“O sir, have we not fightings enough without, to employ all our time
and strength? Must we also declare war and promote fightings within?
Must we catch at every opportunity to stab one another? What can be
more cutting to an old minister of Christ than to be traduced as a
dreadful heretic, in printed letters sent to the best men of the
land, through all England and Scotland, and signed by a person of
your rank and piety? While he is gone to a neighbouring kingdom,
to preach Jesus Christ, to have his friends prejudiced, his foes
elevated, and the fruit of his extensive ministry at the point of
being blasted? Of the two greatest and most useful ministers I ever
knew, one is no more. The other, after amazing labours, flies still,
with unwearied diligence, through the three kingdoms, calling sinners
to repentance. Though oppressed with the weight of near seventy
years, and the cares of near thirty thousand souls, he shames still,
by his unabated zeal and immense labours, all the young ministers in
England, perhaps in Christendom. He has generally blown the gospel
trumpet, and rode twenty miles, before most of the professors, who
despise his labours, have left their downy pillows. As he begins the
day, the week, the year, so he concludes them, still intent upon
extensive services for the glory of the Redeemer, and the good of
souls. And shall we lightly lift up our pens, our tongues, our hands
against him? No; let them rather forget their cunning. If we _will_
quarrel, can we find nobody to fall out with, but the minister upon
whom God puts the greatest honour?”
Shirley’s “Narrative” was published in September, in which he
gives great prominence to one of Fletcher’s letters requesting his
“Vindication” to be suppressed. He furnishes an extract from one
addressed to Mr. Ireland, dated August 15, to the following effect: “I
feel for poor dear Mr. Shirley, whom I have, (considering the present
circumstances,) treated too severely in my vindication of the minutes.
My dear sir, what must be done? I am ready to defray, by selling to my
last shirt, the expense of the printing of my Vindication, and suppress
it.”
This was characteristic of Fletcher’s large heartedness; but the
extract from his letter was a garbled one, and rendered it necessary
that he should again enter the field of battle, and defend himself
as well as others. This was done at once, and, before the year was
ended, another production of his facile pen was published, namely, “A
Second Check to Antinomianism: occasioned by a late narrative, in three
letters, to the Hon. and Rev. Author. By the Vindicator of the Rev. Mr.
Wesley’s Minutes.” 12mo, 109 pages.
He tells Shirley, that, though it was perfectly true that he had
written to Mr. Ireland, requesting his letters to be suppressed,
he had also stated to the same gentleman, that “the minutes _must_
be vindicated,--that Mr. Wesley owed this to the Church, to the
‘real protestants,’ to all his societies, and to his own aspersed
character.” He states: “I was going to preach when I had the news of
your happy accommodation, and was no sooner out of church, than I
wrote to beg my Vindication might not appear in the dress in which I
had put it. I did not then, nor do I yet, repent having written upon
the minutes; but, as matters are now, I am very sorry I did not write
in a general manner, without taking notice of the circular letter,
and mentioning your dear name.”[147] He adds, that when he gave the
manuscript to Wesley, he begged him to correct it, and to expunge
whatever might be “unkind or too sharp.” Wesley had assured him, that
“he _had_ expunged every tart expression”; and, if so, (for Fletcher
had not yet seen it in a printed form,) he was “_reconciled_ to its
publication.” Fletcher further adds, that he had just received a
letter (September 11, 1771) from Bristol, stating that when Thomas
Olivers, who was now acting as Wesley’s editor, heard of Fletcher’s
wish to suppress his “Vindication,” he had already announced to the
Bristol congregation, that the work was in the press, and would soon be
ready. “Besides,” continues Fletcher, in reference to Thomas Olivers
being the only preacher who refused to sign the declaration at the
conference,--“Besides, Mr. Olivers would have pleaded, with smartness,
that he never approved of a patched up peace,--that he bore his
testimony against it at the time it was made,--had a personal right to
produce _my_ arguments, since both parties refused to hear _his_ at the
conference.”
