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Today’s Episode: Eve of Revival.
New Year’s day has a special place in Methodist History. In 1755, John Wesley began holding Covenant Services on New Years day based on the work of the Puritan, Richard Alleine. Before that though, as mentioned at the end of Episode 53 of this series, on January 1, 1739, with John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, and many others had a powerful spiritual experience. The next few months exist in the shadow of this experience and prepare John, Charles, and George Whitefield, for the revival to come. The first quarter of 1739, the beginning of January through the end of March, mark a major transition point for John Wesley and the Methodist movement.
In episode 49 of this series, we looked at the immediate aftermath of John Wesley’s Aldersgate Experience. It didn’t translate suddenly into revival in England nor an ease of life for John. His powerful experience on New Year’s Day, 1739, did cause John to reflect back on Aldersgate in light of new feelings of revival in England.
He writes in his journal on January 4: “One who had had the form of godliness many years wrote the following reflections.” In looking at John’s diary, we see that John is talking about himself here.
John writes:
’My friends affirm I am mad, because I said I was not a Christian a year ago. I affirm, I am not a Christian now. Indeed, what I might have been I know not, had I been faithful to the grace then given, when, expecting nothing less, received such a sense of the forgiveness of my sins as till then I never knew. But that I am not a Christian at this day, I as assuredly know, as that Jesus is the Christ.
’For a Christian is one who has the fruits of the Spirit of Christ, which (to mention no more} are love, peace, joy. But these I have not. I have not any love of God. I do not love either the Father or the Son. Do you ask, how do I know whether I love God, I answer by another question, "How do you know whether you love me" Why, as you know whether you are hot or cold. You feel this moment that you do or do not love me. And I feel this moment I do not love God; which therefore I know, because I feel it…'From hence I conclude, though I have given, and do give, all my goods to feed the poor, I am not a Christian. Though I have endured hardship, though I have in all things denied myself and taken up my cross, I am not a Christian. My works are nothing; my sufferings are nothing; I have not the fruits of the Spirit of Christ. Though I have constantly used all the means of grace for twenty years, I am not a Christian.’…Verily, verily I say unto you, I ‘must be born again.’1
We see here the kernel of what will be John’s great sermon: the Almost Christian, where he writes:
I did go thus far for many years, as many of this place can testify; using diligence to eschew all evil, and to have a conscience void of offence; redeeming the time; buying up every opportunity of doing all good to all men; constantly and carefully using all the public and all the private means of grace; endeavouring after a steady seriousness of behaviour, at all times, and in all places; and, God is my record, before whom I stand, doing all this in sincerity; having a real design to serve God; a hearty desire to do his will in all things; to please him who had called me to "fight the good fight," and to "lay hold of eternal life." Yet my own conscience beareth me witness in the Holy Ghost, that all this time I was but almost a Christian.
The next week, John preached at Basingshaw Church, on Basinghall Street in London. The week after, on the 17th, John gives evidence of invalid enthusiasm. He writes:
I was with two persons who I doubt are properly enthusiasts. For, first, they think to attain the end without the means, which is enthusiasm properly so call. Again, they think themselves inspired by God, and are not. But false imaginary inspiration is enthusiasm. That theirs is only imaginary inspiration appears hence: it contradicts the law and the testimony.2
This is an important argument that John is making here. Enthusiasm as such is not good on its own. He does not support anyone who claims to be inspired by God. Wesley is constantly discerning in this matter and checking to see if there is fruit or if there is not.
