From these Communion hymns we pass to a series of a very different
type. The story of the Calvinistic controversy—which seemed to show
that a theological fountain could at the same time send forth sweet
water and bitter—belongs to Church history, not to hymnology. Yet we
cannot pass it over, for none of the hymns of the Wesleys _meant_ so
much as those which proclaimed the glad tidings of a free and full
salvation. The controversy was civil war, a strife among brethren, and
it is good to know that the love of Whitefield and the Wesleys was
able to bear, though not without terrible strain, even this sore
trial. From that great controversy we inherit the true eirenicon, the
agreeing to differ, which is the best possible solution of many
religious disputes. Whitefield and the Wesleys finally agreed to
differ and continued to love. But for a time there was ‘a sharp
contention so that they parted asunder one from the other.’
In 1740 John Wesley published, after some hesitation, his sermon on
‘Free Grace,’ and added a long, dull hymn by his brother on ‘Universal
Redemption.’ In the same year the brothers issued a second series of
_Hymns and Sacred Poems_, which contained this and other pieces,
setting forth in the most emphatic terms the Arminian doctrine, and
condemning in even more emphatic terms all who believed in what Calvin
had called ‘_decretum horribile_.’ Whitefield was shocked by the
Wesleyan doctrine itself, and was beyond measure distressed by what he
saw must lead to a breach between himself and his dearest friends. His
love and sorrow come out most attractively in his letters.
‘My dear, dear Brethren,’ he wrote, ‘why did you throw out the bone
of contention? Why did you print that sermon against predestination?
Why did you, in particular, my dear brother Charles, affix your hymn
and join in putting out your late hymn-book?’[129]
John Wesley’s sermon carefully avoided reference to his friend.
Whitefield, however, felt in honour bound to state his own views and
to ‘answer’ Wesley’s sermon. To this reply he added a poor poem by Dr.
Watts, which was intended to balance Charles Wesley’s hymn. Here are
two of Watts’s verses—
Behold the potter and the clay,
He forms His vessels as he please;
Such is our God, and such are we,
The subjects of His high decrees.
May not the sovereign Lord on high,
Dispense His favours as He will;
Choose some to life while others die,
And yet be just and gracious still?
After this the battle became fast and furious. The two pamphlets of
_Hymns on God’s Everlasting Love_[130] were issued in 1741, and
Whitefield was in despair. He writes: ‘Dear brother Charles is more
and more rash. He has lately printed some very bad hymns.’[131] From
Whitefield’s point of view they were undoubtedly very bad, and even
justify his charge that the Wesleys ‘dressed up’ the doctrine of
election in ‘horrible colours.’ On the other hand, these hymns contain
some of the finest specimens of evangelic hymn-writing to be found in
the Wesley poetry.
They may be readily divided into two classes, the one vigorous and
often bitterly satirical onslaughts upon the Calvinistic position,
which are more in the style of ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’ than in that of
‘Jesu, Lover of my soul,’ the other containing the proclamation of the
glad tidings of universal redemption. Both elements are often found in
the same composition. This is true of the first of the hymns, a
portion of which has been used in Methodist congregations for more
than a century and a half, and retains its place in the new hymn-book.
I print some verses with the original italics, indicating its polemic
purpose.
Father, _whose everlasting love_
Thy only Son for sinners gave;
Whose grace to _all_ did _freely_ move,
And sent Him down a _world to save_.
Help us Thy mercy to extol
Immense, unfathomed, unconfined;
To praise the Lamb who _died for all_,
The _general Saviour of mankind_.
Thy _undistinguishing regard_
Was cast on _Adam’s_ fallen race:
For all Thou hast in Christ prepared,
_Sufficient, sovereign, saving_ grace.
Jesus hath said, we _all_ shall hope,
Preventing grace for all is free:
And I, if I be lifted up,
I will _draw all men_ unto Me.
Arise, O God, maintain Thy cause!