These facts are of great consequence, inasmuch as Shirley magnifies
Wesley’s publication of Fletcher’s Vindication into a heinous fault;
and others after him have endeavoured to brand Wesley’s character, not
only for perpetuating the war, but for publishing Fletcher’s manuscript
contrary to Fletcher’s wish. This is utterly unjust. The war was begun,
not by Wesley, but by the Calvinists; and surely the attacked was not
presumptuous, or wanton, in endeavouring to defend himself. It is
true, that, in doing that, he uses the sword of his friend Fletcher;
but what of that? The sword was given him to use, on July 27, when on
his return from Ireland; and, though Fletcher subsequently hesitated
as to the propriety of the step he had taken, it was not until the
sword was brandished, by Fletcher’s manuscript being committed to the
press and actually announced for sale. Besides, Fletcher’s hesitancy
had reference, not to the thing done, but to the manner of its being
done. A vindication he considered to be imperatively required: but
he was afraid that his own was too personal. Shirley was aggrieved,
because he pretends to have thought that the signing of the declaration
would have ended the matter; but Shirley conveniently forgets: (1)
that he himself had blackened Wesley’s character throughout the three
kingdoms; (2) that Wesley and his preachers had conceded nothing
to their adversaries, except that the minutes of 1770 were “not
sufficiently guarded in the way in which they are expressed”; (3) that,
as Fletcher abundantly demonstrates, there was a terrible necessity
for an enforcement of the doctrine of the minutes at this momentous
period, both the pulpits and pews of churches being infected with the
deadly antinomianism of the late Dr. Crisp; and (4) that, after all,
the doctrine of the minutes was only one part of the controversy which
the Calvinists had raised, and that there were other attacks on Wesley,
made by men like Augustus Toplady, and the editor of the _Gospel
Magazine_, which it was impossible, and, in fact, would have been
criminally disastrous, to have passed without rebuke.
That Fletcher did not regret the publishing of his Vindication is
evident from the alacrity he showed in the preparation and publishing
of his “Second Check;” the chief object of which was to establish “the
doctrine of justification by works in the day of judgment”; and to
reprove Walter Shirley for insinuating, in his “Narrative,” that this
was a doctrine which Wesley and his fifty-three itinerant preachers had
given up.
Shirley retired from the field of battle; but others took up the
gauntlet. The _Gospel Magazine_, faithful to its character, was
as furious as ever. In its August number, it published a review
of the “Church of England vindicated from the Charge of Absolute
Predestination,” declaring that Wesley was its author’s “dictator and
employer.” The work is pronounced “a composition of low scurrility
and illiberal abuse.” The writer is charged with having “horribly
blasphemed, and daringly given the lie to the God of truth, by
asserting that any justified soul may at last perish in hell.”
“Arminianism is a hodgepodge of human systems, made up of grace and
works, so blended together as to destroy the true meaning of both.”
In the same number was published Cleon’s poem on “Wesley’s apostasy
from the genuine faith of the gospel, an awful proof that evil men and
seducers wax worse and worse.” One verse must serve as a specimen.
After describing the doctrine of Wesley’s minutes, Cleon writes:
“In vain for worse may Wesley search the globe,
A viper hatched beneath the harlot’s robe;
Rome, in her glory, has no greater boast,
Than Wesley aims--to all conviction lost.”
In the September number, “Simplex, from the neighbourhood of the
Foundery,” expresses his astonishment, that Shirley and his friends
should have been satisfied with the declaration, signed at conference,
inasmuch as “it denies not one tittle clearly asserted in the minutes.”
Wesley is credited with possessing “the unfathomable policy of a
dubious divine.” He is a “fox,” who “has had sagacity enough to elude
his hunters;” and “evidently shows that he never meant to recant what
he had declared in the minutes, when he signed the declaration.”
In a subsequent number, “Simplex” reappears, and tells his readers that
he is “sorry to see the name of a Christian minister prefixed to such
foul and futile productions as those of Mr. Sellon. Mr. Fletcher’s pen
is more cleanly, but every whit as unfair. He is like a madman flinging
abroad firebrands, arrows, and death, amongst those who differ from
him. Master Thomas Olivers has shocked common decency in his letter
to Mr. Toplady. And Mr. Wesley must be more explicit than he has been
accustomed to be, before he can give a satisfactory answer to Simplex’s
querulous epistle.” These are moderate specimens of the tone and
language of the _Gospel Magazine_.
