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: The New Name of Methodism
In the fall of 1739, John Wesley is back in London and spending some time with his mother. John Wesley’s relationship with his mother was essential to his formation as a minister and Christian leader.
Often in the narrative of Methodism, Susanna Wesley is reserved for the beginning of the story. We are told about how she runs the household. And then once John goes off to boarding school, Susanna stays in the shadows. This is not the case. Up until her death in 1742, she will continue to play a decisive role in John and Charles’s ministry and in their self-understanding of what they are doing.
Finding forms of continuity within the faith in what he is doing in Bristol and London is vitally important to John. With his father gone, and his older brother Samuel moderately estranged, Susanna becomes an important resource and anchor for John. In the fall of 1739, continuity with Christian tradition is one of a number of important questions that John is wrestling with.
By tradition, I don’t mean here the vast tradition of the faith, but whether the people in ages past believed rightly or wrongly about God. That is, if they had a proper understanding of justification by faith. Before he can be assured of his faithfulness to the early church, John needs to make sure he and Susanna are on the same page about things.
On September 3, John Wesley writes in his Journal about a conversation with his mother.
I talked largely with my mother, who told me that, till a short time since, she had scarcely heard such a thing mentioned as the having forgiveness of sins now, or God’s Spirit bearing witness with our spirit: much less did she imagine that this was the common privilege of all true believers. “Therefore,” said she, “I never durst ask for it myself. But two or three weeks ago, while my son Hall1 was pronouncing those words, in delivering the cup to me, ‘The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee,’ the words struck through my heart and I knew God for Christ’s sake had forgiven me all my sins.”2
John is so heartened by his mother’s words. She is also able to give him consolation about his famous grandfather, Samuel Annesley, the non-conformist preacher in London.
I asked whether her father had not the same faith and whether she had not heard him preach it to others. She answered that he had had it himself; and had declared, a little before his death, that for more than forty years he had had no darkness, no fear, no doubt at all of his being “accepted in the Beloved.”3
John also continued his pattern of ministry in London. He would visit house to house during the week and then preach to large crowds on Sunday. On Sunday, September 9, John spoke to ten thousand in Moorfields and then twenty thousand at Kennington, a service in which his mother also attended.
That night, he went to Fetter Lane and had a positive experience exhorting “them to love one another. The want of love was a general complaint. We laid it open before our Lord. We soon found he had sent us an answer of peace.”4
Being in the heart of London and the heart of ecclesiastical power for the Church of England, John was asked directly at this time: in what points…do you differ from the other clergy of the church of England? I will quote this at length because it shows how John relates to the other clergy of the Church of England at this time.
I answer∣ed, "In none from that part of the clergy who ad∣here to the doctrines of the church; but from that part of the clergy who dissent from the church (though they own it not) I differ in the points following:
First, They speak of justification, either as the same thing with sanctification, or as something con∣sequent upon it. I believe justification to be wholly distinct from sanctification, and necessarily antecedent to it.
Secondly, They speak of our own holiness or good works, as the cause of our justification; or, that for the sake of which, on account of which we are justified before God. I believe, neither our own holiness nor good works, are any part of the cause of our justification; but that the death and righteousness of Christ, are the whole and sole cause of it; or, that for the sake of which, on account of which, we are justified before God.
Thirdly, They speak of good works, as a condition of justification, necessarily previous to it. I believe no good work can be previous to justification, nor consequently a condition of it: but that we are justified (being till that hour ungodly, and therefore in∣capable of doing any good work) by faith alone, faith without works, faith (though producing all, yet) including no good work.
Fourthly, They speak of sanctification (or holiness) as if it were an outward thing, as if it consisted chiefly, if not wholly, in these two points, 1. The doing no harm, 2. The doing good (as it is called) i. e. The using the means of grace, and helping our neighbor.
I believe it to be, an inward thing, namely, The life of God in the soul of man; a participation of the divine nature; the mind that was in Christ; or, the renewal of our heart, after the image of him that created us.