On the 28th of January, John meets with a group of French Prophets, Huguenots who had fled France but claimed divine inspiration, but he left the meeting sayings to himself, “if it be not of God, it will come to nought.”3
John replied to a letter from his older brother, Samuel on February 4, defending some of his spiritual activities. John writes:
I think Bishop Bull’s sermon the witness of the Spirit (against the witness of the Spirit it should rather be entitled) is full of gross perversions of Scripture, and manifest contradictions both to Scripture and experience. I find more persons day by day who experience a clear evidence of their being in a state of salvation…I fear you [my brother] dissent from the fundamental Articles of the Church of England. I know Bishop Bull does. I doubt you do not hold justification by faith alone; if not, then neither do you hold what our Articles teach concerning the extent and the guilt of original sin, neither do you feel yourself a lost sinner; and if we begin not here, we are building on the sand. O may the God of love, if my sister or you are otherwise minded, reveal even this unto you!”4
The journal account of February goes rather swiftly. He preached at a few places but not much else happens. The diary account of January and February is much richer; he visited with many people every day, ate dinner at different houses, visited band meetings in homes. He sang often with others. Sometimes with lively zeal, as he notes. In all, according to the diary, Wesley’s life seemed very stable. As Henry Rack writes:
the pattern of Wesley’s activity consisted of a busy round of preaching in churches, and meeting and preaching in the societies, especially Fetter Lane. He took several excursions to Oxford…Fetter Lane now had fifty-six men in eight bands, though only eight women in two. Sometimes he was addressing five or six hundred people.5
Rack also speculates that John could have been having struggles with desire around women at this time, though it is not remarked in the Journal or diary. During the next year, James Hutton will write about Charles and John: “Both of them are dangerous snares to young women; several are in love with them. I wish they were once married to some good sisters, but I would not give them one of my sisters if I had any.”6
On March 3, John Wesley receives a letter from George Whitefield. He writes a little of the first movements of revival in Bath, mentioned briefly in our last episode. Then he asks: “How would you advise me to act?…You must come and water what God has enabled me to plant.”7 John replies two weeks later with a granular account of his activities, concluding with the line: “God hath indeed planted and watered. O may he give the increase!”8 At this point, though, John is still staying in the East of England and continuing his basic activities.
John writes in his journal about the letter from Whitefield and another from a Mr. Seward, “entreating me in the most pressing manner,”9 yet without conclusion.
On March 23, John receives another letter from Whitefield:
Honored sir, I beseech you come next week…I pray for a blessing on your journey in our meetings. The people expect you much. Though you come after, I heartily wish that you may be preferred before me.10
A few days after receiving this, John’s mind has changed. He writes in the journal:
My journey was proposed to our society at Fetter Lane. But my brother Charles would scarce bear the mention of it; till, appealing to oracles of God…Our other brethren, however, continuing the dispute without any probability of their coming to one conclusion, we at length all agreed to decide it by lot. And by this it was determined I should go.11
John wrote in his diary for this day: “talk of my going to Bristol: lots, I going! prayed.” He then wrote four scriptures: two from 2 Samuel and two from 2 Chronicles. I am going to read this verses in the King James to understand what is going on in Wesley’s head.
2 Samuel 4:11: How much more, when wicked men have slain a righteous person in his own house upon his bed? shall I not therefore now require his blood of your hand, and take you away from the earth?
2 Samuel 3:1: Now there was long war between the house of Saul and the house of David: but David waxed stronger and stronger, and the house of Saul waxed weaker and weaker.
2 Chronicles 28:27: And Ahaz slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city, even in Jerusalem: but they brought him not into the sepulchres of the kings of Israel: and Hezekiah his son reigned in his stead.
2 Chronicles 29:30: Moreover Hezekiah the king and the princes commanded the Levites to sing praise unto the Lord with the words of David, and of Asaph the seer. And they sang praises with gladness, and they bowed their heads and worshipped.
John Wesley sees the struggle of the Israelite kings playing out in his own life. He anticipates God being glorified in his life and ministry just as God was glorified through Hezekiah.
John left London the next day, on March 29 and he arrived in Bristol in the evening of March 31. The journal account is vivid here.
In the evening I reached Bristol and met Mr. Whitefield there. I could scarcely reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he set me an example on Sunday; I had 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 a church. April 1.—In the evening (Mr. Whitefield being gone) I began expounding our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount (one pretty remarkable precedent of field-preaching, though I suppose there were churches at that time also), to a little society which was accustomed to meet once or twice a week in Nicholas Street. Monday, 2.—At four in the afternoon, I submitted to be more vile and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city, to about three thousand people.12
We are at the start of Revival. John Wesley is field preaching and lives are changing. What were those first days like and how did the fire first spread from Bristol, next time on the History of Methodism.
Sources
Henry Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast (London: Epworth, 1988).