who and what they are."112 To Dr. Horne, of the University of Oxford, later Bishop of Norwich, he said the same thing: Horne was not justified in bringing charges of heresy against the Methodists until he found out exactly who the Methodists were and what they believed. 113 Wesley felt that if his opponents understood his movement better, they would find him quite orthodox. He urged his societies to obey the Church in the observation of its feast days.114 When asked whether he did not hold doctrine contrary to the Church; whether he did not make dust of her words; whether he did not bewilder the brains of weak people, Wesley emphatically answered: "No."115 He told Mr. Howard, who had asked what the points of difference were, that there were none; that the doctrines that the Methodists preached were the doctrines. of the Church as laid down in her prayers, Articles, and Homilies.116 Of his preaching he said, "I simply described the plain old religion of the Church of England, which is now almost everywhere spoken against under the new name of Methodism."117 Indeed, he continually thought of himself as defending the Church from those who were secretly striving to undermine it, while he declared that all who remained with him as his followers, were mostly Church of England men who loved her Articles, her liturgy, her Homilies, and her discipline, and unwillingly varied from them in any instance. 118 These only would he have about him.119 No doctrine was held by Wesley that he did not think to be in harmony with the liturgy, Articles, and Homilies of the Church, and he quoted from these sources with great freedom to prove his most fundamental doctrines. 120. He named nine of the Rubrics and professed to have observed them punctually even at the hazard of his life. 121 The Canons also he claimed Ibid., p. 438. Jour., vol. ii, p. 257. 115 Works, vol. vii, p. 402. 116 Jour., vol. ii, pp. 274-276. 117 Ibid., p. 293. 118 Appeal to Men of Reason, Works, vol. v, p. 24. 120 Works, vol. v, p. 34ff. to obey as well as any man in England. He challenged any one of the clergy to say whether or not he had read over the Canons to his congregation as required; and then stated that he himself fulfilled this law. He professed a most loyal support to all the Canons and denied breaking any. Wesley could not have gone far astray from the doctrines of the Established Church, for the Bishop of Gloucester testified that "Methodism signifies only the manner of preaching; not either an old or a new religion; it is the manner in which Mr. W. and his followers attempt to propagate the plain old religion." Wesley let this statement of the bishop stand, for it represented his position.122 Stevens summed well Wesley's position in the words: "The theological distinction of Methodism lay not in novel tenets, but in the clearness and the power with which it illustrated and applied the established doctrines of the English Reformation; and in harmony with its own characteristic design, merely confined its teachings to such of these doctrines as related to personal or spiritual religion."123 If this be true, then one cannot say that the Methodists became estranged from the Church on doctrinal grounds alone. To be sure, Wesley said he was put out of the churches for preaching justification by faith alone.124 He also said that until he preached this doctrine, he was welcomed into the churches; but a pseudonymous writer, John Smith, takes Wesley to task for this, and reminded Wesley that he was forbidden to preach in the churches before the time when he claimed to have experienced the truth in the doctrine of salvation by faith.125 Since Wesley did not deny the error of statement which Smith attributed to him, it would seem that doctrine had little to do with the Methodists leaving the churches. When it is a glory peculiar to the Methodists that there is "no other religious society under heaven which requires nothing of men in order to admission to it but a desire to save souls, not opinions—we think and let think; nor modes of worship". when this is the attitude of a group of people, one cannot cor 122 Letter to Bishop of Gloucester, Works, vol. v, p. 451. 128 124 Hist. of Meth., vol. ii, p. 408. Appeal to Men of Reason, Works, vol. v, p. 23. 125 Moore: Life of Wesley, vol. ii, p. 421. rectly think that the demarcation along doctrinal lines is very clearly cut. 126 Doctrine, then, was not a direct cause for antagonism between the groups of Methodists and Churchmen of so great an extent that they would not live together in concord. Difference of opinion on some of the facts of religion and the interpretation of those facts was abundantly and irritatingly present; but there was no huge doctrinal gap between the Church and the Methodists. Doctrine, however, did show a state of mind, and out of this certain state of mind came a type of action. It was this which drove the wedge between the clergy and the Methodists; for this action brought out a strong opposition from the Church, and this opposition worked to establish a group consciousness among the Methodists that heretofore had not existed. Doctrine alone never could have parted the Methodists from the Churchmen, Action could and did. CHAPTER IV PRACTICES OF THE EARLY METHODISTS THERE was no fundamental difference between the Meth-. odists and the Churchmen regarding doctrine. But in the Xmethod of applying those doctrines, and in the emphasis put upon portions of those doctrines there was a difference. The Church believed in justification by faith; but while so believing, it was not keenly alive to the fact that men were being forever lost in large numbers. The Methodists thought they faced a world quite bad, and that their chief duty was to save souls. Great vigor in applying their doctrine resulted from this attitude of mind. Their method of application, rather than the doctrine itself, caused many of the clergy for the time being to shut the Methodists out of their pulpits. In a letter dated March 7, 1745, Wesley recorded, that about seven years ago he began teaching "inward present salvation, as attainable by faith alone. For preaching this doctrine we were forbidden to preach in the churches."1 It would appear that it was the manner Wesley adopted in preaching this doctrine, rather than the doctrine itself, that caused the ousting from the churches. He himself told of the instance, wherein a woman in Newlyn objected to his preaching by saying, "Nay, if going to Church and sacrament will not put us to heaven, I know not what will."2 This showed that the people in the Church felt-whether they were right or wrong is not to the point—that Wesley was against the Church and the sacrament. If this was so, they thought themselves in duty bound to keep him from speaking in the Church. It was a misunderstanding; because at Epworth the people were urged by Wesley to attend the sacrament; yet the rector would not give Wesley the sacrament because he "was not fit." Wes ley stated that reaction of the Methodists to this misunderstand ing and spiritual deadness in the Established Church as follows: "They still cleave to the Church which they truly love; but being generally out from her pulpits, they had no alternative but to become, what has been called, irregular. Their hearts bowed to the opprobrium." This agitation with its hard feeling forced the Methodists to adopt a certain program in order to save this world that was "utterly lost." SECTION I. EARLY FIELD PREACHING 995 Finding the churches closed to him, Wesley took to outdoor preaching. It was a "sudden expedient. Wesley did not anticipate this method of spreading salvation; for when he preached a second time he described it as "submitting to be more vile."6 Whitefield had been preaching out of doors at Bristol and had invited Wesley to come and see how it worked; but Wesley could "scarce reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he set me an example on Sunday: having been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in Church."7 He began this procedure by preaching on the Sermon on the Mount and quoting Jesus as a precedent for field preaching. Nevertheless he never really liked field preaching. Writing to an opponent he said, "I do prefer the preaching in a church when I am suffered; and yet, when I am not, the wise providence of God overrules this very circumstance for good, many coming to hear because of the uncommonness of the thing, who otherwise would not have heard at all." Overton was right when he said that Wesley had a "repugnance which he had the greatest difficulty in overcoming" for field preaching.1o 8 Once begun, field preaching was carried on in a thorough manner. Wesley did away with formal prayer, that he might Moore: Life of Wesley, vol. i, p. 358. 7 Ibid., p. 361. Jour. vol. ii, p. 172. Ibid., vol. ii, p. 167. Ibid., vol. ii, p. 168. 'Letter to Author of Enthus. of Meth. and Papists Compared, p. 9. |