Mr. Wesley, it has been said, "was no stormy and dramatic Luther. He was no Cromwell, putting his enemies to the sword in the name of the Lord. He was no Knox, tearing down churches to get rid of their members. He was no Calvin; he did not burn anybody for disagreeing with him."
Mr. Wesley was styled "the mover of men's consciences." His preaching was simple—a child could easily understand him. There were no far-fetched terms, no soaring among the clouds. All was simple, artless, and clear. He declares that he could no more preach a fine sermon than he could wear a fine coat.
George Whitefield was regarded as the prince of modern eloquence. Dr. Franklin (no mean judge) accorded him this rank. Charles Wesley was but little inferior to Whitefield as a pulpit orator; while Fletcher was not inferior to either. Mr. Wesley regarded him as superior to Whitefield. "He had," says Wesley, "a more striking person, equally good breeding, and winning address; together with a rich flow of fancy, a strong understanding, and a far greater treasure of learning both in language, philosophy, philology, and divinity, and above all (which I can speak with greater assurance, because I had a thorough knowledge both of one and the other), a more deep and constant communion with the Father, and with his Son, Jesus Christ."
These were mighty men. The multitudes that listened to them were swayed by their eloquence and power as is the forest by a rushing, mighty wind. Their earnest appeals drew floods of tears from eyes unaccustomed to weep.
We are not informed that Mr. Wesley often wept while preaching, and yet no such effects were produced by Whitefield's preaching as were witnessed under Wesley's. Mr. Southey admits that the sermons of Wesley were attended with greater and more lasting effect than were the sermons of Whitefield. Men fell under his words like soldiers slain in battle. While he was calm, collected, deliberate, and logical, he was more powerful in moving the sensibilities as well as the understanding of his hearers than any other man in England. Marvelous were the physical effects produced by his preaching.
We are told that "his attitude in the pulpit was graceful and easy; his action calm and natural, yet pleasing and expressive," and his command over an audience was very remarkable. He always faced the mob, and was generally victorious at such times. In the midst of a mob he says: "I called for a chair; the winds were hushed, and all was calm and still; my heart was filled with love, my eyes with tears, and my mouth with arguments. They were amazed, they were ashamed, they were melted down, they devoured every word." There must have been, in such preaching, that which seldom falls to our lot to hear. Beattie once heard him preach at Aberdeen one of his ordinary sermons. He remarked that "it was not a masterly sermon, yet none but a master could have preached it."
The account of Wesley preaching at Epworth on his father's tombstone is inspiring. He was refused the church where his honored father had preached thirty-nine years, and for three successive nights he stood upon his father's tombstone and preached to a large company of people. "A living son," says Tyerman, "preaching on his dead father's grave, because the parish priest refused to allow him to officiate in the dead father's church." "I am well persuaded," said Wesley, "that I did more good to my Lincolnshire parishioners by preaching three days on my father's tomb than I did by preaching three years in his pulpit." During the preaching of these sermons, it is said, the people wept aloud on every side, and Wesley's voice at times was drowned by the cries of penitents, and many in that old churchyard found peace with God. On another evening many dropped as dead men under the word. A clergyman who heard Wesley preach on that occasion, in writing to him, said: "Your presence created an awe, as if you were an inhabitant of another world."
Who remembers the name of Rector Romley, that ecclesiastical pretender who arrogated to himself such authority? His name has long since passed into comparative oblivion, while that of Wesley, whom he despised, shines as a star of the first magnitude, and shall shine on until the heavens shall pass away. A few years later Romley lost his voice, became a drunkard, then a lunatic, and thus died.
A late writer, not a Methodist, gives a glowing description of Wesley and his conflicts:
He was the peer, in intellectual endowments, of any literary character of that most literary period. No gownsman of the university, no lawned and mitered prelate of his time, was intellectually the superior of this itinerant Methodist—a bishop more truly than the Archprelate of Canterbury himself in everything but the empty name. The hosts of literary pamphleteers and controversialists that rained their attacks upon his system, in showers, were made to feel the keenness of his logic and the staggering weight of his responsive blows. It is a fine sight to look upon, from this distance, that of this single modest man, an unpretentious knight of true religion and consecrated learning, beset for forty years by scores, yes, hundreds, of assailants, armed in all the ostentation of churchly dignity, shooting at him their arrows of tracts and sermons; newspaper writers pouring upon him their ceaseless squibs; malicious critics assailing his motives and his methods with innuendoes and false suggestions; ponderous professors tilting at him with their heavier lances of books and stately treatises; and he, alone, giving more than thrust for thrust, and his brother Charles furnishing the inspiring accompaniment of martial music until one man had chased a thousand, and two have put ten thousand to flight.[D]