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John Wesley and the , 1736-40

W.M. JACOB

Throughout his long life regularly protested his loyalty to the Church of England. Although he was frequently critical of parish clergy from whose parishes and congregations he recruited the members of his considerable ‘connexion’ of societies, he claimed that he was a loyal son of the Church, working merely to revive and reform it.The , forty and more years after his ‘conversion’ are usually seen as the years when the de facto separation of the Methodist societies from the established Church began to take effect. It was then that John Wesley formalized his ‘connexion’, that there were increasing instances of societies meeting for worship during the hours of church services, and that Wesley, as a mere of the Church of England took unilateral action in laying hands on Thomas Coke to set him apart to superintend the societies in North America.This essay suggests that, despite John Wesley’s upbringing in the context of a rigorous reforming high-church household and parish, and of his own exercise of the strictest of high-church ministries in Savannah, immediately after his ‘conversion’ in 1738, he began to sit light to the historic discipline of the Church, and established his own practices, ‘gathering a church out of the Church’. Both Wesley’s grandfathers were distinguished , but his father, Samuel, conformed to the established Church. Evidence of Samuel’s activities at Epworth identifies him with the reforms that archbishops Sancroft,Tillotson and Tenison regarded as necessary to complete the English Reformation to win the hearts and minds of parishioners, and to change their lives. Samuel Wesley, like many contemporary clergy, was keen to establish a discipline and order in the Church of England modelled on their knowledge of the ‘Antient Church’. He was an enthusiastic correspondent of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge [SPCK] which, from its foundation in 1698, acted as an agency for disseminating ideas and materials for promoting more effective parochial ministry. Samuel Wesley was particularly keen on opportunities 57 07 Jacob 11/8/05 9:22 am Page 58

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afforded by ‘religious societies’. He compared these with Tertullian’s description of ‘the first Christians’ who often met together ‘ad conferandum Disciplinum; and to pray, and to sing Hymns to Christ as God’. He envisaged religious societies filling gaps left by the ‘Destruction of Monasteries’ suggesting, ‘a great part of the good Effects of that way of Life may be attained without many of the Inconveniencies of it, by such Societies as we are now discoursing of, which may be erected in the most populous Towns and Cities, without depriving the Commonwealth of the Service and Support of so many useful Members’. He envisaged members of religious societies assisting parish , especially in populous parishes,

almost Deacons under him, caring for the Sick and Poor, giving him an account of the Spiritual Estate of themselves and others; Persuading Parents and Sureties to Catechise their Children and fitting them for Confirmation, discoursing with those who have already left the Church, to bring them back to it, or who are tempted to leave it, in order to preserve them in it …. This assistance would in all probability conduce as much to the health of the Minister’s Body by easing him of many a weary step and fruitless Journey as to the great satisfaction of his Mind, in the visible Success of his Labours.

Public worship, he noted, did not allow for ‘Christian Conversation’ or ‘Pure Discourse’ which was ‘as necessary as it is a delightful Employment to all good Christians, and yet what more generally and shamefully neglected …’. He noted that ‘The design of these Societies … is by no means to gather Churches out of Churches, to foment new Schisms and Divisions …’, although ‘there may and will be some Persons in these Societies of more Heat than Light, more Zeal and Warmth, than Judgement and Discretion, but where was ever such Body of Men without some of such character …’.1 The reality in Epworth, as he reported to the SPCK, was less satisfactory. Following the example of Josiah Woodward’s An account of the rise and progress of the religious societies in the city of London,2 Samuel Wesley ‘resolv’d to draw out some of the most sensible and well dispos’d persons among my singers, in order to the founding of such a society’.There were about twenty members.

They are most of ‘em remarkably altered since we began; they forebear publick Houses, unless their Necessary occasions calls ‘em thither, are much more careful of their Life and Conversation, Communicate Monthly with great Devotion, and appear very zealous for the glory of God and the welfare of their own and other souls …

1 Samuel Wesley, ‘A letter concerning the religious societies’, Appendix to Samuel Wesley, The pious communicant rightly prepar’d: or a discourse concerning the blessed sacrament (London, 1700), no pagination. 2 First published in 1699, and in its fifth edition in 1724.