Another brace of antagonists must be mentioned, Richard and Rowland
Hill, the sons of Sir Rowland Hill, the former born in 1732, and the
latter in 1745. Richard had been educated at Westminster, and had spent
four or five years at Magdalen college, Oxford. Rowland had been sent
to Eton, and then to Cambridge university. Both the brothers had turned
preachers, though, as yet, neither of them had been ordained. They were
young, proud, and irascible; and, with greater zeal than prudence,
entered into the Calvinian conflict.
Richard Hill published[148] a sixpenny pamphlet, 8vo, of 31 pages,
entitled “A Conversation between Richard Hill, Esq., the Rev. Mr.
Madan, and Father Walsh, superior of a convent of English Benedictine
monks at Paris, held at the said convent, July 13, 1771, relative
to some doctrinal Minutes, advanced by the Rev. Mr. John Wesley and
others, at a conference in London, August 7, 1770. To which are added
some Remarks by the Editor; as also Mr. Wesley’s own Declaration
concerning his Minutes, versified by another Hand.” A prodigiously
long title of a supremely silly tract, whose object is to show that
Wesley’s doctrine was a great deal worse than popery; in fact, that
“popery is about midway between protestantism and Mr. J. Wesley.” We
content ourselves with Sir Richard’s poetical version of Wesley’s
declaration:
“Whereas, the religion and fate of three nations
Depend on the importance of our conversations;
And as some objections are thrown in our way,
Our words have been construed to mean what they say;
Be’t known from henceforth, to each friend and each brother,
Whene’er we _say_ one thing, we _mean_ quite _another_.”
Sir Richard was not content with this. He issued a penny 12mo tract of
12 pages, with the title, “An Answer to some capital Errors contained
in the Minutes,” etc., which finishes by reproducing the doggerel
calumny just given, as though it were far too precious to be entombed
in the more costly pamphlet with which he had enriched the Christian
church.
His third publication,--by far the best,--was an octavo pamphlet of 40
pages, entitled, “Five Letters to the Reverend Mr. Fletcher, relative
to his Vindication of the Minutes of the Reverend Mr. John Wesley.”
Apart from its theology, of which we say nothing, this was worthy of a
scholar, a Christian, and a gentleman. The spirit of the piece is most
loving, and the style unexceptionable.
The publications, on the other side, in addition to those of Fletcher,
were three in number.
First, Wesley’s tract of 12 pages, entitled, “The Consequence Proved”;
without either the author’s or the printer’s name. Its object is to
substantiate his former assertion, that the gist of Toplady’s Zanchius
is to teach that “one in twenty (suppose) of mankind are elected, and
nineteen in twenty are reprobate: that the elect shall be saved, do
what they will; and the reprobate shall be damned, do what they can.”
Wesley says: “I have not leisure to consider the matter at large. I
can only make a few strictures, and leave the young man (Toplady)
to be farther corrected by one that is full his match, Mr. Thomas
Olivers.”[149]
To be handed over to Thomas Olivers was one of the bitterest pills that
Toplady had to swallow. Olivers was a man of great intellectual power;
but he had the misfortune to commence life as a Welsh mechanic of not
the highest order. He was left an orphan when only four years old, and
had now attained the age of forty-six. His publication, 12mo, 60 pages,
was entitled, “A Letter to the Reverend Mr. Toplady, occasioned by his
late Letter to the Reverend Mr. Wesley.” In invective and tart rebuke,
Toplady met a match in the intrepid and fiery Welshman who, on behalf
of Wesley, undertook to fight the furious predestinarian with the not
too respectable weapons of his own choosing. It certainly is difficult
to decide which is the more proficient in the use of strong language.
It was a fisticuff encounter between a pugilistic pair, whose thumping
blows may be considered of equal force.
The third publication, alluded to above, was “The Church of England
Vindicated from the Charge of Predestination, as it is stated and
asserted by the Translator of Jerome Zanchius, in his Letter to the
Rev. Dr. Nowell; together with some Animadversions on his Translation
of Zanchius, his Letter to the Rev. Mr. John Wesley, and his Sermon
on 1 Timothy i. 10.” 12mo, 129 pages. The author was the redoubtable
Walter Sellon, who, for outspokenness, was only second to Toplady and
Olivers themselves. At the same time, however, Sellon’s book evinces
great ability and research, and thoroughly demolishes the unfounded
theories of an opponent, whose pen was guided by bigotry rather than by
Christian discretion. The castigation was severe, but it was merited.
