DOCSLIB.ORG

Jabez Bunting

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Jabez Bunting 8 EARLY CORRESPONDENCE OF JABEZ BUNTING In 1826 the Leeds circuit was divided, and there was great ill-feeling over the division of the Sunday school, which was not in origin a circuit or even a Methodist institution, and from the radical leaders of which serious trouble was expected. The explosion in fact came over the proposal to install an organ in the Brunswick chapel which was new, fashionable, and reputed the largest in the connexion. The law was clear that the organ might be introduced only with Conference consent after an investigation and approval by a District Meeting, and clear on almost nothing else. The Brunswick Trustees applied for the organ by a majority of 8 votes to 6 with one neutral; the Leaders' Meeting, viewing the organ as a middle-class status symbol, and thoroughly irritated by the new arrangements in the circuit and by the itinerants' refusal to entertain any representations from the local preachers, opposed it by a majority of more than twenty to one, and were upheld by the District Meeting. Bunting nevertheless persuaded a Conference committee largely composed of the same preachers who had met in the District Meeting to reverse their ver- dict. When serious opposition developed in Leeds, Conference sovereignty was demonstrated by the summoning of a Special District Meeting (attended by Bunting as President's special adviser) to settle the affairs of the circuit. This court expelled members in large numbers without trial before a Leaders' Meeting from which palatable verdicts could not have been obtained. This exercise of central authority and personal influence turned the radicals into inveterate defenders of circuit rights, led in 1828 to the formation of a secession connexion, the Leeds Protestant Methodists, and estab- lished their view of Bunting as the Methodist Pope. What kind of a man was he in fact ? (3) JABEZ BUNTING Jabez Bunting was born at Manchester, May 13,1779; and through the tender mercy of God his Saviour, born again at the same place in the year 1794. In 1799 he felt it his duty to quit the study of medicine, in which for four years he had been engaged, under the truly paternal direction of Dr. Thomas Percival; and to devote himself to the Christian Ministry among the Wesleyan Methodists, in serving whom, 'for Jesus's sake', he has now spent twentynine busy and laborious, but happy years. O may I every mourner cheer, And trouble every heart of stone; Save, under God, the souls that hear, Nor lose, in seeking them, my own; Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 01 Oct 2021 at 02:09:02, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068690500005018 EARLY CORRESPONDENCE OF JABEZ BUNTING 9 Nor basely from my calling fly, But for thy gospel live and die.1 THIS autograph, composed by Bunting in 1828 as he entered upon the Presidency of the Wesleyan Conference for the second time, neatly poses the two-fold biographical problem presented by his career. The Bunting of Methodist historiography was an indispens- able adjunct to the high Wesleyan doctrine of the Pastoral Office, and was invested with an appropriate aura of legend by both the champions and the opponents of that doctrine. The difficulty of penetrating to the man behind the legends—the legend of the child blessed by John Wesley himself, the young man who could not take home his bride without their being 'privileged to have Mr. Wesley's own bed for their use',2 or on the other hand the Methodist Pope and ruthless practitioner of caucus politics—is doubled by Bunting's own willingness to sink himself in[his office; not merely never basely to fly from his calling, but to regard a career principally devoted to admin- istration and public affairs as one which was in authority pastoral, given over to saving 'under God, the souls that hear'. 'I feel that I am public property,' he confessed in 1824 ;3 and the evidence of a huge correspondence confirms that by then the personality of Jabez Bunting had been completely encapsulated by the public persona of the ecclesiastical statesman, and made only one brief reappearance, upon the death of his first wife in 1835. The evidence, both of silence and of solid fact, of Bunting's early career suggests that in origin he was something different from what he speedily became. The late Dr. Scott Lidgett is said to have claimed his own place in the Wesleyan succession by affirming that as a child he had been blessed by the great Dr. Bunting, as the young Jabez had been blessed by John Wesley. In his autograph, however, it is noteworthy that Bunting makes no such claim for himself, con- venient as it would have been on the morrow of the Leeds secessions, and, in the sermon he preached for Bunting's funeral, Thomas Jackson was quite silent about the matter. Bunting's mother, a country girl from Monyash in the Peak of Derbyshire, admirably 1 Mfethodist] C[hurch] Archives] MS. Autograph by Jabez Bunting, August 30, 1828. 2 Life of Bunting, i, p. 21; M.C.A. MS. notes of the life of Jabez Bunting, July 18, 1877. In fact the newly married pair were given hospitality in the homes of substantial laymen for some months, being allotted only the room at City Road normally taken by the junior preacher and 'the use of the large drawing room ... on the second floor'. M.C.A. MSS. Jabez Bunting to George Marsden, April 21, 1804. 