Lastly, They speak of the new birth, as an outward thing, as if it were no more than baptism; or, at most, a change from outward wickedness to outward goodness; from a vicious to (what is called) a virtuous life. I believe it to be an inward thing; a change from inward wickedness to inward goodness; an entire change of our inmost nature from the image of the devil (where∣in we are born) to the image of God: a change from the love of the creature to the love of the Creator, from earthly and sensual, to heavenly and holy affections: in a word, a change from the tempers of the spirits of darkness, to those of the angels of God in heaven.
There is therefore a wide, essential, fundamental, irreconcilable difference between us: so that if they speak the truth as it is in Jesus, I am found a false witness before God. But if I teach the way of God in truth, they are blind leaders of the blind.
It is important to say that John distinguishes here his teaching with other clergy, not with the church itself. One of the books John is sharing during this time period is his own extract from the Anglican book of homilies titled the Doctrine of Salvation, Faith, and Good Works. It is a 12 page booklet out of print today but which went through a dozen printings in the 18th century. John continued to hold faithfully to his understanding of Anglican doctrine, but he was not exceedingly patient with fellow clergy in this matter.
As well, in the fourth point, we see in this structure a summation of the General Rules, (Do no harm, Do all the good you can, and Attend to the ordinances of God), which Wesley will publish in 1743 in a pamphlet titled “The Nature, Design, and General Rules of the United Societies.” In the preface to this work, John writes that, in 1739, “groups of men and women sought him out for pastoral guidance—persons who were ‘deeply convinced of sin, and earnestly groaning for redemption’ (Wesley, 1989:69).”5 He doesn’t mention this encounter in his Journal or Diary, but the seeds are definitely there in his response to the clergy.
The following Sunday, John speaks at Moorfields and Kennington again. He makes here one of the first formal affirmations of the name Methodist. John writes:
At both places I described the real difference between what is generally called Christianity and the true old Christianity, which under the new name of ‘Methodism’ is now also ‘everywhere spoken against.’6
We see in the Fall of 1739 a self-understanding about the ministry that John is doing. It doesn’t happen over night. He didn’t set out to start a movement. He aimed to discern which way to go and stay faithful in all of his avenues. We see how John continues to hold onto language of the old Christianity, like the nonjuror influences of his youth, as described in Episodes 18 and 21.
As he continued to write about his ministry at this time, his journal consistently shows examples of people responding to prayer and physically changing. On September 28, John said that a middle-aged woman came to him who had recently been tied to her bed because of convulsions, “[b]ut upon prayer made for her she was instantly relieved and restored to a sound mind.”7
On October 1, John went to Oxford and met with the remaining members of the Holy Club. The group was a shell of its former size. Two days later, he visited the Castle Prison and the City Prison which had been such a part of their life in Oxford, but no one was caring for their souls anymore. The Oxford part of his life was nearing an end.
John and Charles then went south towards Gloucester, stopping regularly and praying and preaching as they went. They continued on this way to the area around Bristol. On October 11, they met with a man who had formerly been a notorious drunkard and swearer but who had changed his life.
On October 15, John made it to Wales for the first time. He did not have a great time at first in Wales, at one point saying, “I felt in myself a strong aversion to preaching here.”8 However, the trip shifted and by the end of it five days later, he wrote, “I have seen no part of England so pleasant for sixty or seventy miles together as those parts of Wales I have been in. And most of the inhabitants are indeed ripe for the gospel.”9
When he gets back to Bristol, John is reading a work of William Law, which he finds “philosophical, speculative, precarious; Behmenish, void and vain!” before quoting Julius Caesar in saying, “O what a fall there is!”10
Behminish refers to the writings of Jacob Boehme, a German mystic and philosopher of the 16th and 17th century who was influential among some Pietists and Quakers. John has truly moved away from Law and his thought by this point. He is no longer reading Law for insight but clarity about how is own belief’s differ from Law’s.
