THE METHODISTS.

CHAPTER I.

THE FATHERLAND OF METHODISM.

METHODISM did not originate in the Western Hemisphere. It was transported across the sea, planted in a fertile soil, and brought forth fruit after its own kind. Montesquieu asserts that "in the infancy of societies the chiefs of the state form the institutions; afterward the institutions form the chiefs of the state."1

Among the founders of Methodism one name is preëminent. Others either derived their impulse from his persevering and victorious zeal, or submitted to his direction; so that it may be said, with no detriment to their fame, that without him Methodism had not been. Emerson discerned and recognized this in saying: "An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man: as monachism, of the Hermit Anthony; the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called 'the height of Rome'; and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons."

1 "Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans," Baker's translation, chap. P. 21.

It is proposed, therefore, in accounting for the springing of American Methodism fully fledged from the brain and heart of Robert Strawbridge and Philip Embury, to show what formed the moral and intellectual personality of John Wesley, and how he formed Methodism.

For centuries prior to the sixteenth the state of religion and morals throughout the Christian world had steadily deteriorated, although several times during the middle ages the minds of men asserted their fundamental rights against the corruption of Rome. Little knowledge existed, and that was chiefly confined to the clergy. In this period not one man in five hundred could have spelled his way through a psalm. Books were few and costly. Copies of the Bible, inferior in beauty and clearness to those which every cottager may now command, sold for prices which many priests could not afford to give."1

Every archbishop of Canterbury acknowledged the papal supremacy, and received in return the pallium, the sign of authority and the pledge of submission; and all the enactments concerning transubstantiation, confession, indulgences, and the primacy of the pope, with the condemnation of the Albigenses and Waldenses, were accepted by the English church, whose ambassador was present at the Fourth Lateran Council, which sat in 1215, when Magna Charta was signed. All the great orders flourished in England, and the Mendicant Friars, the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Carmelites-respectively known as Gray, Black, and White Friars-as soon as established migrated thither successively.

For the three hundred years prior to the reign of Henry VIII. England "had been the tamest part of Christendom to the papal authority, and had been accordingly dealt with. But though the Parliaments and two or three high1 Macaulay's "History of England,” vol. i., p. 13.

MEDIEVAL ENGLISH CHRISTIANITY.

3

spirited kings had given some interruptions to the cruel exactions and other illegal proceedings of the court of Rome, yet that court always gained their designs in the end."1

It was quite common in those days for men who had committed the worst crimes to take orders; for then not only were all past misdeeds condoned, but they could not be arrested for any crime committed after holy orders were given until they had been degraded; in the meantime they were the bishop's prisoners, and protected against the civil law.

As the people, though often worse, are seldom better than the clergy, the terrible impeachment of the former by Wickliffe, in the middle of the fourteenth century, is conclusive as to the general condition.

"They haunt taverns out of measure, and stir up laymen to drunkenness, idleness, and cursed swearing, cheating, and fighting. For they will not follow earnestly in their spiritual office after Christ and his apostles, and therefore they resort to plays at tables, chess, and hazard, and roar in the streets, and sit at the taverns till they have lost their wits, and then chide and strive, and fight sometimes. And sometimes they have neither eye nor tongue nor hand nor foot to help themselves for drunkenness. By this example the ignorant people suppose that drunkenness is no sin; but he that wasteth most of poor men's goods at taverns, making himself and other men drunken, is most praised for nobleness, courtesy, freeness, and worthiness." 2

Henry, second son of Henry VII. and his queen, Elizabeth of York, was born at Greenwich in 1491. In April, 1509, he succeeded his father on the throne, and two months later wedded his brother's widow, Catherine of Aragon.

1 Burnet's "History of the Reformation in England," vol. i., bk. i., p. 9. 2 "A Book about the Clergy," by J. C. Jeaffreson, vol. i., p. 47.

During his reign changes were made the effects of which upon the civil and ecclesiastical government of England and its dependencies, upon the visible forms of Christianity in every English-speaking country, and upon the laws, institutions, and social and individual life of their peoples, continue to this day.

war.

Until his twenty-ninth year he was devoted to the pope and eager to prove his loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church. The Reformation was progressing rapidly on the Continent, which was speedily plunged into universal Cardinal Wolsey attempted the impossible double task of reforming the clergy and suppressing the religious revolution. At this stage arose the controversy between Henry VIII. and the pope concerning his relations to Catherine. His father had had doubts of the legitimacy of the marriage, and a foreign court had made objection to intermarriage with the children of Catherine; yet, as there were no male heirs, the probability of a disputed succession in the event of his death agitated the people of the realm.

In 1527 a demand for a declaration that the marriage was null and void was formally laid before the pope. The temporizing of the pontiff irritated the king, who discarded Wolsey as not being sufficiently zealous. In 1529 a Parliament was convened which took important and far-reaching steps, the end of which was probably not foreseen.

The first formal step, however, toward the separation of Henry VIII. from the Church of Rome was taken in 1531, the year after the death of Wolsey, when the attorneygeneral filed a bill against the whole body of the clergy, as having been the favorers and abettors of Wolsey in breaking the Act of Præmunire-an act intended to check evasions of existing statutes against those appointed by papal provision to English benefices or dignities.