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: Samuel Wesley Jr..
John and Charles Wesley are famous brothers in the History of Methodism. Beyond those two, the sheer amount of Wesley siblings is astonishing. As we discussed in Episode 23, Susanna Wesley gave birth to 19 or 20 children. Not all of them survived into adulthood. The oldest sibling was not John or Charles, though, but Samuel Jr.
Samuel was born in 1690, soon after Samuel Senior’s ordination and the Glorious Revolution, that brought so much tension to the household. At that time, Samuel Senior was the curate in Newington Butts.
When he was old enough, Young Samuel attended the Westminster School, where Charles would later attend. Samuel would eventually become head usher, or second master of the school in 1711, while he was still at Christ Church College, Oxford.
Soon after, Samuel was ordained a priest in the Church of England. And like his father, young Samuel was connected to the Tory wing of the church. He was a friend of Bishop Francis Atterbury, who was a favorite of Queen Anne but despised by George I. Atterbury was arrested for a plot to capture the Hanoverians and return the Jacobites to the throne in 1721 and sent to the Tower of London. He was stripped of his duties and exiled, eventually connecting with the Jacobite pretender and serving as a prime minister in exile of sorts.
Atterbury’s downfall did not effect Young Samuel. He was soon married and eventually had six children with his wife, Ursula Berry, though only two survived into adulthood.
Samuel was a published poet and friendly with two of the great poets of the age, Matthew Prior and Alexander Pope.
Like Pope, Samuel’s poetry was often satirical parodies of epic poems from Virgil and Homer and Milton. His most famous long poem was called The Battle of the Sexes and went through a few editions.
Of Arms, which fieree contenting Sexes bore,
I sing; and Wars for Fame and Empire made.
Despotick Man rul’d with tyrannick Pow’r,
Obey’d, but with Reluctance still obey’d;
With Words his long disputed Cause he tries,
But Woman’s equal Wit disdains to yield:
At length to Arms ungen’rously he flies:
As quick the Female takes the proferr’d Field;
Each their superior Merit to maintain,
For Man was learn’d, and proud; and Woman fair, and vain.1
He also published a parody of Homer’s Iliad titled: The Iliad in a Nutshell, or Homer's Battle of the Frogs and Mice.2
Samuel Junior’s great contribution to the history of Methodism, though, is found in his relationship and correspondence with his brother’s, John and Charles.
John wrote over a hundred letters to his brother Samuel, beginning in 1724 even before his ordination. The first extant letter is from June 17, and includes some news going on in Oxford and John’s translation of a Latin poem. Charmingly, John ends it by saying, “If you will excuse my pen and my haste, I shall be once more, Yours. This is my birthday.”3
In another letter about a year later, John includes his translations of some of Horace’s Odes.4 He clearly respected his older brother’s opinion and his Latin. As head usher, Samuel’s Latin must have been empeccable.
The next extant latter is from 1726, while John was still at Oxford, and it is much more substantial than the prior ones. Samuel Senior had become angry with John over his defense of their sister, Hetty, and over John using their father as a sermon illustration.5
But what is interesting is that John is responding to a letter from Samuel Junior that we don’t have, which concerns the 53rd Canon of the Church of England, outlawing preachers criticizing other preachers from the pulpit.6
Samuel Junior made the dispute not just about the family but about canon law, showing himself an expert in this niche area.
In his response to John, Samuel Junior writes, “I reckon myself obliged to you for your frankness in that matter, and freely acknowledge ’tis impossible you should break that law without set purpose and design.”7
The respect is mutual, even in moments of disagreement.
We see a bit of Samuel Junior’s theology in a letter from 1727. John had sent a sermon manuscript seeking feedback. I am going to read a significant excerpt because of how much it illustrates Samuel’s thought.
God never yet bid man hate his enemy; that was only one of the many traditions of the Jews which made the law of God of none effect. The command may be new as to the plainness and frequency of its injunction, the degree and importance of our love, the person who gave it, and the motives to its practice. We are under more particular obligation to the household of faith, indeed we are not only more bound to love them, but bound also to love them more, in an higher degree and manner than others, which I think you have not inserted. Our Saviour’s example is well urged, but methinks it would have been highly proper to have taken off a seeming objection —that even he called the scribes and Pharisees hypocrites and painted sepulchres, and Herod a fox, and so have showed that even such sharpness was not railing. We are not only to forgive but also love our enemies. I am of opinion some degree of love must be before we can possibly forgive, but ’tis of small import which is first, provided they are inseparable, as I believe they will be found. Repentance is not necessary to these, but in order to trust it doubtless is. You have fairly proved that God’s enemies are not excluded, no more than our own.8
John quickly responds a week later, going in to some of the details that Samuel brings up, but the correspondence leaves us this gem.
