Hello, I'm Wilson Pruitt, and you are listening to the History of Methodism Podcast. You can support us online at patreon.com/historyofmethodism. Please rate and review wherever you get your podcasts. Today’s Episode: European Interlude.
After leaving his mother’s house, in early June of 1738, John was still not satisfied. He needed something more than what London could give him. He headed towards Oxford. On the way, he went to the small village, Stanton Harcourt, 6 miles west of Oxford. And on June 10, he preached a new sermon there based on a text from Ephesians 2:8 ("By Grace are ye saved through faith." ). The next day, he preached it again at St. Mary’s, Oxford. This was a sermon he later included in his first published collection from 1746. Titled Salvation by Faith, it is the first post-Aldersgate sermon that John retained for posterity. As Albert Outler notes, The Aldersgate experience had not produced a new doctrine, but a new resolution to make the most of his opportunities to expound the one to which he had already come.1
Because of this sermon’s importance to the later Methodist movement, the themes and arguments of this sermon are worth digging up so that we will better understand the state of John’s faith during this time.
John begins, as he does in most of his sermons, with a brief introduction. He lays out the major questions one should have concerning Ephesians 2:8:
I. What faith it is through which we are saved.
II. What is the salvation which is through faith.
III. How we may answer some objections
In the first section, John distinguishes the faith of the apostles during the life of Jesus with the faith with which we are to live today. He writes:
And herein does it differ from that faith which the Apostles themselves had while our Lord was on earth, that it acknowledges the necessity and merit of his death, and the power of his resurrection…Christian faith is then, not only an assent to the whole gospel of Christ, but also a full reliance on the blood of Christ; a trust in the merits of his life, death, and resurrection; a recumbency upon him as our atonement and our life, as given for us, and living in us
John then marks out, in the second section, that we are saved from sin as well as the consequence of sin. He goes on,
both [meanings are] often expressed in the word justification; which, taken in the largest sense, implies a deliverance from guilt and punishment, by the atonement of Christ actually applied to the soul of the sinner now believing on him, and a deliverance from the power of sin, through Christ formed in his heart.2
Finally, Wesley addresses a few objections to the doctrine of salvation by faith. The first: by speaking of faith, doesn’t that mean that we don’t have to follow the law anymore? Wesley’s answer is that “First, all who preach not faith do manifestly make void the law; either directly and grossly, by limitations and comments that eat out all the spirit of the text; or indirectly, by not pointing out the only means whereby it is possible to perform it.”3 That is, a fixation on the law voids the law. By faith, we are able to follow it through the spirit.
The next objection asks if faith leads to pride. John responds that proper fear of the Lord keeps us from pride. The next is antinomian: that is, if we received God’s mercy, why don’t we just keep on sinning? John writes: “The goodness of God ought to lead them to repentance; and so it will those who are sincere of heart.”4
Wesley ends with an anti-Catholic section about how salvation by faith “first drove popery out of these kingdoms.”5 And he ends with a militant call to “march on under the great Captain of thy salvation, conquering and to conquer, until all thine enemies are destroyed and death is swallowed up in victory.”6
The last few times John preached before, he was never asked to return to that church. He didn’t keep those sermons. He kept this one. There is a fervor throughout the sermon that still follows a direct logic of the scriptural text and the Protestant tradition. John is very Protestant here, quoting Luther and separating himself from Catholic tradition, points relevant to his future continental journey.
His mind had already been made up about what to do next. The following day, John headed to London, then Gravesend, and then by the 15th they have landed in Rotterdam, Holland. His old friend, Benjamin Ingham, goes on the journey with John. There were 8 total in the group, five from England and three from Germany. This trip is rarely discussed in histories, save for John’s experience after he arrives at Herrnhut. We will save Herrnhut for our next episode, but the journey there, as described in the Journal is fascinating on its own and offers us insight into John’s understanding of the world during this season.
Upon landing in Rotterdam, a Mennonite, Dr. Koker, walked with them an hour, but then he turned around and the group continued to walk on their way to Herrnhut. The road itself is remarkable to John. He writes about how he had “never before [seen] such a road as this. For many miles together it is raised for some yards above the level, and paved with a small sort of brick, as smooth and clean as the mall at St. James’s. The walnut trees stand in even rows on either side, so that no walk in a gentleman’s garden is pleasanter.”7
They spent that night in Gouda, the town for which the cheese was named after, and then head to Ijseelstein, where they stay with Baron Watteville, a German Moravian and friend of Zinzendorf. That Saturday, June 17, was John’s birthday. He shared communion with the English in the group that morning. Then, around 2pm, they all joined the Moravian community spending Saturday, in his words, “in prayer, praise and such other exercises as became those who were all filled with the Holy Ghost.”8
On Sunday, they took a boat to Amsterdam and stayed at the home of a Mennonite, Mr. Deknatel. John spent much of the week in Amsterdam, visiting Society meetings.
The group left on June 22 by boat and landed on the edge of Holland, where they walked and crossed into the imperial lands of what is now Germany. They passed through a few towns over the next few days before making it to Cologne on June 27. Wesley writes: “we…came…into the ugliest, dirtiest city I ever yet saw with my eyes.”9 Wesley visits the famous Cologne Cathedral, but calls it “a huge, misshapen thing.”10 There is definitely an anti-Roman edge to Wesley’s writings at this time. You find it in the sermon and especially here in this language around the city of Cologne.
