Wesley’s Theory of the Church

Few things in ecclesiastical history are stranger than the circumstance that a century after Wesley’s death, and when one of the greatest Protestant Churches in the world bears his name and is the direct fruit of his work, it should still be a matter of perplexed debate whether he ever intended the creation of a Church. Was it — or was it not — his purpose that Methodism should remain an order within the Anglican Church?

It is easy to dismiss the question with the obvious generalisation that he who plants the acorn must be held to intend the oak. But the puzzled reader wants to understand Wesley; and the task, looked at in some lights, is not easy. Wesley, it is true, was the frankest of men. He had absolutely no reserves. His correspondence in bulk equals that of Horace Walpole, and is infinitely more open and honest. Wesley, moreover, in his Journal, has photographed not merely his own character and work, but the changes of almost every day in his own moods. Betwixt his conversion in 1738 and his death in 1791 is a long stretch of fifty-three years, and through that whole period Wesley lived in a blaze of publicity. Every act he did ips registered, almost every word is audible, well-nigh every letter is preserved. And yet, after reading everything Wesley has written, and studying everything that he did, doubt is possible to many anxious souls whether Methodism in becoming a Church has wrecked its founder’s ideals or fulfilled them. If John Wesley came back in the flesh again, would he recognise his own work; and if he did, would he embrace it or renounce it?

It is easy to quote many sayings of Wesley which can be flung as reproaches and arguments against Wesley’s Church by disputants who are eager to prove it has no right to exist. And these inconvenient missiles are to be found not only in the utterances of his earlier years, when

WESLEY AND HTS CENTURY

hot blood ran in his veins and High Church prejudices coloured his whole vision. They can be discovered in the later years of his life, when reason was cool, and when his work as an evangelist had reached its climax.

It was in 1787, within four years of his death, that Wesley wrote the oft-quoted sentence which at least proves that he had not the vision of a prophet: “When the Methodists leave the Church of England, God will leave them.” A year later he declares: “The glory of the Methodists is not to be a separate body;” and that, “the more he reflected the more he was convinced that the Methodists ought not to leave the Church.” Still a year later (in 1789) he declared that “none who regarded his judgment or advice would separate from the Church of England.” What could be more emphatic than these statements? If the quotations could stop here the case would be closed.

It is true that at the stage of these sayings the Church of England had forgotten, in large measure at least, its early scorn of the Methodist revival. It had begun to dimly realise Wesley’s greatness and the splendour of his services to religion. The church doors so long shut against him were now on every side thrown open. Wesley himself, his head white with the snows of over eighty years, and crowned with the spiritual honours of a career so memorable, was welcomed with veneration everywhere. “I have come somehow, I know not how,” said the puzzled Wesley himself, “to be an honoured man.” Bishops no longer attacked him. Clergymen no longer headed mobs to break up his services. Never again would a dninken divine thrust hira from the sacramental table, as had once happened at Epworth. And this new mood on the part of the Anglican clergy might quite naturally have increased Wesley’s always strong desire to keep his followers within the Church.

But this is by no means a sufficient explanation of the emphatic words about separation from the Church we have quoted. Those sentences are perhaps the only sayings of Wesley that a good many High Churchmen know by heart, and they derive infinite comfort from them, while they probably cause not a little disquiet to some good Methodists when they happen to hear them quoted.

But then it is just as easy to quote a chain of sayings of an exactly opposite character from Wesley’s lips and pen. “The uninterrupted succession,” he declares, “I know to be a fable which no man ever did or could prove.” “That it” — the episcopal form of Church government — “is prescribed by Scripture, I do not believe. This opinion, which I once zealously espoused, I have been heartily ashamed of since I read Bishop Stillingfleet’s ‘Irenicon.’” “Church or no Church,” he says again, “we must attend to the work of saving souls.”

Sometimes the satire of mere dates is very cruel. Thus on December 27, 1745, Wesley’s brother-in-law. Hall, wrote a long letter, urging him to renounce the Church of England. Wesley, in reply, writes a letter in which the High Churchman is in the ascendant. He declares: “We believe it would not be right for us to administer either baptism or the Lord’s Supper unless we had a commission so to do from those bishops whom we apprehend to be in succession of the Apostles. We believe that the threefold order of ministers is not only authorised by its apostolic institution, but also by the written Word. Yet,” he adds, with characteristic frankness, “we are willing to hear and weigh whatever reasons you believe to the contrary.” Less than four weeks after, however (January 20, 1746), he writes: “I set out for Bristol. On the road I read over Lord King’s ‘Account of the Primitive Church.’ In spite of the vehement prejudice of my education I was compelled to believe that this was a fair and impartial draught (draft); hnt if so, it would follow that bishops and presbyters are (essentially) of one order, and that originally every Christian congregation was a Church in(lei)eudent of all others!”’

