The points upon[upon] which Mr Wesley gives advice to his young curate are—1. His general aims and intentions; 2. His converse and demeanour among the parishioners; 3. His reading the liturgy; 4. His studies; 5. His preaching and catechising. 6. His administering the sacraments. 7. The administration of discipline.
In reference to the first, he avers that the end to be aimed at by every Christian minister is “the glory of God, the edifying of His Church, and the salvation of immortal souls.” The man who makes the attainment of worldly dignity any part of his design, falls not far short of the iniquity of Simon Magus, nor can he expect a much better end. Without the aim being right, a clergyman’s life would be one of the most tasteless and wearisome things in the world. “For my own part,” he says, “I had rather be a porter, or even a pettifogger.” To keep the heart right in this matter, he recommends his curate to read, once a quarter, the form of ordination; just as Methodist preachers, some years ago, were enjoined to read the “Liverpool Minutes.”
As it regards “converse and demeanour,” he strongly advises that, when parish business calls the minister to a public-house, as it sometimes may, his stay in such a place should be as brief as possible; and that when visiting, especially the rich, he should guard himself against the bottle and against bribes. He recommends him to “visit his whole parish from house to house, and that even the men and maid-servants; for a good shepherd knows his sheep by name.” He advises him to take down the name and age of every person, and to ascertain who can read; who can say their prayers and catechisms; who have been confirmed; who have received the communion; who are of age to do it; and who have prayers in their families. He had attempted this twice or thrice himself during the first twelve years of his ministry at Epworth; but during the last twelve, since his house was burned, he had been so much diverted, that, though he had begun such a systematised visiting, he had not been able to quite finish it. He recommends the curate to visit the sick, even though not requested; and to endeavour to suppress the new custom of burying by candlelight.
With regard to “reading prayers,”[[268]] he expresses a confident hope that his curate will do as he has done, viz., read the prayers on every holiday, Wednesday, and Friday; and, he says, he should be pleased if this was done also on the eves of holidays. He remarks that there are but very few who read the Liturgy as it should be read; and that he has heard a hundred good preachers to one good reader. He says—“I am of opinion that the prayers, and even the lessons, might be pricked, as are the psalms and anthems, so as to be read properly and musically.” He urges his friend to avoid “unequal cadences,” and “incondite whinings; laying weight where there ought to be none, or omitting it where it is requisite, like the music of a Quakers’ meeting.” “He must,” he adds, “avoid a running over the prayers, as if we were in haste to be at the end of them; and, on the other side, a drawling, canting manner, either of which will be apt to render the reader, if not the prayers themselves, contemptible.”
Respecting psalmody, he says that, as they cannot, at Epworth, “reach anthems and cathedral music, they must be content with their present parochial way of singing.” Indeed, he inclines to think they must also be content with their “grandsire Sternhold,” for Bishop Beveridge had declared that the common people could understand the Psalms of Sternhold better than those of Tate and Brady. Wesley says there may be truth in this, for the common people “have a strange genius at understanding nonsense.” He adds that the people at Epworth “did once sing well, and it cost a pretty deal to teach them.” The singing, however, was now not so good as formerly, and he hopes his curate will tune them up again by meeting them at church in the long winter evenings, and by getting the scholars to sing as they used to do when he first came thither.
Concerning his “studies,” Mr Wesley advises his curate to add to his knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages a knowledge of the Hebrew, for that is necessary in order to be a complete divine. He contends that, while logic, history, law, pharmacy, philosophy, chronology, geography, mathematics, poetry, music, and other parts of learning, are to be read and studied, they must all be used as auxiliaries to divinity. The Bible, however, must be the main subject of a clergyman’s studies, and this ought always to be read with devotion. The Apocryphal Books ought not to be neglected, being of great and venerable antiquity, and some of them referred to by St Paul, and perhaps also by our Saviour. Mr Wesley then proceeds to enumerate a host of writers whose works are worthy of being read or otherwise. Tertullian had fire enough, and Justin and Clemens Alexandrinus sense and learning; but Origen is worth them and all others put together. Irenæus is learned, acute, orthodox, zealous, and devout; and St Cyprian is safer than his master Tertullian; but Lactantius, notwithstanding the purity of his language and the beauty of his periods, is so novel a Christian, or so rank an heretic, that he scarce had patience to read him. Socrates and Plato are almost transcripts of Pythagoras. Tully is worth all the Romans. Seneca is well worth reading. And thus Samuel Wesley runs through all the principal writers, Christian and heathen, from the birth of Christ to the time of the Reformation. He had not read much of Luther; Melancthon was ingenious and polite; Calvin worthy of being read with caution. Bucer was pious, learned, and moderate; Bellarmine had all the strength of the Romanists; Fisher was a great man; Gardiner was far from being contemptible; Erasmus useful and pleasant; Jewel neat and strong; Cranmer pious and erudite; but Ridley, among all the Reformers, for clearness, closeness, strength, and learning, stands pre-eminent. Chillingworth was one of the best disputants in the world; Grotius was the prince of commentators, and worth all the rest, though he seems not always consistent with himself; Hammond was learned, judicious, and orthodox, if you throw aside his Jerusalem, and Gnostics, and Simon Magus; Sanderson was a master casuist; Mede has many bright and happy thoughts; the critics were worth a king’s ransom, and most of them might be found in Pool’s Synopsis.