From Cologne, John wrote to his mother and his brother. To Charles, he wrote concerning the Moravian doctrine of faith, which distinguishes faith (absolutely speaking), justifying faith, the assurance of faith, and being born again. He also asks his brother to pray for them “that all things may work together for our good, and that we may be more and more rooted in faith, joyful through hope, and grounded in charity! Adieu!”11
Wesley and the others then took four days going up the Rhein River before arriving in Frankfurt on July 3. Unfortunately, they could not enter the guarded and wealthy city once they arrived. He writes:
Faint and weary as we were, we could have no admittance here, having brought no passes with us, which indeed we never imagined would have been required in a time of settled general peace.12
Hours later, they are finally admitted thanks to Peter Böhler’s father, and then the following day, they make it to their first destination of Marienborn, what is now Sommersdorf in northern Germany. Zinzendorf was staying there at the time. Unfortunately, John was ill from his journeys and could do nothing but lie down the rest of that first day.
The next day, July 6, Zinzendorf took John to see friend who was noble, and Wesley was impressed by the German frugality of the place: with girls wearing linen instead of Satin and jewels. At night, he stayed with a Moravian and conversed as much as he could with whomever could speak English or Latin (John’s German was not yet up to snuff).
John writes in his Journal:
I continually met with what I sought for, viz à viz, living proofs of the power of faith: persons ‘saved from inward as well as outward sin’, by ‘the love of God shed abroad in their hearts’; and from all doubt and fear by the abiding ‘witness of the Holy Ghost given unto them.’13
The following day, John heard Zinzendorf preach for the first time, which he only notes, with little comment, in his journal.
He took the time to write his mother, Susanna, on this day, as well as his brothers Charles and Samuel Jr. The letters to Charles and Susanna are more of the same, but Samuel is not of one mind with John and Charles. Samuel is not interested in reading William Law’s A Serious Call and they argue about it. John writes:
I was much concerned when my brother Charles once incidentally mentioned a passage that occurred at Tiverton: 'Upon my offering to read', said he, 'a chapter in the Serious Call, my sister said, "Who do you read that to? Not to these young ladies, I presume; and your brother and I do not want it." ' Yes, my sister, I must tell you in the spirit of love, and before God, who searcheth the heart, you do want it; you want it exceedingly.14
The disagreements with Samuel will continue throughout the year, but they are always held in grace and charity, each brother seeing the best and seeking the best in the other.
A few days later, while still in Marienborn, on Wednesday, July 12, John describes conference held for strangers interested in the Moravian way, which John found compelling. He included notes from Zinzendorf’s talk.
- Justification is the forgiveness of sins.
- The moment a man flies to Christ he is justified :
- And has peace with God, but not always joy :
- Nor perhaps may he know he is justified till longafter :
- For the assurance of it is distinct from justification itself.
- But others may know he is justified by his power over sin, by his seriousness, his love of the brethren, and his " hunger and thirst after righteousness," which alone prove the spiritual life to be begun.
- To be justified is the same thing as to be born of God. (Not so.)
- When a man is awakened, he is begotten of God, and his fear and sorrow and sense of the wrath of God are the pangs of the new birth.
John connects this to what Peter Böhler had taught him in the springtime in London.
John spends another week at Marienborn at the request of Benjamin Ingham. A few days later, they head out on their journey. They next arrive at Weimar and are held at the gate until someone is ready to see them and question them in the town square. This person of importance, whom John assumes that it is the Duke of Weimar (who would have been William Ernst August), asks the party why they were going on such a long journey to Herrnhut. Wesley answers: “to see the place where Christians live.”15
The next city of note they pass through is Jena, a university town, which John notices is quite different from Oxford or Cambridge because the students don’t live in colleges but around the town.
On the 27th of July they arrive in Leipzig, during the time that Johan Sebastian Bach was working and composing in Leipzig. Bach was writing his Harpsichord concertos and the Kyrie-Gloria masses during this season. As well, John Wesley could have easily heard the organ music coming from St. Thomas’s church during this time.
A few days later, they arrive in Meissen and stop at Meissen Castle, the oldest castle in Germany, having been built in 1471. John noted the gaudiness of attire in the place. “The minister’s habit was adorned with gold and scarlet, and a vast cross both behind and before. Most of the congregation sat…and all of them stayed during the Holy Communion, though but very few received. Alas, alas! What a Reformed country is this!”16
They next arrive at Dresden and are held up at the gate yet again. John is quite frustrated by the poor German hospitality throughout this journey, all these cities that would’t let him pass even if though they weren’t in open war. Most of the area he passed were relatively self-governing city-states, so their tight security was a means of their survival, but that didn’t justify it for Wesley.
In Dresden, he also notes new architecture of the recently deceased Elector of Saxony, Frederick Augustus, and comments on all of the splendor: “Alas! Where will all these things appear when ‘the earth and the works thereof shall be burned up?”
Then at three in the afternoon, on August 1, they arrive at their destination in Herrnhut. It took John almost two months to travel from London to Herrnhut. With modern transportation, it would take 13 hours driving to make the same journey. From Rotterdam, it was about 550 miles, nearly all of them filled with conversation and prayer.
John knew what he was looking for at the heart of Moravian Europe, but would he find it there? Next time on the History of Methodism.