The irony of dates in this fashion is often discoverable in Wesley’s acts and utterances. In April 1790, for example, he wrote the famous passage which has been quoted against the Methodist Church by angry sacerdotalists ever since: —

“‘I never had any design of separating from the Church. I have no such design now. I do not believe the Methodists in general design it when I am no more seen. I do, and will do, all that is in my power to prevent such an event. Nevertheless, in spite of all that I can do, many of them will separate from it (although I am apt to think not one-half, perhaps not one-third

‘Journal, p. 216. of them). These will be so bold and injudicious as to form a, separate party. In flat opposition to these, I declare once more that I live and die a member of the Church of England, and that none who regards my judgment or advice will ever separate from it.’”

But only two months afterwards — in June of the same year — he writes to the Bishop of London: —

“I must speak plain, having nothing to hope or fear in this world, which I am on the point of leaving. The Methodists in general, my lord, are members of the Church of England. They hold all her doctrines, attend her services and partake of her sacraments. They do not willingly do harm to any one, but do what good they can to all. To encourage each other herein, they frequently spend an hour together in prayer and mutual exhortation. Permit me, then, to ask, ‘Cui bono? for what reasonable end would your lordship drive these people out of the Church?’ Your lordship does, and that in the most cruel manner; yes, and the most disingenuous manner. They desire a licence to worship God after their own conscience. Your lordship refuses it, and then punishes them for not having a licence! So your lordshi)) leaves them only this alternative, ‘Leae the Church or starve.’ And is it a Christian — yea, a Protestant bishop — that so persecutes his own flock? I say persecutes, for it is persecution, to all intents and purposes. You do not burn them, indeed, but you starve them, and how small is the difference! And your lordship does this under colour of a vile, execrable law, not a whit better than that ‘de heretico comiurendo.’”

Here, by Wesley’s own testimony, a bishop of the Church of England is ‘’driving” the unfortunate Methodists out of the Church, and is doing this “in the most cruel manner.” How could Wesley himself hope they would stay in the Church?

But the best comment on Wesley’s strong words about not separating from the Church of England is found in his own acts at the very time these words were written or spoken. Concurrently with these very words he took steps, and took them under the irresistible compulsion of events, which tended to separation, which i)ractically were acts of separation. In 1784, as we have seen, he constituted Methodism a legal entity, with assured continuity of existence. He made it, that is, a Church. In the same year he ordained Coke, Whatcoat, and Vasey for America, and this with full knowledge of Lord Mansfield’s dictum that “ordination is separation.” In 1785 he ordained some of his helpers for Scotland, justifying the act by the plain necessities of his societies there, and by the circumstance that the Anglican episcopate did not cross the Border. In 1787 he licensed many of his buildings under the Toleration Act as Dissenting chapels. In 1789 he ordained some of his helpers for England.

All these were acts of separation. They constituted Methodism a Church. And yet, while Wesley was performing these very acts he was speaking, or writing, words which forbade separation, at least during his own life! The puzzle, on the face of it, is very great. Is it to be solved by charging Wesley with inconsistency or insincerity? But that explanation, at least, is utterly incredible. It is contradicted by Wesley’s whole character and career.

The explanation is to be found in that theory of the Church which Wesley, since his conversion at least, had always held, but which had not always been clear to his own consciousness, or allowed to colour his speech and determine his policy. We have shown how, almost up to the day of his conversion, Wesley was a High Churchman and a Ritualist of the severest type. His sacerdotalism had running through it a strain of the ascetic; it glowed with the ardour of a fanatic. He refused the Lord’s Supper to all who had not been baptized by a minister with due orders. He rebaptized the children of Dissenters; he held the theory of the Apostolic Succession in its extremest form.

But his conversion changed the whole perspective, not only of Wesley’s life, but of his theology, and of his ecclesiastical views. All his High Church theories were jettisoned. Religion, for him, was no longer mechanical but spiritual. Ecclesiastical formulae and methods were but as husks and chaff when weighed against spiritual realities.