3 No. 58, infra. B Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 01 Oct 2021 at 02:09:02, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068690500005018 10 EARLY CORRESPONDENCE OF JABEZ BUNTING fitted the pattern of Wesleyan piety, and is said to have been converted by a sermon from a Methodist itinerant on his way to America, on the text 'And Jabez was more honourable than his brethren; and his mother called his name Jabez' (1 Chron. iv. 9). But his father was a different matter, and more than Jabez's son and biographer, Percy Bunting, could account for. William Bunting was a radical Manchester tailor who sent his son to not one but two Unitarian preachers for his education, and finally apprenticed him to Thomas Percival, a leading Unitarian doctor in the town; moreover Percival's great kindness (not only to Jabez, but to other Methodist preachers and their families)1 which Bunting commemorated in his autograph and in the baptismal names of his third son, did not fit the established polemic of the high Wesleyan case. It could only be suggested that 'the lapse from orthodoxy of many of the Presby- terians in England was, at that time, neither so great nor so well understood as it afterwards became', an unlikely story in Manchester in the 1790s, and that Dr. Percival was in a measure redeemed by 'very moderate' opinions in secular and ecclesiastical politics, and and by the fact that almost all his descendants returned to the communion of the Established Church.2 Still worse, one period of Methodist education which Jabez gave his own son and namesake was too embarrassing to bear mention, for it took place in the Leeds academy of James Sigston, the notorious radical and revivalist, the constitution-maker to the Leeds Protestant Methodists, whom Bunting drove from the connexion in the great clash of 1827.3 To the outward eye the young Bunting was himself a revivalist. His first public ministry was exercised in the Manchester cottage prayer-meetings, the spear-head of revival. He first preached in the streets in the doorway of an enthusiastic mechanic who thrust his hand into the fire to prove his ability to burn for Christ; the recollec- tion of his sponsor was so embarrassing to the mature Bunting that he related how he had been ultimately hanged for murder, making a false profession of innocence on the scaffold. Jabez's trial sermon as a local preacher was preached in the Manchester Band Room, a centre of revivalism, maintained by Broadhurst, the celebrated draper, whose following Bunting was to help turn out of the connexion in 1806. 1 M.C.A. MSS. Joseph Entwisle to Jabez Bunting, February 29, 1804. After Dr. Percival's death Jabez Bunting arranged his papers. M.C.A. MSS. Jabez Bunting to [Rd. Reece] November 28, 1804. 2 Life of Bunting, i, pp. 11, 25, 51. 3 It was clearly affirmed in Bunting's life-time by William L. Thornton, preacher and classical tutor at Didsbury College, who later edited Bunting's sermons, that he and young Bunting had been pupils at Sigston's academy at the same time. M.C.A. MSS. W. L. Thornton to Dr. Melson, June 20, 1845. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 01 Oct 2021 at 02:09:02, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068690500005018 EARLY CORRESPONDENCE OF JABEZ BUNTING 11 Bunting's own former minister, John Barber, wrote him a word of encouragement as he entered the ministry, which in retrospect could hardly have been more ironical: I am fully convinced that what our friends at Manchester call the spirit of the revival is the spirit in which we shall all live, if we wish to be useful.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 231 BOOK REVIEWS John Pritchard
    Methodist History, 52:4 (July 2014) BOOK REVIEWS John Pritchard, Methodists and Their Mission Societies, 1760-1900. Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2013. 318 pp. £63. Methodists and Their Mission Societies, 1760-1900, is the first part of a two-volume series by John Pritchard about British Methodist mission work around the world. The publication of this series marks the two hundredth anniversary of the first meeting of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (WMMS) in October of 1883 in Leeds. Moreover the book updates the 1913 five volume work by G.G. Findlay and W.W. Holdsworth entitled The History of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (Epworth). The focus of this work is further broadened and includes the mission work of four other denominations (Primitive Methodists, Methodist New Connexion, United Methodist Free Churches and Bible Christians) under the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society to become the Methodist Mission Society in 1932. Pritchard records in great detail the early Methodist mission efforts around the world including the roles of John Wesley, Thomas Coke, Jabez Bunting and other mission proponents. Beginning with the backdrop of six- teenth-century Catholic and late seventeenth-century to early eighteenth-cen- tury German Pietist mission work, the book quickly focuses on the British context. The author describes the priority of the Society for the Promotion of the Gospel (SPG) to provide for the spiritual needs of the colonists before evangelizing native peoples. William Caray’s 1792 Enquiry, which led to the creation of the Baptist Missionary Society, and Thomas Coke’s apoca- lyptic urgency heightened this priority, however the tension between empire and mission to the indigenous remained for several decades—varying from country to country.
