John Wesley
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, had a
profound impact on the church in the 18th century. Born in 1703, John was the fifteenth of
nineteen children of Samuel and Susanna Wesley.
Susanna, herself the youngest of twenty-fife children, conducted the
formal education of each child and supervised the household during the frequent
absences of her husband. Beginning on
their fifth birthday, Susanna instructed each child in the classical education
typical of the day – ensuring each child, including the girls, were thoroughly
educated in the Greek and Latin languages, as well as in studies of the Bible –
requiring them to memorize large portions of the Bible’s text. Running the home by necessity in a very
structured way, she ensured the good order of the home and made certain an
allotment of time was spent with each child every week to review their studies
and their spiritual condition.
One of John’s earliest memories was at age five, when he
was trapped in his home on the second floor as a fire consumed it. Just before the roof collapsed, John was
rescued by a man standing on another man’s shoulders. Susanna commented that it was as if “a brand
was plucked from the fire” (quoting Zechariah 3:2). John often used this in his preaching as a
metaphor for salvation.
During John’s time at Oxford university, he joined a club
founded by his younger brother Charles which was derisively called “The Holy
Club.” John was soon named the leader of
this club. In their study of what a
truly devout and holy life meant, John led them in rigorous spiritual
discipline: meeting daily from six to nine for prayer, psalms, and reading of
the New Testament (in Greek); they made a point to pray several minutes per
hour for a specific virtue; they took of Holy Communion weekly; they fasted
until 3:00 PM every Wednesday and Friday, as they understood was the habit of
the early church; they made frequent visits to prisons, and raised funds for
the relief of those in debtor’s prison.
For all his outward piety, John tried more and more
discipline to validate his salvation. He
developed an elaborate grid where he recorded his daily activities
hour-by-hour, resolutions he had kept or broken, and ranked his ‘temper of
devotion’ on a scale of 1 to 9, for every hour of his day.
As an Anglican, John felt called in 1735 to the British
colony of Georgia, in the new town of Savannah (then less than 2 years old) to
be the Anglican pastor of the town. On
the voyage to the colony, John came into contact with Moravian settlers. Even with all his self-discipline, John was
impressed by their piety and calm, deep faith.
While en route, a violent storm arose and snapped the mast of the
ship. The English panicked, the
Moravians gathered together to sing and pray.
John saw this and realized these simple people had an inner strength he
did not have.
After the story, John approached the pastor of the
Moravians to ask about his serenity during the storm. The pastor replied to his question with a
question: Did he, Wesley, have faith in Christ?
Wesley replied in the affirmative, but later reconsidered, writing in
his journal, “I fear they were vain words.”
John’s ministry in Georgia was mostly a failure, partly
because he tried to instill the same sense of spiritual discipline on his
congregation, and partly because he was facing his own internal spiritual
struggle. Wesley returned to England
after less than two years, depressed and bitter. On the return voyage he wrote in his diary,
“I went to America to convert the Indians but, oh, who shall convert me? Who, what, is he that will deliver me from
this evil heart of unbelief?”
Upon returning to England, he turned to some Moravians in
London for guidance and advice. He
reluctantly attended a meeting at Aldersgate Street in London on May 24th,
1738. He described it thus:
"In the evening I went very
unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's
Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was
describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I
felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for
salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even
mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."
John, still an Anglican preacher, began preaching as
Luther did before him – that Salvation was by grace alone, though faith in
Christ. This, along with the strict
methodical lifestyle he still practiced and advocated, brought him into
conflict with Anglican clergy. Wesley
felt called to the reformation of the Anglican Church, of which he remained a
member his entire life. John felt the
church failed in its duty to call sinners to repentance, and were thus guilty
of allowing people to die in a lost condition.
John disregarded many of the Anglican rules which he felt constricted
him in his calling: ignoring established parish boundaries and
self-commissioning lay preachers. John
had an incredible gift for organization and the “Methodist” movement quickly
spread.
As many Anglican churches closed to him, John Wesley
began open-air preaching, often in graveyards, giving him a means to bypass the
restrictions the local Anglicans would place on him and allowing him to preach
to many who would have never otherwise entered a church building. Traveling around England on horseback, he
would preach wherever he could assemble a crowd. More than once, when preaching in the town of
Epsworth, he would use his own father’s gravestone to stand on to preach to the
crowds. Over the course of his life, it
is estimated that John traveled over 250,000 miles and preached around 40,000
sermons.
The Methodist Church moved out of England and into
America via evangelists George Whitfield and Thomas Coke, among others, and
thrived during and in the aftermath of the American Revolution.
John was married at age 48 to a widow with four
children. They had no children of their
own. Fifteen years later she left him,
stating that she could no longer compete for his attention with his devotion to
the Methodist movement. John wrote in
his journal, “I did not forsake her, I did not dismiss her, I will not recall
her.”
John Wesley, with his organizational genius, recorded the
exact numbers of followers he had when he died: 294 preachers, 71,668 British
members, 19 missionaries, and 43,265 American members with 198 preachers.
John died at age 87, leaving behind a fantastic legacy of
commitment to the Gospel and a tremendous example of personal devotion. He left numerous volumes of sermons and
theology, and discourses of many issues of the day. He was a mentor to British abolitionist
leaders John Newton and William Wilberforce.
John Wesley quotes:
Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all
the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all
the people you can, as long as ever you can.
Catch on fire and people will come for miles to see you
burn.
Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin
and desire nothing but God, and I care not whether they be clergymen or laymen,
they alone will shake the gates of Hell and set up the kingdom of Heaven upon
Earth.
Money never stays with me. I would burn it if it did. I throw it out of my hands as soon as
possible, lest it should find its way into my heart.
The best thing of all is God is with us. (John Wesley’s
final words)
John Wesley’s Journal – As Abridged by Nehemiah Curnock,
Philosophical Library, 1951.
