WESLEY, JOHN. 



WESLEY, JOHN. 



6th of February 1736. Charles returned to England, sent homo by 

 Oglethorpe with despatches, early in 1737 ; John remained in America 

 till tho close of that year. The most remarkable incident of this part of 

 his history is the affair in which he became involved with Miss Sophia 

 Causton, niece of the chief magistrate at Savannah, whose partiality he 

 for some time encouraged, but whom he eventually, on the advice of 

 his Moravian friends, declined to marry. On this disappointment 

 Miss Causton married Mr. Williamson ; and soon after Wesley refused 

 to admit her to the communion, upon which her husband indicted him 

 for defamation, laying his damages at 1000Z. The affair was never 

 brought to an issue ; but it was the occasion of driving Wesley from 

 the colony, which he left on the evening of Saturday, the 3rd of 

 December 1737, shaking the dust off his feet, to use his own expression, 

 after a residence of one year and nearly nine months. The singular 

 account which his followers give of this matter may be read in Coke 

 and Moore (pp. 114-130). 



He reached England February 1st, 1738. While he had been 

 abroad, the religious excitement which now began to be generally 

 known by the name of Methodism had made great progress in London, 

 Bristol, and other parts of the south of England, under the impulse 

 of the enthusiastic preaching of Whitefield, who had sailed from the 

 Downs for Georgia only a few hours before the vessel which brought 

 Wesley back from thence cast anchor there, the two ships in fact 

 passing in sight of each other. As soon as he arrived in London, 

 Wesley hastened to renew his connection with the Moravians. It was 

 not however till some months after this, that, according to his own 

 account, he for the first time attained to true views of Christianity. 

 His conversion, we are assured, took place about a quarter before 

 nine o'clock on the evening of Wednesday, the 24th of May, at a meet- 

 ing, to which he had gone very unwillingly, of " a society in Alders- 

 gate-street, where one was reading Luther's 'Preface to tbe Epistle to 

 the Romans.' " 



About three weeks after his 'new birth,' on the 15th of June, he 

 set out for Germany, to visit the Moravian brethren at their original 

 seat of Herrnhut. He met Count Zinzendorf, the head of the Mora- 

 vians, at Marienborn, was brought before the prince royal of Prussia 

 (afterwards Frederick the Great) at Weimar, and having reached 

 Herrnhut, in Upper Lusatia, on the 1st of August, remained there 

 for about a fortnight, and then set out on his return to England, 

 where he arrived about the middle of September. From this date the 

 history of Wesley merges in the history of Methodism ; and all we 

 can attempt here is to note briefly the succession of the principal 

 events and circumstances with which he was personally most con- 

 cerned. 



Whitefield returned from Georgia in the latter end of 1738 ; and 

 he and Wesley immediately again became intimately associated. The 

 example of preaching in the open air, first set by Whitefield on the 

 17th of February 1739, was shortly after followed by Wesley at the 

 same place, the neighbourhood of Bristol. The first separate meeting- 

 house for the Methodists was begun to be built in the Horse Fair, 

 near St. James's church, Bristol, on the 12th of May in that same 

 year. Lay preaching, of which the first example had been set by an 

 individual named Bowers, in Islington churchyard, after a sermon by 

 Whitefield, was, not without some hesitation, sanctioned by Wesley 

 soon after his return to London in the autumn. This last movement 

 in particular gave to Methodism in most people's eyes the distinct 

 appearance of a schism in the church. Accordingly, when, before the 

 end of the year, Wesley's mother professed her accordance in his 

 views, her son Samuel wrote to her expressing the exceeding concern 

 and grief with which he had heard that she countenanced the spread- 

 ing delusion so far as to become " one of Jack's congregation." The 

 old lady had, like her son John, been converted in a moment and 

 from that time continued to live with him, and to attend his ministry 

 till her death in 1742. 



In July, 1740, Wesley solemnly separated himself from tho Mora- 

 vians, with whom he had now come to differ, or had discovered that 

 they differed from him, on some fundamental points of doctrine ; and 

 soon after he broke with Count Zinzendorf, the two parting, say his 

 official biographers, " without the least prospect of a reconciliation." 

 Their last interview took place in Gray's Inn Walks. His separation 

 from Zinzendorf and the Moravians, which made the two parties 

 immediately bitter enemies, was followed before the close of the same 

 year by a breach with Whitefield, which however although it divided 

 the new religionists into two permanently distinct bodies, only sus- 

 pended for a time the friendship and mutual regard of the two 

 fathers of Methodism. 



From this time Wesley's life was spent in preaching, travelling, 

 writing books, and labouring in all other possible ways for the con- 

 solidation and extension of the new church, the management of which 

 was now wholly in his own hands. No man ever gave himself up 

 more entirely to any object, or prosecuted it either with more zeal 

 and determination, or more method and skilful management. Not an 

 hour, scarce even a minute, was abstracted from tho service of the 

 cause on which he had set his heart ; and rarely has any ambition 

 been so well seconded by the other qualities and habits of mind, and, 

 it may be added, of body too, necessary to sustain it and give it full 

 effect. He rested nowhere, seldom riding less than forty, fifty, or 

 sixty miles a day ; even on his journeys from place to place he read 



and wrote ; and he generally preached three or four times, sometimes 

 five times, a day. For a long time he usually travelled on horseback ; 

 latterly he used a chaise ; " nor do we believe," say his official bio- 

 graphers, " there could be an instance found, during the space of 

 fifty years, wherein the severest weather hindered him even for 

 one day." 



