easy to trace both in the letter and the pamphlet the one motive which actuated him. Law was far more than a match for Wesley in any purely intellectual dispute. But Wesley's fault, whatever it may have been, was a fault of the head, not of the heart. It is thoroughly characteristic of the generous and forgiving nature of the man that, in spite of their differences, Wesley constantly alluded to Law in his sermons, and always in terms of the warmest commendation.

The same motive which led Wesley to dispute with Law actuated him in his separation from the Moravians. In justice to that exemplary body it must be remembered that they were not well represented in London when Wesley split from them. The mischievous notion that it was contrary to the Gospel for a man to search the Scriptures, to pray, to communicate—in fact, to use any ordinances—before he had faith, that it was his duty simply to sit still and wait till this was given him, would, if it had gained ground, have been absolutely fatal to Wesley's efforts. He could not even tacitly countenance those who held such tenets without grievous hindrance to his work.[720] One is thankful to learn that he resisted his besetting temptation, and did not send to the Herrnhut brethren a rude letter which he had written,[721] and thankful also to find that he did full justice to the good qualities of Count Zinzendorf.[722] But as to his separation from the London Moravians, Wesley could not have acted otherwise without seriously damaging the cause which he had at heart. His dispute with Whitefield will come under our notice in connexion with the Calvinistic controversy, which forms a painfully conspicuous feature in the Evangelical movement. It is sufficient in this place to remark that the Antinomianism which, as a plain matter of fact, admitted even by the Calvinists themselves, did result from the perversion of Calvinism, was, if possible, a more fatal hindrance to Wesley's work than the Moravian stillness itself. This was obviously the ground of Wesley's dislike of Calvinism,[723] but it did not separate him from Calvinists; so far as a separation did ensue the fault did not lie with Wesley.[724]

His misunderstanding with some of the Evangelical clergy of his day arose from the same cause as that which led him into other disputes. An overpowering sense of the paramount importance of the great work which he had to do made him set aside everything which he considered to be an obstacle to that work without the slightest hesitation. Now, much as Wesley loved the Church of England, he never appreciated one of her most marked features, the parochial system. Perhaps under any circumstances such a system would have found little favour in the eyes of one of Wesley's temperament. To a man impatient of immediate results the slowly but surely working influence of a pastor resident in the midst of his flock, preaching to them a silent sermon every day and almost every hour by his example among them, would naturally seem flat, tame and impalpable when compared with the more showy effects resulting from the rousing preaching of the itinerant. Such a life as that of the parish priest would have been to Wesley himself simply unbearable. He was of opinion—surely a most erroneous opinion—that if he were confined to one spot he should preach himself and his whole congregation to sleep in a twelvemonth. He never estimated at its proper value the real, solid work which others were doing in their respective parishes. He bitterly regretted that Fletcher would persist in wasting his sweetness on the desert air of Madeley. He had little faith in the permanency of the good which the apostolic Walker was doing at Truro. Much as he esteemed Venn of Huddersfield, he could not be content to leave the parish in his hands. He expressed himself very strongly to Adam of Winteringham on the futility of his work in his parish. He utterly rejected Walker's advice that he should induce some of his itinerant preachers to be ordained and to settle in country parishes. He thought that this would not only narrow their sphere of usefulness, but also cripple their energies even in that contracted sphere. Mistaken as we may believe him to have been in these opinions, we cannot doubt his thorough sincerity. In the slight collision into which he was necessarily brought with the Evangelical clergy by acting upon these views he was actuated by no vulgar desire to make himself a name by encroaching upon other men's labours, but solely by the conviction that he must do the work of God in the best way he could, no matter whom he might offend or alienate by so doing. Order and regularity were good things in their way, but better do the work of God irregularly than let it be half-done or undone in the regular way.[725] He predicted that even the earnest parochial clergy of his day would prove a mere rope of sand—a prophecy which subsequent events will scarcely endorse.

Not that John Wesley ever desired to upset the parochial system. From first to last he consistently maintained his position that his work was not to supplant but to supplement the ordinary work of the Church. This supplementary agency formed so important a factor in the Evangelical revival, and its arrangement was so characteristic of John Wesley, that a few words on the subject seem necessary. It would fill too much space to describe in detail the constitution of the first Methodist societies. It is now purposed to consider them simply in their relation to their founder. The most superficial sketch of the life and character of John Wesley would be imperfect if it did not touch upon this subject; for, after all, it is as the founder, and organiser, and ruler of these societies that John Wesley is best known. There were connected with the Evangelical revival other writers as able, other preachers as effective, other workers as indefatigable, as he was; but there were none who displayed anything like the administrative talent that he did. From first to last Wesley held over this large and ever-increasing agency an absolute supremacy. His word was literally law, and that law extended not only to strictly religious matters, but to the minutest details of daily life. It is most amusing to read his letters to his itinerant preachers, whom he addresses in the most familiar terms. 'Dear Tommy' is told that he is never to sit up later than ten. In general he (Mr. Wesley) desires him to go to bed about a quarter after nine.[726] 'Dear Sammy' is reminded, 'You are called to obey me as a son in the Gospel. But who can prove that you are so called to obey any other person?' Another helper is admonished, 'Scream no more, at the peril of your soul. Speak with all your heart, but with a moderate voice. It is said of our Lord, "He shall not cry"—literally, scream.' The helpers generally are commanded 'not to affect the gentleman. You have no more to do with this character than with that of a dancing-master.' And again, 'Do not mend our rules, but keep them,' with much more to the same effect. His preachers in Ireland are instructed how they are to avoid falling into the dirty habits of the country and the most minute and delicate rules about personal cleanliness are laid down for them.