Near the end of October John wrote a letter to his friend, the Rev. James Hervey, where he upholds the life of Jesus revealed in the Scriptures over the saints. He writes:
Though Basil and Nazianzen were good men, I know a better, Jesus of Nazareth. And were I now to prepare myself for the service his church, I would do it by following his example, ‘going about doing good’, temporal or spiritual, as of the small ‘ability which God giveth.’11
In the same letter he gives his strongest yet account of his ecclesiology
But indeed I could not serve (as they term it) a cure now. I have tried, and know it is impracticable to observe the laws of the English Church in any parish in England. I observed them in my parish of Savannah, till I was obliged to fly for my life…Set the matter in another light, and it comes to a short issue. I everywhere see God’s people perishing for lack of knowledge. I have power (through God) to save their souls from death. Shall I use it, or shall I let them perish—‘because they are not of my parish’?12
John still saw himself as the wronged one in Georgia and saw that he was not able to follow the church law as he understood it and he didn’t see that changing. He didn’t forsake his ordination, but he did see himself as apart from the normal structure of the Church of England and outside of its disciplinary mechanism.
November marks a new journal that wasn’t published until 1744. Its focus is the Methodists relationship to the Moravian Church. This Journal contains much of what we talked about in the last episode about the Fetter Lane Society and begins with a letter to the Moravian Church describing how he is grateful for all he learned from them. November is also the time when his older brother, Samuel Wesley, Jr., passes away suddenly.
Much of these events we described in our last two episodes and so we will quickly pass over them. An important thing to note that I missed in our episode on Samuel Wesley, Jr., in November, John was planning to go to Oxford to finalize his Bachelor of Divinity degree, but Samuel Jr’s death changed those plans, and John never pursued a Bachelor of Divinity again. It was a requirement for most of the Fellows of Lincoln College, Oxford. John had planned on getting the degree, but by this time, those plans had changed so radically so that he never speaks of it again.
In November, John also takes the time to talk about how the Kingswood school is doing and the fruit of their ministry to the coal miners of the Bristol area (or the colliers, as he puts it.
He also met with two other preachers, Gambold and Robson, and agreed to meet quarterly and send each other a monthly account “of what God had done ‘in each of our stations’”13 Wesley did not include this detail in his Journal, but as Henry Rack points at, the meeting “looks like the embryo of the Conference that would begin in 1744.14
December brings some intellectual challenges from a few different directions. There is Molther and the quietist influence at Fetter Lane, but there is also a man of learning who was a hedonist in a manner Wesley didn’t expect, as well as an account of justification that claims to believe in being saved by faith in Christ alone, butalso that justification is twofold. The first in this life and the second at the last day. And that “we are not justified by subjective faith alone, that is, by the faith which is in us, but good works.”15
John writes:
In flat opposition to this I cannot but maintain…(1) that the justification which is spoken of by St. Paul to the Romans, and in our Articles, is not twofold. It is one and no more…(2) It is true that the merits of Christ are the ‘sole cause’ of this our justification. But it is not true that this all which St. Paul and our Church mean by our being justified ‘by faith only’…But (3) by our being justified by faith only both St. Paul and the Church mean that the condition of our justification is faith alone, and not good works…Lastly, that faith which is the sole condition of justification is the faith which is in us by the grace of God.16
John refuses to be lumped in with people who believe we are saved by both faith and works. Justification by faith alone in Jesus Christ remains a central doctrine, perhaps the central doctrine of his ministry.
And so in the Fall of 1739, John reasserted his connection to the early church, his connection with his family, his connection with the true faith of the Church of England, the first draftings of the General Rules, and he began the early steps of holy conferencing. The Foundery Chapel is being remodeled, but he doesn’t mention going there.
On January 1, 1740, instead of a revival breaking out, John preaches on stillness and the verse from the psalms: Be still and know that I am God.
The next year, though, will not be still. The conflict at Fetter Lane will come to an ignominious conclusion and tensions with Whitefield will increase, but that new name of Methodism will spread in new ways John or Charles could not expect. Next time on the History of Methodism.
- Her son, Hall, was the Rev. Westley Hall, who had married John’s younger sister, Martha. ↩︎
- WW 19:93. ↩︎
- WW 19:94. ↩︎
- WW 19:95. ↩︎
- Thompson, 2013. ↩︎
- WW 19:97. ↩︎
- WW 19:100. ↩︎
- WW 19:106. ↩︎
- WW 19:108. ↩︎
- WW 19:109. Cf. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 3.2.194. ↩︎
- WW 25:692. ↩︎
- WW 25:693. ↩︎
- Rack, 211. ↩︎
- Rack, 211. ↩︎
- WW 19:128. ↩︎
- WW 19:128. ↩︎