    [Show full text]
  • Jabez Bunting
    JA BEZ B U N T I N G A GREAT METHO DIST LEA DER I D . REV. MES H RR N R G D O G . JA A IS , T HE M D ETHO IST BOO' CON C ERN . N EW 'OR ' C I CI AT I N NN . P R E 'A C E N o o ne can feel more deeply than the writer how inadequate is the little book he h a s i written , when crit cally regarded as a life - sketch of the greatest man o f middle Methodism , to whose gifts and character organized Wesleyan Methodism throughout the world owes incomparably more than to any other man , With more Space a better book might and ought to have been made . But to bring the book within reach of every intelligent and earnest Methodist youth and ’ o f every working man s family , a very cheap volume was necessary , and therefore a very small one . The writer has done his best, w accordingly , to meet the vie s of the Metho dist Publishing House in this matter . He knows how great and serious are some o f the deficiencies in this record ; especially 6 Pre fa ce o n i the side of Methodist Fore gn Missions , hi as to w ch he has said nothing , though Jabez Bunting in this field was the prime and most influential organizer in all the early ’ years of o u r Church s Connexional mission work and world -wide enterprises The subject was too large and wide , too various and too complicated , to be dealt with in a section of a small book .
    [Show full text]
  • Biblical Equality and the Spirituality of Early Methodist Women Paul W
    Biblical Equality and the Spirituality of Early Methodist Women Paul W. Chilcote The essential role of women in early Methodism An excerpt from the journal of Grace Murray reveals an ex- tensive ministry: O, blessed fountain of love! Fill my heart more with [Thy] Divine Mr. Wesley fixed me in that part of the work, which he thought principle. Sink me lower in the depths of humility, and let me sit proper; and when the House was finished, I was appointed to at the feet of Jesus, and learn of Him. Enlarge my soul, that I may be the Housekeeper. Soon also, the people were again divided better contemplate Thy glory. And may I prove myself Thy child, into Bands, or small select Societies; women by themselves, by bearing a resemblance to Thee, my heavenly Father!1 and the men in like manner. I had full a hundred in Classes, This prayer of Mary Hanson expresses the power and beauty of whom I met in two separate meetings; and a Band for each Christian spirituality among early Methodist women. Like Mary, day of the week. I likewise visited the Sick and Backsliders. most of these women remain unknown, not only to the larger . We had also several Societies in the country, which I regu- Christian community, but even to contemporary Methodists. larly visited; meeting the women in the daytime, and in the Their legacy is amazing. In an effort to introduce you to this ne- evening the whole society. And oh, what pourings out of the glected treasure and the witness of these women to biblical equal- Spirit have I seen at those times!4 ity, I want to begin where they would most likely begin: in a nar- There is no question that women were preponderant in the rative fashion.