The fulness of the _Gentiles_ call:
Lift up the standard of Thy cross
And _all_ shall own Thou diedst for all.[132]
In other hymns he employs the most biting, taunting sarcasm. It is
difficult to suppose that these were ever sung even in the thickest of
the fight; but they were sown broadcast (price fourpence), and were,
no doubt, read with ecstatic delight by those who were on the Wesleys’
side in the great controversy. It is easy at this distance of time and
circumstance to condemn the vehemence of the language used on both
sides, especially in the later and more acrimonious stages of the
controversy. But this was one of ‘freedom’s battles.’ It was
magnificent, and it was war. To the Wesleys the doctrine that by the
arbitrary decree of God—the God of love!—children were born to a doom
which they could neither escape nor deserve was hateful, blasphemous,
impossible. If _this_ were indeed the truth of God, what gospel was
there to preach? Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die and meet
the inevitable doom. Nor could they tolerate what seemed to them the
smug satisfaction of ‘the elect,’ to whose certainty of salvation the
equal certainty of the damnation of the reprobate added a pleasing
flavour. They would not accept salvation on such terms. ‘Take back,’
Charles Wesley cries indignantly,
Take back my interest in Thy blood,
Unless it streamed for all the race.
With a true controversial instinct, the Wesleys fastened upon Calvin’s
phrase ‘_decretum horribile_,’ and, preferring to transliterate rather
than to translate, turned again and again to rend it.
A poem describing the possibilities of evil in the human heart and
mind comes to a climax thus—
I could the devil’s law receive,
Unless restrained by Thee;
I could (good God!) I could believe
The Horrible Decree.
I could believe that God is hate—
The God of love and grace
Did damn, pass by, and reprobate
The most of human race.
Farther than this I cannot go,
Till Tophet take me in.
But, O, forbid that I should know
This mystery of sin.[133]
Such were the amenities of religious controversy in the eighteenth
century!
Again, in a lighter but still intensely earnest vein, he caricatures
his adversaries’ teaching—
The righteous God consigned
Them over to their doom,
And sent the Saviour of mankind
To damn them from the womb:
To damn for falling short
Of what they could not do,
For not believing the report
Of that which was not true.
He did not do the deed—
(Some have more mildly raved),
He did not damn them, but decreed
They never should be saved.
This effusion ends in a higher strain, with a dedication of his own
life to the proclamation of universal redemption—
My life I here present,
My heart’s last drop of blood;
O let it all be freely spent
In proof that Thou art good:
Art good to all that breathe,
Who all may pardon have:
Thou willest not the sinner’s death,
But all the world _wouldst_ save.
John Wesley tried in his brief tract on the _Calvinistic
Controversy_[134] (1743) to make peace with Whitefield, and some of
his concessions are surprising—indeed, he afterwards retracted them.
But Charles, who at this time was in the full glow of his early
evangelistic triumphs, and who was much less of a theologian than his
brother, felt that he was engaged in a holy crusade. He tried to write
calmly, he prayed for grace to speak tenderly of those who were erring
from the truth he held so dear, but—well, he could not keep silence.
In one of these hymns—a portion of which remains in the _Methodist
Hymn-book_—he prays—
O arm me with the mind,
Meek Lamb! that was in Thee,
And let my knowing zeal be joined
To fervent charity.
With calm and tempered zeal
Let me enforce Thy call,
And vindicate Thy gracious will,
Which offers life to all.
Thou dost not stand in need
Of me to prop Thy cause,
To assert Thy general grace, or spread
The victory of Thy cross.
O may I love like Thee!
And in Thy footsteps tread!
Thou hatest all iniquity,
But nothing Thou hast made.
O may I learn Thy art,
With meekness to reprove;
To hate the sin with all my heart,
But still the sinner love.[135]
These verses might be headed ‘A Prayer before Controversy,’ but it is
a shock to the reader on turning the page to find that the next verse
shows how soon he descended from this high level.
The controversy was renewed thirty years later with vastly greater
bitterness, and with much more personal feeling.