Christ, as Wesley now saw, was present in His own Church, and governed it. His grace did not trickle exclusively through some poor little, uncertain, and solitary human pipe; it did not depend on the touch of a particular set of ordaining human hands on certain human heads. It was Christ’s direct gift to the personal soul. The Holy Ghost, in Wesley’s new theology, was no longer relegated to some far-off day in early Church history; the mind of that Spirit was not exclusively expressed in certain ancient Church usages. The Divine Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Light, was as surely present in the Church of the eighteenth century as in the Apostolic Church. The Day of Pentecost, on this reading of history, is not a particular set of twenty-four hours in Jerusalem many centuries ago. It is to-day! Men live in it. The winds of Pentecost no longer blow, its cloven tongues of flame are no longer visible; but though the signs given to the sense of man on that far-off day in Jerusalem have vanished, the presence of the Holy Ghost in the Church is continued. So, for Wesley, the mechanical High Church theory was no longer credible.

But this new view of Wesley about the Church did not at once find full expression. It was not clear always to his own consciousness. He continued, at intervals, to talk High Church language long after he had renounced the whole High Church theory. His mind on this subject was a sort of palimpsest. The evangelical theory as to the Church was written large and indelibly upon it, to be read of all men. But hidden beneath, and visible to those who searched, were fragments, in dim and broken syllables, of the old and renounced High Church doctrine.

The key to Wesley’s apparently contradictory acts and words in relation to the Church of England may be found in his famous “Twelve Reasons against Separation,” published in 1758. The opening sentence in that document defines Wesley’s position: “Whether it be lawful or not, which itself may be disputed, being not so clear a point as some may imagine, it is by no means expedient to separate from the Established Church.” Wesley, that is, made expediency — the question of more or less practical efficiency — the supreme test of ecclesiastical forms; and that position is fatal to the whole High Church theory. The Twelve Reasons which follow all belong to the category of expediences and inexpedieuces. No. 8, for example, runs: “Because to form the plan of a new Church would require infinite time and care (which might be far more profitably bestowed) with much more wisdom and greater depth and extensiveness of thought than any of us are masters of.” No. 10 runs, “Because the experiment has been so frequently tried already, and the success never answered the expectation.”

Charles Wesley added a note saying his brother’s “reasons against our ever separating from the Church of

England are mine also. I subscribe to them with all my heart. Only, with regard to the first, 1 am quite clear that it is neither expedient nor lawful for me to separate.’”

The date of these “Twelve Reasons” is significant, as it shows that at this early stage of their work the two brothers were parted from each other by fundamental differences in Church theory. John Wesley held separation to be expedient; whether it was lawful or not he declined to say. Charles Wesley is quite clear that separation is “neither expedient nor lawful,” and that sentence marks the water-shed which divides two irreconcilable ecclesiastical systems. For Charles Wesley separation was a sin!

His own conduct, of course, was hardly consistent with that heroic doctrine. He was guilty, in fact, of a thousand acts in conflict with it. He was the first of the brothers to administer the Lord’s Supper in an unconsecrated building. He preached and administered the sacraments for years in City Road Chapel, yet he held the building to be such an ecclesiastical offence that he gave directions he was not to be buried in it.

John Wesley, for his part, refuses to pronounce whether separation is unlawful, “a point,” he says drily, “not so clear as some may imagine.” He would not discuss that abstract question at the moment; for this would have been the signal for a controversy which might have rent the goodly companionship of his comrades asunder. But the theory as to the Church Wesley expressed at this early date is essentially and profoundly anti-sacerdotal.

It is possible to quote from AVesley’s writings a chain of utterances, calm, reasoned, and positive, and running through the whole stretch of his public work, in illustration of his views on Church order.

Does the New Testament, for example, supply a single authoritative pattern of Church government which is binding on the universal Christian conscience, and outside which are to be found only the uncovenanted mercies of the Divine Grace? Says Wesley: —

“As to my own judgment, I still believe ‘the Episcopal form of Church government’ to be Scriptural and apostolical. I mean, well agreeing with the practice and writings of the Apostles.

‘Smith, p. 275.

