LETTER LIII.
Methodists.—Wesley and Whitfield.—Different Methods of attacking the Establishment.—Tithes.—Methodism approaches Popery, and paves the Way for it.—William Huntingdon, S. S.
In the year 1729 a great rent was made in the ragged robe of heresy. Wesley and Whitfield were the Luther and Calvin of this schism, which will probably, at no very remote time, end in the overthrow of the Established Heretical Church.
They began when young men at Oxford by collecting together a few persons who were of serious dispositions like themselves, meeting together in prayer, visiting the prisoners, and communicating whenever the sacrament was administered. Both took orders in the Establishment, and for awhile differed only from their brethren by preaching with more zeal. But they soon outwent them in heresy also, and began to preach of the inefficacy and worthlessness of good works, and of the necessity of being born again, a doctrine which they perverted into the wildest enthusiasm. The new birth they affirmed was to take place instantaneously, and to be accompanied with an assurance of salvation; but throes and agonies worse than death were to precede it. The effect which they produced by such a doctrine, being both men of burning fanaticism, and of that kind of eloquence which suited their hearers, is wonderful. They had no sooner convinced their believers of the necessity of this new birth, than instances enough took place. The people were seized with demoniacal convulsions; shrieks and yells were set up by frantic women; men fell as if shot through the heart; and after hours of such sufferings and contortions as required the immediate aid either of the exorcist or the beadle, they became assured that they were born again, and fully certain that their redemption was now sealed.
There may have been some trick in these exhibitions, but that in the main there was no wilful deception is beyond a doubt. Duæ res, says St Augustine, faciunt in homine omnia peccata, timor scilicet et cupiditas: timor facit fugere omnia quæ sunt carni molesta; cupiditas facit habere omnia quæ sunt carni suavia. These powerful passions were excited in the most powerful degree. They terrified their hearers as children are terrified by tales of apparitions, and the difference of effect was according to the difference of the dose, just as the drunkenness produced by brandy is more furious than that which is produced by wine. All those affections which are half-mental, half-bodily, are contagious;—yawning, for instance, is always, and laughter frequently so. When one person was thus violently affected, it was like jarring a string in a room full of musical instruments. The history of all opinions evinces that there are epidemics of the mind.
Such scenes could not be tolerated in the churches. They then took to the streets and fields, to the utter astonishment of the English clergy, who in their ignorance cried out against this as a novelty. Had these men, happily for themselves, been born in a catholic country, it is most probable that they might indeed have been burning and shining lights. Their zeal, their talents, and their intrepid and indefatigable ardour, might have made them saints instead of heresiarchs, had they submitted themselves to the unerring rule of faith, instead of blindly trusting to their own perverted judgments. It was of such men, and of such errors, that St Leo the Great said: In hanc insipientiam cadunt, qui cum ad cognoscendam veritatem aliquo impediuntur obscuro, non ad Propheticas voces, non ad Apostolicas literas, nec ad Evangelicas auctoritates, sed ad semetipsos recurrunt; sed ideo magistri erroris existunt, quia veritatis discipuli non fuere.
Thousands and tens of thousands flocked to hear them; and the more they were opposed the more rapidly their converts increased. Riots were raised against them in many places, which were frequently abetted by the magistrates. There is a good anecdote recorded of the mayor of Tiverton, who was advised to follow Gamaliel's advice, and leave the Methodists (as they are called) and their religion to themselves. "What, sir!" said he: "Why, what reason can there be for any new religion in Tiverton? another way of going to Heaven when there are so many already? Why, sir, there's the Old Church and the New Church, that's one religion; there's Parson Kiddell's at the Pitt Meeting, that's two; Parson Westcott's in Peter Street, that's three; and old Parson Terry's in Newport Street, is four.—Four ways of going to Heaven already!—and if they won't go to Heaven by one or other of these ways, by —— they sha'n't go to Heaven at all from Tiverton, while I am mayor of the town."—The outrages of the mob became at length so violent that the sufferers appealed to the laws for protection, and from that time they have remained unmolested.
