[880] [The lives of Wesley as touching this early experience of his life, as well as illustrating a moral revolution, which took within its range all the English colonies during the period of the present volume, may properly be characterized here:—
The introduction to Rigg’s Living Wesley is devoted to a criticism of the different accounts of John Wesley, and the student will find further bibliographical help in a paper on “Wesley and his biographers,” by W. C. Hoyt in the Methodist Quarterly, vol. viii.; in the article in Allibone’s Dict. of Authors; in Decanver’s [Cavender pseud.] list of books, written in refutation of Methodism; and in the list of authorities given by Southey in his Life of Wesley.
Wesley left three literary executors,—Coke, Moore, and Whitehead, his physician; and his journals and papers were put into the hands of the last named. Coke and Moore, however, acting independently, were the first to publish a hasty memoir, and Whitehead followed in 1793-96; but his proved to be the work of a theological partisan. A memoir by Hampton was ready when Wesley died, but it turned out to be very meagre.
Next came the life by Southey in 1820. He had no sources of information beyond the printed material open to all; but he had literary skill to make the most of it, and appreciation enough of his subject to elevate Wesley’s standing in the opinion of such as were outside of his communion. He accordingly made an account of a great moral revolution, which has been by no means superseded in popular usefulness.
Now followed a number of lives intended to correct the representations of previous biographers, and in some cases to offer views more satisfactory to the Methodists themselves. Moore, in 1824, found something to correct in the accounts of both Whitehead and Southey. Watson, in 1831, aimed to displace what Southey had said unsatisfactory to the sect, and to correct Southey’s chronological order; but he made his narrative slight and incomplete. Southey was, however, chiefly relied upon by Mrs. Oliphant in her sketch, first in Blackwood’s Mag., Oct., 1868, and later in her Hist. Sketches of the Reign of George II.; but while Dr. Rigg acknowledges it to be clever, he calls it full of misconceptions. Mrs. Julia Wedgwood, in her John Wesley and the Evangelical Reaction of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1870), relied so much on Southey, as the Methodists say, that she neglected later information; but she so far accorded with the general estimation of Wesley in the denomination as to reject Southey’s theory of his ambition.
In the general histories of English Methodism, Wesley necessarily plays a conspicuous part, and their authors are among the most important of his biographers. The first volume of George Smith’s history was in effect a life of Wesley, though somewhat incomplete as such; but in Abel Stevens’s opening volumes the story is told more completely and with graphic skill. There is an excellent account of these days in chapter 19 of Earl Stanhope’s History of England, and a careful summary is given in the fourth volume of the Pictorial History of England.
The relations which Wesley sustained throughout to the Established Church have been discussed in the London Quarterly Review by the Rev. W. Arthur, and by Dr. James H. Rigg, the contribution by the latter being subsequently enlarged in a separate book, The relations of John Wesley and of Wesleyan Methodism to the Church of England, investigated and determined. 2d edition, revised and enlarged. London, 1871. See also British Quarterly Review, Oct., 1871, and the Contemp. Review, vol. xxviii. Curteis, in his Bampton lectures, goes over the ground also. Urlin, John Wesley’s place in Church History (1871), prominently claimed that Wesley was a revivalist in the church, and not a dissenter, and aimed to add to our previous knowledge. A Catholic view of him is given by Dr. J. G. Shea in the Amer. Cath. Quart. Rev., vii. p. 1.
The most extensive narrative, considering Wesley in all his relations, private as well as public, the result of seventeen years’ labor, with the advantage of much new material, is the Life and Times of Wesley, by Tyerman. It is, however, far too voluminous for the general reader. He is not blind to Wesley’s faults, and some Methodists say he is not in sufficient sympathy with the reformer to do him justice.
Those who wish compacter estimates of the man, with only narrative enough to illustrate them, will find such in Taylor’s Wesley and Methodism, where the philosophy of the movement is discussed; in Rigg’s Living Wesley, which is a condensed generalization of his life, not without some new matter; and in Dr. Hamilton’s article in the North British Review, which was kindly in tone, but not wholly satisfactory to the Methodists.
There is a well-proportioned epitome of his life by Lelièvre in French, of which there is an English translation, John Wesley, his Life and Work, London, 1871. Janes has made Wesley his own historian, by a collocation of his journals, letters, etc., and his journals have been separately printed. There is a separate narrative of Wesley’s early love, Narrative of a remarkable Transaction, etc. A paper on his character and opinions in earlier life is in the London Quart. Rev., vol. xxxvii. On his mission to Georgia, see David Bogue and James Bennett’s History of Dissenters from 1688 to 1808, London, 1808-12, in 4 volumes, vol. iii.; and the note on his trouble with Oglethorpe in Grahame’s United States (Boston ed., iii. p. 201).