    [Show full text]
  • Copyright Holiness Data Ministry -- All Rights Are Reserved for This Digital Publication, and Duplication of This DVD by Any Means Is Forbidden
    Copyright Holiness Data Ministry -- All Rights Are Reserved For This Digital Publication, And Duplication Of This DVD By Any Means Is Forbidden. Also, Copies Of Individual Files Must Be Made In Accordance With The Restrictions Of The B4UCopy.txt File On This Disc. AMERICAN METHODISM By M. L. Scudder With An Introduction By Rev. Joseph Cummings, President Of Wesleyan University Illustrated "Ye are chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people." S. S. Scranton & Co., Hartford, Connecticut Zeigler, McCurdy & Co., Cincinnati, Ohio; O. F. Gibbs, Chicago, Illinois; H. H. Bancroft & Co., San Francisco, California. 1867 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by S. S. Scranton & Co., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Connecticut. * * * * * * * Digital Edition 07-26-09 By Holiness Data Ministry * * * * * * * CONTENTS Introduction Book Pictures 01 -- PRESENT STATE OF METHODISM -- Methodism Claims To Be Of God -- The Phenomena Of Its History -- Its Present Status -- Its Rapid Growth, Compared With The Primitive Church -- Statistical Proof Of Greatness -- English Methodism -- Its Numerical Strength -- A Religious Educator Of The Young -- Its Literature Among The People -- Its Missionary Work -- Beneficial Re-Action On The Domestic Church - - Its Moral Power On The Masses -- Maintains Its Evangelical Spirit -- American Methodism -- A Wonderful Religious Movement -- What The Centenary Year Has Shown, By Its Services, By Its Teachings, By Its Commemorative Offerings -- General Diffusion
    [Show full text]
  • Wesleyan Worship and the Means of Grace
    WESLEYAN WORSHIP AND THE MEANS OF GRACE Robert W. Gribben The first of three keynote addresses given at the 7th Australasian Centre for Wesleyan Research Conference, Brisbane 12-13 August 2016 This article explores the question, ‘What is Wesleyan worship?’ by investigating John Wesley’s use of the means of grace and of hymn singing. The role of hymns as a valuable mode of teaching doctrine is highlighted. The liturgical minimalism of nineteenth-century Methodism and the impact of revivalism are identified as contributing causes of the loss of Wesley’s worship practices among Methodists. ____________________________________________________ Introduction I had better begin by defining my terms. My title was not ‘Methodist worship’, though these lectures will be very brief if Methodism is not included! I do, however, want to keep Mr Wesley - as his disciples still call John - as my plumbline. As I was preparing for this weekend, I was also reading - I am embarrassed to say, for the first time - David Hempton’s ground-breaking study, Methodism, Empire of the Spirit.1 It is a breathtaking survey and reframing of the Methodist movement, and perhaps the first which adequately embraces both its British and its American forms. It is also most eloquently written and a joy to read. Hempton breaks the pattern of writing about Wesley and Methodism by those who are devoted to, and defensive of the man and his movement. That, I suspect, is where I still was when I began; I hope I have learned from Hempton. One thing Hempton and others have borne in upon me in recent times, though a glance at the membership of the World Methodist Council would confirm it, is that there is no one single way of being ‘Wesleyan’.
    [Show full text]
  • The Good Time Coming : the Impact of William Booth's Eschatological Vision
    .. ....... .. I. ... ., ... : .. , . j;. ..... .. .... The Copyright law of the United States (title 17, United States Code) governs the making of phwtmwpies or derreproductiwns of mpyrighted material. Under cetZBin conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorid to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. Om of these specific mditions is that the phohmpy or reproduction is not to be “Used fir my purpose other than private study, schdanhip, or research.” If B user make3 a quest far, or later uses, a photompy or repductim for puqmses in ecess of ‘‘fair we9”that user may be liable for mpyright infringement, This institution reserves the right to rehe to accept a copying order if, in its judgmenk fulfitlrnent of the order would involve violation ofcoMght Jaw- By the using this materid, you are couwnting h abide by this copyright policy, Any duplication, reprodndinn, nr modification of this material without express waitken consent from Asbuv Theological Seminary andhr the original publisher is prohibited. Q Asbury TheoIogi@alSeminary 2009 MECUMTAW BINDERY, INC ASBURY SEMINARY 10741 04206 ASBURY THEOLOGICAL, SEMINARY “THE GOOD TZME COMING”: THE IMPACT OF WILLIAM BOOTH’S ESCHATOLOGICAL VISION A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUlREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE, MASTOR OF DIVINITY BY ANDREW S. MILLER I11 WILMORE, KY DECEMBER 1,2005 “THE GOOD TIME COMING”: THE IMPACT OF WILLIAM BOOTH’S ESCHATOLOGICAL VISION Approved by: Date Accepted: Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Date CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................... V INTRODUCTION ...................................... 1 Goals of the Study Review of Literature Chapter : 1. WILLIAM BOOTH’S ESCHATOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE .... 6 Eschatology as the Centerpiece of William Booth’s Theology William Booth as a Postmillennialist William Booth’s Theological History The Making of an Eschatological Army Contemporary Application Conclusion 2.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction Welcome to the Methodist Church Here at High Street