The two leaders did not long agree. Wesley had deliberately asserted, that no good works can be done before justification, none which have not in them the nature of sin,—the abominable doctrine which the Bonzes of Japan preach in honour of their deity Amida! Whitfield added to this the predestinarian heresy, at once the most absurd and most blasphemous that ever human presumption has devised. The Methodists divided under these leaders into the two parties of Arminians and Calvinists. Both parties protested against separating from the Church, though they were excluded from the churches. Wesley however, who was the more ambitious of the two, succeeded in establishing a new church government, of which he was the heretical pope. There was no difficulty in obtaining assistants; he admitted lay preachers, and latterly administered ordination himself. The œconomy of his church is well constructed. He had felt how greatly the people are influenced by novelty, and thus experimentally discovered one of the causes why the Established clergy produced so little effect. His preachers, therefore, are never to remain long in one place. A double purpose is answered by this; a perpetual succession of preachers keeps up that stimulus without which the people would relapse into conformity, and the preachers themselves are prevented from obtaining in any place that settled and rooted influence which would enable them to declare themselves independent of Wesley's Connection (as the sect is called), and open shop for themselves. An hundred of these itinerants compose the Conference, which is an annual assembly, the cortes or council of these heretics, or, like our national councils, both in one; wherein the state of their numbers and funds is reported and examined, stations appointed for the preachers, and all the affairs of the society regulated. The authority of the preachers is strengthened by the system of confession,—confession without absolution, and so perverted as to be truly mischievous. Every parish is divided into small classes, in which the sexes are separated, and also the married and the single. The members of each class are mutually to confess to and question each other, and all are to confess to the priest, to whom also the leader of each class is to report the state of each individual's conscience. The leader also receives the contributions, which he delivers to the stewards. The whole kingdom is divided into districts, to each of which there is an assistant or bishop appointed, who oversees all the congregations within his limits; and thus the conference, which is composed of these assistants and preachers, possesses a more intimate knowledge of all persons under their influence than ever was yet effected by any system of police, how rigorous soever.
While Wesley lived his authority was unlimited. He resolutely asserted it, and the right was acknowledged. It was supposed that his death would lead to the dissolution of the body, or at least a schism; but it produced no change. The absolute empire which he had exercised passed at once into a republic, or rather oligarchy of preachers, without struggle or difficulty, and their numbers have continued to increase with yearly accelerating rapidity. He lived to the great age of eighty-eight, for more than fifty years of which he had risen at four o'clock, preached twice and sometimes thrice a day, and travelled between four and five thousand miles every year, being seldom or never a week in the same place; and yet he found leisure to be one of the most voluminous writers in the language. The body lay in state for several days,—in his gown and band in the coffin, where it was visited by forty or fifty thousand persons, constables attending to maintain order. It was buried before break of day, to prevent the accidents which undoubtedly would else have taken place. For many weeks afterward a curious scene was exhibited at his different chapels, where the books of the society are always sold. One was crying "The true and genuine life of Mr Wesley!" another bawling against him, "This is the real life!" and a third vociferating to the people to beware of spurious accounts, and buy the authentic one from him.
Wesley had no wish to separate from the Establishment, and for many years he and his preachers opened their meeting-houses only at hours when there was no service in the churches. This is no longer the case, and the two parties are now at open war. The Methodists gain ground; their preachers are indefatigable in making converts: but there is no instance of any person's becoming a convert to the Establishment;—waifs and strays from other communities fall into it, such as rich Presbyterians, who are tempted by municipal honours, and young Quakers who forsake their sect because they choose to dress in the fashion and frequent the theatre; but no persons join it from conviction. The meeting-houses fill by draining the churches, of which the Methodists will have no scruple to take possession when they shall become the majority, because they profess to hold the same tenets, and to have no objection to the discipline.