But that it is piescrlbed in Scripture T do not believe. Bishop Stilllngfleet has unanswerably proved that ‘neither Christ nor His Apostles prescribe any particular form of Church government, and that the plea of divine right for Diocesan Episcopacy was never heard of in the Primitive Church.’ “’

The doctrine of “the succession is, on the sacerdotal reading of Church order, necessary to the validity of the Christian ministry’; but that doctrine Wesley absolutely rejects, and he sees with characteristic keenness where the theory breaks down: —

“I deny that the Romish bishops came down by uninterrupted succession from the Apostles. I never could see it proved; and, I am persuaded, I never shall. But, farther, it is a doctrine of your Church that the intention of the administrator is essential to the validity of the sacraments which are administered by him. If you pass for a priest, are you assured of the intention of the bishop that ordained you? If not, you may happen to be no priest, and so all your ministry is nothing worth; nay, by the same rule, he may happen to be no bishop. And who can tell how often this has been the case? But if there has been only one such instance in a thousand years, what becomes of your uninterrupted succession?”=

Through the writings of Wesley for fifty years, to sum up, there runs a chain of emphatic utterances which prove that the High Church theory was an offence alike to his reason and his conscience. A thousand prepossessions and prejudices, of course, bound him to the Church of his birth and training. The whole character of his genius made him averse to unnecessary changes. He clung to historic forms even when he was making them the vehicle of new forces, and to venerable words when they were charged with new meanings. But he never admitted that separation stood in the category of a sin. It was a question of practical advantage or disadvantage, to be determined by the circumstances of the moment. That which to-day was so inexpedient as to represent a disaster, might to-morrow be so expedient as to become an obligation.

His people, he declares, “will, even after my death, remain in the Church unless they be thrust out!” And that dreadful and cruel contingency became a fact. They were thrust out! They were being thrust out even while

•Works, vol. xiii. p. 211.
V6ti., vol. iii. p. 44.

Wesley lived. And yet Wesley himself was held by a hundred forces which had no relation to conscience, and sometimes not even to reason, from open breach with the Church. He foresaw the possibility of separation from the very beginning of his work. The possibility, step by step, became a probability. It grew into a certainty. But always it was for Wesley himself a thing undesired; to be approached only by the slowest stages, and only as compelled by the logic of facts.

It is almost amusing, indeed, to note, as we have shown, for how long Wesley talked the language of the High Churchman, after he had utterly cast High Church theology overboard. His ecclesiastical prejudices gave an accent to his speech and governed his tastes for years after they had been renounced by his reason and conscience. But his conversion, we repeat, shifted the whole centre of his theology. From that moment he saw that Church forms were questions of expediency. Expediencies and inexpediencies had to be weighed together; sometimes the scale might incline one way, sometimes another. That it finally turned in the direction of separation history proves. And while Wesley himself never formally left the Church of England, he gave to Methodism a form and powers which meant separation.

Wesley, it cannot be doubted, lies open to the charge of verbal inconsistency. All that can be said is that old mental habits clung to him, old verbal formulte crept to his lips and to the tip of his pen long after they had been drained of their meaning. The influence of his brother Charles was a force pulling him always in the High Church direction. So it happened that at intervals he still talked like a High Churchman when he was doing things — things to him urgent, inevitable, sacred — which were fatal to the whole High Church theory.

The relations of Wesley with the Anglican Church, it will thus be seen, are the story of an education. We have the picture of an eager, logical, and intensely earnest character breaking, thread by thread, the bonds woven of early training, early beliefs, and passionate ecclesiastical prejudices, and giving effect, though slowly and reluctantly, to his deeper convictions. The practical note in Wesley’s genius, his habit of taking short views, and of dealing with difficulties only when they became concrete and urgent, makes the process slow; while his frankness and directness of speech at each stage of the process supply a chain of utterances which often seem in conflict with each other. Each utterance, indeed, has to be interpreted by its date, and read in the light of the particular set of circumstances with” which it dealt. His very honesty to the mood and circumstance of the moment is sometimes, indeed, the real explanation of some saying which contradicts another utterance dealing with another set of conditions. And Wesley, it cannot be denied, retained, in fragments at least, the vocabulary of sacerdotalism longer after he had cast the whole sacerdotal theory resolutely overboard.

Who studies, in a word, this, the most keenly criticised aspect of Wesley’s work, finds in it the picture of a man with an obstinate High Church bias drawing him in one direction, a bias due to birth and training and temperament; whilst, step by step, led by Providence and compelled by facts, he moves on a path which leads to quite another goal, a goal undesired but not wholly unseen.