    Introduction Welcome to the Methodist Church here at High Street, Maidenhead. We hope that your visit to this long - established and continuously active church will be both be for you an architectural interest and an appreciation of the lives of some of the people associated with it over the past 150 years or so. There has been a Chapel on this site since 1841 which was built for the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion. Originally it was a rectangular shape measuring approximately 65 ft x 35 ft. A partition across its width allowed about three quarters of the building at its north end to be used for worship whilst the remainder consisted of two rooms one above the other. A gallery at the northern end (above today’s vestibule) also housed the organ. The foundation stone was laid on 30 March 1841. The property and grounds (about one third of an acre) were purchased by the Methodist Church on 8th October 1858 and redeveloped. Consequently the partition and two rooms were removed and the worship extended to south wall. New pews were added, basic heating installed and the gallery repaired. The normal seating capacity was therefore increased to 400 with space to accommodate 550 “at a push” should circumstances require. A Vestry and Schoolroom were built on the southern end of the site. Since then the church interior has had considerable alteration the most significant of which have been the addition, and subsequent removal, of galleries along the side walls and the addition of the two transepts. The last major refurbishment of the interior took place in 1991 when the whole of the church interior was gutted, the pews removed, the ceiling woodwork grit-blasted, the walls re- plastered, galleries rebuilt, organ re-positioned, floor re-carpeted, new lighting installed and more glass incorporated into the main and side entrances.
    [Show full text]
  • Durham E-Theses
    Durham E-Theses Watching Over one another in Love: Methodist Superintendents and Oversight in the Church COCKLING, IAN,NEIL How to cite: COCKLING, IAN,NEIL (2015) Watching Over one another in Love: Methodist Superintendents and Oversight in the Church , Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/11372/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Abstract Ian Neil Cockling Watching Over one another in Love: Methodist Superintendents and Oversight in the Church The thesis tests the claim that superintendent ministers in the Methodist Church of Great Britain exercise an effective ministry of personal oversight which is pivotal in the church’s life, and which makes a distinctive contribution to the Christian understanding of episkopé. The thesis describes empirical, exploratory research into the nature, operant practice and understanding of superintendency which was focused on the Newcastle upon Tyne District of the Methodist Church during 2011-2012.
    [Show full text]
  • The Story of Ann Cutler of Thornley, 1759
    heard anything spoken against Ann Cutler except her manner of approaching the Lord - she prayed with great exertion of voice, and in this she never lost her foes". She was nicknamed "Praying Nanny". In 1790 ohe wrote to John Wesley about her spiritual experiences, and he replied (15th April) that she should be cautious when speaking of this, because there would be people who would misunderstand her. William Bramwell wrote that Ann was at Dewsbury, Greatland, Birstall, the Leeds circuit, Bradford and the Otley circuit. "In appearance she was weak and insignificant ... her daily food consisted of milk and herb tea" [This sounds incredible!] "... she rose at midnight for an hour of prayer, and winter and summer she invariably got up at four o'clock". 1794 was a busy year and on one occasion she and another lady conducted the service at the Preston Methodist chapel, a most unusual event because there was still opposition to women preachers. On December 8th she wrote from Derby to a friend at Leeds "I was above a week in Oldham circuit, above a fortnight at Manchester, above a fortnight in Leek circuit and now I have been a week in Derby circuit. I am going to Maccleafield, they have sent for me". Macclesfield had a thriving silk industry and was in the forefront of the industrial revolution, which is perhaps why it came to have a strong Methodist connection. Mr Charles Roe, local employer and silk magnate was sympathetic and in 1775 he built Christ Church at his own expense via an Act of Parliament, as a private benefice of the Church of England.