Leisure and I have now taken leave of one another. I propose to be busy as long as I live, if my health is so long indulged to me.9
A few years later, John and Samuel have a debate about the usefulness of laughter, which is, unfortunately, not very funny.10
As mentioned before, even though he was an ordained priest, Samuel Junior’s career was in education. This connection to education was a consistent thought for John and something he often brought up in letters. In 1736, while he was waiting to go to Georgie, one of the last letters that John wrote was to Samuel Junior from on board the Simmonds. John’s goal was to convince his brother to teach Greek and Latin through Christian authors and not just pagan ones. This was after Samuel had moved from Westminster to be the Headmaster at Blundell’s School in Tiverton, in Devonshire north of Exeter.
So many souls are committed to your charge by God, to be prepared for a happy eternity. You are to instruct them, not only in the beggarly elements of Greek and Latin, but much more in the gospel. You are to labor with all your might to convince them that Christianity is not a negation or an external thing, but a new heart, a mind conformed to that of Christ, ' faith working by love.’11
We see here how writing to Samuel helps John articulate what he sees as the purpose of education. Writing to Samuel also helps John to understand what he appreciates about Moravians. After Aldersgate and during John Wesley’s trip to the Moravian center in Herrnhut, he writes to Samuel Junior about what an amazing place it is.
God has given me at length the desire of my heart. I am with a Church whose conversation is in heaven, in whom is the mind that was in Christ, and who so walk as He walked. As they have all one Lord and one faith, so they are all partakers of one Spirit, the spirit of meekness and love, which uniformly and continually animates all their conversation. Oh how high and holy a thing Christianity is! and how widely distant from that (I know not what) which is so called, though it neither purifies the heart nor renews the life after the image of our blessed Redeemer!12
Samuel functions as a helpful foil for John during the early days after Aldersgate and the trip to Europe, forcing John to define how he understands God working in people, as well as even what a Christian is. John writes to his brother in October of 1738.
With regard to my own character, and my doctrine likewise, I shall answer you very plainly. By a Christian I mean one who so believes in Christ as that sin hath no more dominion over him; and in this obvious sense of the word I was not a Christian till May the 24th last past. For till then sin had the dominion over me, although I fought with it continually; but surely then, from that time to this it hath not, such is the free grace of God in Christ. What sins they were which till then reigned over me, and from which by the grace of God I am now free, I am ready to declare on the house-top, if it may be for the glory of God.13
Samuel’s response to this letter was cold and to the point, unpersuaded by John’s description of his own experience and the stories of others. Samuel writes: “When I hear visions, etc., reproved, discouraged, and ceased among the new brotherhood, I shall then say no more of them; but till then I will use my utmost strength that God shall give me to expose these bad branches of a bad root.”14
For the next year, they continue to have a running correspondence over Aldersgate, spiritual gifts, and assurance of salvation. Here is the main point I am trying to make about Samuel Wesley Junior and his importance for the Methodist Movement. Samuel clarified for John what he did and didn’t believe about God acting in the Methodist Movement. Samuel would not let his brother get away with lazy thinking or cheap justifications.
His final letter to Samuel was ten days before his brother’s untimely death in October of 1739. In it, he still responds directly to questions and concerns from Samuel about the validity of the spiritual experiences John witnessed in others while he preached.15
This would be the last letter he wrote, for Samuel Junior died on November 6, 1738, at the age of 48. On November 10, a gap in the diary begins, so we don’t have that daily record of his life until April 13, 1740.
In the Journal account, John describes his joy at visiting Tiverton, where Samuel lived.
we could not but rejoice at hearing from one who had attended my brother in all his weakness that, several days before he went hence, God had given him a calm and full assurance of his interest in Christ. O may everyone who opposes it be thus convinced that this doctrine is of God!16
It is especially helpful to remember that the Journal was written and published for the purposes of edification. And in this sense, I imagine some exaggeration went into the text to push up the joy and push down the grief.
Nevertheless, no more would Samuel be there to clarify John’s theology. No more would that expert in canon law and ancient languages offer gentle correction to his brother’s thought. And yet, Samuel’s influence never left. It gave John a backbone in his future theological controversies with Whitefield and the Moravians. Modest speculation on my part could say that Samuel’s influence also kept John within the bounds of the Church of England. Absent Samuel’s conservative rigor, John might have been more easily swayed by the Moravians or Whitefield post-Aldersgate.
Speculation also leads me to say that grief led John to destroy this section of his diary. Again, pure speculation, but not unfounded. His brother, whom he looked up to almost as much as his father, was no longer there. Yet even though he may have grieved greatly, John was not discouraged.
But before we continue with our chronology, we need to make one more stop in London. Though we described them in Episode 19 on English Spirituality, controversies within the Fetter Lane Society are coming to a boil. And in order to understand how much of an impact that group had on the changes in direction for Methodism John will institute in 1740 and beyond, we need to deeply understand the Rise and Fall of the Fetter Lane Society. Next time on the History of Methodism.