John Fletcher parted in 1771 from his Trevecca students like the saint
he was, for he could no longer hold his place when other Arminians
were discharged. ‘I cannot give up the possibility of the salvation of
all any more than I can give up the truth and love of God.... I left
them all in peace, the servant, but no more the president of the
college.’[136]
The love of Whitefield and the Wesleys was of the kind which many
waters cannot quench; but when Madan, Romaine, Hervey, and Rowland
Hill heaped upon John Wesley’s venerable head torrents of vulgar
abuse—abuse absolutely impossible, inconceivable in our milder
mannered age[137]—Charles felt that there was a point beyond which
even Christian charity could not decently go. His refusal to write
Hervey’s epitaph is worthy of a Christian gentleman:
Let Madan or Romaine record his praise,
Enough that Wesley’s brother can forgive.
The flowing tide, however, was with the Methodists, and though the
fight was long, and the victory was not wholly won in their day, these
hymns rendered an inestimable service to the cause of religious
freedom. It may be true that they represented Calvin’s teaching
one-sidedly, and at times misrepresented it, but it cannot be denied
that they pictured current Calvinistic teaching accurately enough. The
Wesleys saw clearly that, should belief in a limited redemption spread
in their Society, they would but labour in vain and spend their
strength for nought. They might have gathered little coteries of
devout folk, strongly tinctured with what we now call Plymouth
Brethrenism, but they could never have founded a great Church, whose
chiefest glory should be its missionary enterprise both at home and in
the ends of the earth. The mission of Thomas Coke more than a hundred
years ago, the great city missions of our own time, the work of
William Booth, of Hugh Price Hughes, and Samuel F. Collier, would have
been impossible had they not been able to say anywhere and to all—
Sent by my Lord, on you I call;
The invitation is to all:
Come, all the world; come, sinner, thou;
All things in Christ are ready now!
The Wesleys reached their doctrine of general redemption by two paths.
In the first place, they had been trained in the school of Arminius
and of Laud, and had been confirmed in the faith by their own careful
study of God’s word. But it is abundantly evident that their own
experience had led them to believe in the infinite mercy of God.
Charles Wesley, especially, argued with the profound humility of the
sincere penitent, that his own salvation, of which he had received the
undeniable assurance, ‘the indubitable seal,’ on Whit-Sunday, 1738,
was itself convincing evidence of the good tidings he proclaimed.
Thy sovereign grace to all extends,
Immense and unconfined:
From age to age it never ends;
It reaches all mankind.
Throughout the world its breadth is known,
Wide as infinity;
So wide, it never passed by one,
Or it had passed by me.[138]
This is a note which constantly recurs in the _Hymns on God’s
Everlasting Love_—sometimes expressed quaintly and unpoetically,
sometimes with a pathos truly sublime, as in these verses—
O let me kiss Thy bleeding feet,
And bathe and wash them with my tears;
The story of Thy love repeat
In every drooping sinner’s ears,
That all may hear the quickening sound,
Since I, even I, have mercy found.
O let Thy love my heart constrain,
Thy love for every sinner free;
That every fallen soul of man
May taste the grace that found out me;
That all mankind, with me, may prove
Thy sovereign, everlasting love.[139]
In this, as in other respects, the Wesleyan theology was
characteristically Pauline. ‘This is a faithful saying, and worthy of
all men to be received that Jesus Christ came into the world to save
sinners, of whom I am the chief.’
Hymns of this class have an important place in the story of the
Methodist Revival, as well as in the Calvinistic controversy. The
vehemence, the violence, with which the Wesleys asserted their
doctrine was largely, if not entirely, due to their sense of what it
meant to the vast crowds of neglected, ignorant, savage folk who
listened with amazement to the messengers who proclaimed God’s love to
them.
Sinners, believe the gospel word,
Jesus is come your souls to save!
Jesus is come, your common Lord;
Pardon ye all in Him may have,
May now be saved, whoever will;
This Man receiveth sinners still.
See where the lame, the halt, the blind.
The deaf, the dumb, the sick, the poor,
Flock to the Friend of human kind,
And freely all accept their cure;
To whom doth He His help deny?
Whom in His days of flesh pass by?[140]