The lash of a scorpion whip is far from pleasant; but the man who uses
it has no reason to complain of another using it in self defence.
Toplady had a right to wince and writhe; but, under the circumstances,
he had no right to foam, as, in succeeding chapters, we shall find he
did.
Here, for the present, we shall leave this embittered conflict, and
trace the steps of the illustrious man whose high position seemed to
engender the envy which led to the attack upon him; but who, excepting
a short skirmish now and then, pursued his high and holy mission with
as much serenity as if the conflict had not existed.
He landed in Ireland on March 24, and re-embarked for England on July
22nd following.
At Dublin, the society had been jangling for years, and, as a
consequence, had suffered loss. Though not expressly stated, it is
clear that the cause of their quarreling was a dispute respecting the
authority of the preachers and of the leaders respectively. Wesley, as
the fountain of Methodistic law, now laid it down that classleaders
had no authority to restrain the assistant, if they thought he acted
improperly; but might mildly speak to him, and then refer the matter
to Wesley to be decided. They had no “authority to hinder a person
from preaching, or to displace a particular leader, or to expel a
particular member, or to regulate the temporal and spiritual affairs
of the society, or to make any public collection, or to receive the
yearly subscription.” All this was the work of the assistant, with
one exception, namely, that the temporal affairs of the society
were regulated by the society steward. The power of a classleader
simply consisted in authority to meet his class, to receive their
contributions, and to visit his sick members; and the power of all
classleaders united was “authority to show their classpapers to the
assistant, and to deliver the money they had received to the stewards,
and to bring in the names of the sick.”
Rightly or wrongly, such was Methodist discipline in 1771. “In the
Methodist discipline,” writes Wesley, “the wheels regularly stand
thus: the assistant, the preachers, the stewards, the leaders, the
people. But here the leaders, who are the lowest wheel but one, were
quite got out of their place. They were got at the top of all, above
the stewards, the preachers, yea, and above the assistant himself. To
this chiefly, I impute the gradual decay of the work of God in Dublin.”
“Nothing,” says he, at Londonderry, where two years before he had
organised a band of singers, which through the preacher’s neglect was
now dispersed, “Nothing will stand in the Methodist plan unless the
preacher has his heart and his hand in it. Every preacher, therefore,
should consider it is not his business to mind this or that thing only,
but everything.”
More than three months of Wesley’s time were spent, not in Dublin, but
in itinerating the Irish provinces. In many instances, he was gladdened
with the prosperity of the work of God; in others, as Dublin, Athlone,
Tullamore, Waterford, Cork, and Augher, the aspect of things was far
from promising.
While on this lengthened journey, Wesley made the following entry in
his journal: “1771. June 28--This day I entered the sixty-ninth year of
my age. I am still a wonder to myself. My voice and strength are the
same as at nine-and-twenty. This also hath God wrought.”
Wesley remained in Ireland until he was obliged to leave in order to
meet his conference at Bristol. Much space has been already occupied
with an account of its important proceedings; but it may be added that,
notwithstanding the Calvinian disturbances, there was reported an
increase of 1934 members. Among others, Joseph Benson was received on
trial as an itinerant preacher; and Francis Asbury and Richard Wright
were sent as a reinforcement to America. Nearly £1700 were contributed
to extinguish the chapel debts; and, to accomplish the thing at once,
it was recommended that, upon an average, every Methodist, in the
three kingdoms, should give, for one year, a penny a week. “If this is
done,” says Wesley, “it will both pay our whole debt, and supply all
contingencies.”
No sooner was the conference over than Wesley set out for Wales, where
he laboured nearly the next three weeks. One of the Sundays was spent
in Pembroke, where he preached in two of the churches. He writes: “Many
of the congregation were gay, genteel people; so I spake on the first
elements of the gospel. But I was still out of their depth. Oh how hard
it is to be shallow enough for a polite audience!”
Returning to Bristol on August 31, he employed the next month in
visiting the societies surrounding that city. Twelve months before, he
had rejoiced over an apparently great religious revival in Kingswood
school; but now, says he, “it is gone! It is lost! It is vanished away!
There is scarce any trace of it remaining! Then we must begin again;
and, in due time, we shall reap if we faint not.”