Speaking of his own contemporaries, Wesley proceeds to say:—Tillotson brought the art of preaching near perfection, but Stillingfleet was a more universal scholar; and yet Archbishop Sharpe was a more popular pulpit orator than either. Bishop Pearson was a man of almost inimitable sense, piety, and learning, and his work on the creed ought to be in every clergyman’s study, though unable to purchase anything else than the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. Bishop Bull was a strong and nervous writer; and the sermons of Bishop Beveridge were in themselves a library. Bishop Spratt was one of the first masters of the English language. Bishop Burnet, notwithstanding his Scotticisms, had a prodigious genius, and a body that would bear almost anything, for he himself had told Wesley that, at one period of his life, his circumstances were such that, to retrieve them, he lived upon three-halfpence a day. Bishop Ken made almost all who heard him preach begin to weep; Bishop Hopkins was judicious and useful; Isaac Barrow strong, masculine, and noble; Dodwell had piety and learning, but was overfond of nostrums; Ray, Derham, and Boyle were as useful as entertaining; Calamy’s, Smalridge’s, and Atterbury’s sermons were standards; Whitby was learned and laborious, though he had brought his squirt to quench hell-fire, and to diminish the honour of his Lord and Master; and Le Clerc had more wit than learning, and less faith than either. Judge Hale was strong, pious, and nervous; Nelson genteel, zealous, and instructive; Leslie, against the Jews and Deists, was demonstrative; Kettlewell, wonderfully pious and devout; and Hickes’s Letters against the Papists unanswerable. Among his old friends, the Dissenters, Mr Wesley mentions Richard Baxter, whom he had heard preach, and whose practical writings, as well as sermons, had a strange fire and pathos; Dr Annesley, a man of great piety and of very good learning; Charnock, diffuse and lax, but very good; Howe, close, strong, and metaphysical; Alsop, merry and witty; Bates, polite and polished; Williams, orthodox and possessed of good sense, especially that of getting money; Calamy, whose style is not amiss; Bradbury, who is fire and feather; Burgess, who had more sense than he made use of; Shower, polite; Cruse, unhappy; Owen, a gentleman and a scholar; Matthew Henry, commended for his laborious work on the Old Testament; and Clarkson, Tillotson’s tutor, who knew more about the Fathers than all the Dissenters put together.
After going through this long list of authors, with whose writings he was himself more or less acquainted, Mr Wesley takes up the fifth section of his pamphlet—viz., Preaching; and says here “he ought to blush for pretending to give rules for that wherein he was never master, but it is far easier to direct than it is to practise.” First, he advises his curate to prepare a course of sermons on all the principles of religion, so as to comprise, as near as may be, the whole body of divinity. He then proceeds to say—“I sincerely hate what some call a fine sermon, with just nothing in it. I cannot for my life help thinking that it is very like our fashionable poetry—a mere polite nothing.” He recommends that the divisions of a sermon be not too long, or too many; that its illustrations be proper and lively, its proofs close and pointed, its motives strong and cogent, and its inferences and application natural, and yet laboured with all the force of sacred eloquence. He also recommends a prudent, occasional mixture of controversial sermons against papists, sectaries, and heretics; and that the curate, instead of reading his sermons, should repeat them from memory. He advises him to preach suitable sermons in every year, on November 5th, January 30th, May 29th, and August 1st.
In reference to “Catechising,” he says, the curate will have assistance from the pious and careful schoolmaster, in whose house he will live. He thinks that catechising had much to do with the speedy and wide propagation of the Reformed religion, and has little hope that the Church of England will maintain its position if this be neglected. He expresses the opinion that catechising should not be confined to the season of Lent only, but should be practised at evening service on all Sundays and holidays; and that when the children have been made perfect in the ordinary church catechism, they should be taught some larger one. He himself had adopted this plan, using, as his second catechism, that published by Bishop Beveridge.
As to the administration of the Sacraments, he hopes that the curate will succeed in doing what he had never been able to do himself—viz., getting the godfathers and godmothers at baptisms to repeat the responses. The greatest struggle of his ministerial life at Epworth, had been to prevail with the people to bring their children to church for public baptism, and their wives to be churched. In many instances, parents deferred the baptism of their children so long that they brought such monsters of men-children to the font as were almost enough to break his arms while holding them, and whose manful voices were enough to disturb and alarm the whole congregation. This was an evil which ought to be set right. The Lord’s Supper was administered in Epworth Church once a month, and a collection made, at which Mr Wesley, for the sake of example, always gave something himself. This sacrament money, when entered in the church book, was kept in the box appointed for it, with three canonical locks and keys, one of the keys being held by the rector; three-fourths of the money were paid for the children at the charity school, and the remainder put into the bank for such poor sick people as had no constant relief from the parish, and who came to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.