About the year 1750, soon after his brother Charles had become a 

 husband, Wesley married Mrs. Vizclle, a widow with four children. 

 This step was made a little awkward at first by his having a few years 

 before published a tract entitled ' Thoughts on a Single Life,' in 

 strong recommendation of celibacy for all who were able to subject 

 themselves to that restraint. The marriage turned out a very unhappy 

 one : Wesley, who had stipulated that he should not preach one ser- 

 mon nor travel one mile the less on account of his change of condition, 

 was little at home: the lady 'became jealous; robbed him of his sub- 

 stance, as he states in one of hia letters, to prevent his giving it to 

 bad women ; and committed sundry other extravagances and outrages. 

 Wesley had high notions of the authority of a husband, and the supe- 

 riority of his own sex : " Know me," he wrote to her, " and know 

 yourself. Suspect me no more, asperse me no more, provoke me 110 

 more ; do not any longer contend for mastery, for power, money, or 

 praise ; be content to be a private, insignificant person, known and 

 loved by God and me. Attempt no more to abridge me of my liberty, 

 which I claim by the laws of God and man; &c., &c. .... Of what 

 importance is your character to mankind? If you was buried just 

 now, or if you never lived, what loss would it be to the cause of 

 God ? " The end was, that after she had several times run away from 

 him and been induced to return, she repeated the experiment once 

 more, and was not asked to come back. " Non earn reliqui," says 

 Wesley in his journal, "non dimisi, non revocabo I did not forsake 

 her, I did not dismiss her, I will not recall her." This was iu 1771. 

 She lived for ten years longer, and died at Camberwell, where a stone 

 is placed at the head of her grave in the churchyard, setting forth that 

 she was "a woman of exemplary piety, a tender parent, and a 

 sincere friend." She bore no children to her second husband. 



Wesley died after a short illness at his house in London, on the 2nd 

 of March 1791, in the eighty-eighth year of his age. His publications 

 are far too numerous for us to attempt any account or even au enume- 

 ration of them : among the most remarkable, besides his Journal, are 

 a corrected translation of Thomas-a-Kempis, said to have been pub- 

 lished by him in 1735, a short time before his departure for America; 

 various collections of hymns, most of which however were written by 

 his brother Charles ; a History of England ; a short Roman History ; 

 ' Primitive Physic ; ' and many short tracts on theological subjects. 

 There are at least two collected editions of his works : one in 32 vols. 

 Svo, printed immediately after his death ; another in 16 vols. 8vo, 

 printed in 1809. The 'Arminian Magazine,' now called the 'Metho- 

 dist Magazine,' was established by Wesley iu 1780, and was conducted 

 under his superintendence so long as he lived. 



Of several lives that have been written of Wesley, the two principal 

 are that compiled immediately after his death by Dr. Thomas Coke 

 and Mr. Henry Moore, to whom all his manuscripts were left, and 

 published in one volume, Svo, 1792 ; and that by the late Dr. Southey, 

 in 2 vols. Svo, London, 1820. Prefixed to the latter is a list of the 

 chief printed materials for the biography of this extraordinary man. 



THE REV. CHARLES WESLET, the younger brother of John 

 Wesley, was born at Epworth in 1708, and was educated at West- 

 minster School under his brother Samuel, his school-bills there for 

 several years being discharged by the relation or namesake who, as 

 related above, offered to make him his heir if he would accompany 

 him to Ireland. He was elected to Christchurch in 1726, and from 

 this time his history makes part of that of his brother, with whoso 

 labours in the diffusion of his religious views and in the establishment 

 of Methodism he was associated from their commencement. It was 

 contrary to the scheme of life he had laid out for himself, which was 

 to spend his days at Oxford as a tutor, that he was prevailed upon, in 

 1735, to take orders, and to accompany his brother to Georgia. After 

 their return from America, they had occasional differences upon points 

 both of doctrine and practice, but none that ever produced any 

 serious disunion. In 1749 Charles was married by his brother, at 

 Garth in Brecknockshire, to Misa Sarah Gwynne, a lady of a good 

 family in that county. After his marriage he confined his ministra- 

 tions almost entirely to London and Bristol. Charles Wesley was an 

 able preacher, and " possessed," say Coke and Moore, in their Life of 

 his brother, " a remarkable talent of uttering the most striking truths 

 with simplicity, truth, and brevity." He early showed a turn and 

 talent for writing in verse ; and most of the new hymns published by 

 John Wesley in his various collections were of Charles's composition. 

 " In these hyinns," observes his brother, in one of his prefaces, " there 

 is no doggerel, no botches, nothing put in to patch up the rhyme ; no 

 feeble expletives. Here is nothing turgid or bombast on the one 

 hand, or low and creeping on the other. Here are no cant expressions, 

 no words without meaning. Here are (allow me to say) both the 

 purity, the strength, and the elegance of the English language, and 

 at the same time the utmost simplicity and plainness, suited to every 

 capacity." This is a just character of Charles Wesley's poetry, both 

 in his hymns and other compositions. Harmoniously as the two 

 brothers co-operated throughout their lives, they were very unlike in 