Just at this period, Dr. William Cadogan’s book on the gout and all
chronic diseases was attracting great attention. Dr. Johnson called
it “a good book in general, but a foolish one in particulars.” Wesley
read the book, and agrees with Cadogan, that “very few of the chronic
distempers are properly hereditary; and that most of them spring either
from indolence, or intemperance, or irregular passions. But,” he adds,
and here he comes in conflict with modern teetotallers, “but why should
Dr. Cadogan condemn wine _toto genere_, which is one of the noblest
cordials in nature? Yet stranger, why should he condemn bread? Great
whims belong to great men!”
After an absence of seven months, Wesley got back to London on
Saturday, October 5; and, on the Monday following, set out on his usual
tour through the counties of Bedford and Northampton. This occupied a
week, as did a similar visit to the societies in Oxfordshire. For many
years, Wesley was accustomed to spend the last two or three months in
each year in weekly journeys from London as a pastoral centre. The
Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire journey was one; the Oxfordshire
another; Chatham and Sheerness a third; Staplehurst, Rye, Winchelsea,
and other places a fourth; and Norfolk a fifth, which generally
occupied a longer time.
Wesley concludes the year with this entry: “December 30--At my
brother’s request, I sat again for my picture. This melancholy
employment always reminds me of that natural reflection,--
‘Behold, what frailty we in man may see!
His shadow is less given to change than he.’”
Little more remains to be related respecting the year 1771, except the
points following.
It is a curious fact, that, in the year when Fletcher began to render
Wesley important service by the publication of his “Checks,” Fletcher’s
future wife, Miss Bosanquet, applied to Wesley for advice on the
subject of female preaching. Our space prevents the possibility of
discussing such a topic at the length which it deserves; but Wesley’s
letter, hitherto unpublished, will be acceptable, as showing that,
however much importance he was disposed to attach to church order, he
was not the man to make all things bend to it.
“LONDONDERRY, _June 13, 1771_.
“MY DEAR SISTER,--I think the strength of the cause rests there,--on
your having an _extraordinary_ call. So, I am persuaded, has every
one of our lay preachers; otherwise, I could not countenance his
preaching at all. It is plain to me, that the whole work of God
termed Methodism is an extraordinary dispensation of His providence.
Therefore, I do not wonder if several things occur therein, which do
not fall under the ordinary rules of discipline. St. Paul’s ordinary
rule was, ‘I permit not a woman to speak in the congregation.’ Yet,
in extraordinary cases, he made a few exceptions; at Corinth in
particular.
“I am, my dear sister, your affectionate brother,
“JOHN WESLEY.”[150]
In 1771, Wesley began a revision and republication of all the works
which he had published during the last five-and-thirty years, with the
exception of his Notes on the Old and New Testament, his “Christian
Library,” his “Natural Philosophy,” and his books for Kingswood school.
It was during this year that he issued a careful reprint of the four
volumes of sermons published in 1746, 48, 50, and 60, with the addition
of ten sermons, most of which had been published separately.
Besides these, he published five 12mo volumes of his collected works,
embracing the sermons just mentioned; and making together about 1800
printed pages, in which he not only corrected the errors of the press,
but his own mistakes, and did, what has not been done in any subsequent
edition of his works,--placed an asterisk before the passages and
paragraphs which he judged were most worthy of the reader’s notice.
He likewise published the fourteenth “Extract” from his journal,
extending from May 27, 1765, to May 5, 1768. 12mo, 128 pages.[151]
His only other publications were his “Consequence Proved,” and his
“Defence” of his minutes, already mentioned; and finally, “A Letter
to the Reverend Mr. Fleury,” of Waterford, in Ireland. Mr. Fleury was
a young parson, who, both in 1769, and now again in 1771, had taken
the opportunity of Wesley’s visits to Waterford to preach against him.
Wesley writes: “1771, May 28--At eleven, and again in the afternoon,
I went to the cathedral, where a young gentleman most valiantly
encountered the ‘grievous wolves,’ as he termed the Methodists. I
never heard a man strike more wide of the mark. However, the shallow
discourse did good; for it sent abundance of people, rich and poor,
to hear and judge for themselves.” The “young gentleman’s” two
sermons, which were published, were made up of the stale objections
and invectives that had been used, by his superiors and seniors, times
without number. Wesley’s letter is a characteristic reply to them.