    [Show full text]
  • Diversity and Co-Operation
    CHAPTER 2 Diversity and Co-operation Dissent traced its origins back to the seventeenth century. During the Commonwealth Presbyterianism had triumphed. The Church of England had been re-organised on Presbyterian lines: bishops had been abolished; all ministers were treated as equal. In 1662, following the restoration of Charles II to the throne and bishops to the church, those ministers who could not accept the new dispensation were ejected from their posts. Many gathered congregations outside the Church of England; and most were Presbyterians. During the eighteenth century their successors, swayed by the influences of the Age of Reason, gradually abandoned Trinitarian orthodoxy. By the early nineteenth century many of these ‘rational Dissenters’ were prepared to call themselves Unitarians.1 Although their origins were mainly Presbyterian, they differed totally from the Presbyterians of the nineteenth century—essentially Scottish immigrants who brought their orthodox religion to the major cities, together with Northumberland, and who in 1851 possessed 160 places of worship and 0.2% of the population.2 The Unitarians were of comparable strength,SAMPLE with 229 chapels and 0.2%, but were spread rather more evenly over the country. Their city centre causes, such as High Pavement in Nottingham or Mill Hill in Leeds, were dominated by prosperous business and professional families with a powerful civic spirit whose Dissent was usually hereditary. Yet a wide social range was to be found amongst them. In Lancashire a rationalist schism from Methodism had brought over a substantial working-class membership.3 There was a steady 1 R. K. Webb, ‘The Unitarian Background’, in Barbara Smith, ed., Truth, Liberty, Religion: essays celebrating two hundred years of Manchester College (Oxford, 1986).
    [Show full text]
  • William Booth, Catherine Mumford and the Methodist Reformers
    1 WILLIAM BOOTH, CATHERINE MUMFORD AND THE METHODIST REFORMERS By David Malcolm Bennett 2 WILLIAM BOOTH, CATHERINE MUMFORD AND THE METHODIST REFORMERS I The Booths The Methodist reform movement of the 1850s led to many defections from British Wesleyan Methodism in what is sometimes called “The Agitation”.1 Amongst these defectors were William Booth (1829-1912) and Catherine Mumford (Booth – 1829-90), of Salvation Army fame. William Booth had been brought up as a nominal Anglican, but when he was 15 he began to attend the Wesley Methodist Chapel in Nottingham in the north of England. It was through the ministry of this chapel that he was converted not long after. In 1849 he became unemployed, so he moved to London and joined the Wesleyans there. Catherine Mumford was born in Derbyshire not far from where the Booths lived, though the two families were, at that time, unknown to each other. She was brought up a Wesleyan Methodist and for most of her childhood lived in Boston, Lincolnshire. The Mumfords moved to London in 1844, not far from where William Booth was later to live. William and Catherine did not attend the same chapel but were introduced by a Methodist Reformer acquaintance.2 II The Divisions in Methodism It was not long after the death of John Wesley in 1791 that British Methodism began to divide. Because of ministerial dominance, one group broke away as early as 1797 to form the Methodist New Connexion. Another split occurred when Primitive Methodism was founded in 1811. This later became a large body.
    [Show full text]
  • WILLIAM BRAMWELL: the Last of the ANCIENT METHODISTS
    WILLIAM BRAMWELL: THE lAsT OF THE ANCIENT METHODISTS CHARLES GOODWIN On Monday, September 20, 1853, Thomas Collins, who was stationed in Bradford, took his two daughters, "Emmy and Maria to Westgate Hill, to Bramwell's grave. The spot where rest the remains of that man of prayer is truly lovely."' Twenty-two years earlier when he had begun his ministry as a Wesleyan minister at Wark, Northumberland, his father had exhorted him, "Serve Bramwell's God as Bramwell served him, and he will be with thee as he was with him."' No such ven- eration is paid to Bramwell's memory today. John Kent does not see fit to mention him in his essay on "Wesleyan Methodist to 1849" in the second volume of "A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain;" and W.R. Ward describes him, in what Michael Watts calls a "ludicrous understatement,"' as "a Methodist preacher with aspirations to be a revivalist."• This of a man who so revived the work of God in every circuit on which he served that in thirty-three years of active ministry at least 4,850 new members were added to the Wesleyan Methodist connexion.' This modem neglect of Bramwell may be due to his being the last great heir to a type of Methodism which was gradually disowned by the Wesleyan connexion in the five years following the death of John Wesley. A type of Methodism referred to by Wesley as "ancient Methodism." This ancient Methodism, according to John Wesley, was founded upon the principle of itinerant preachers.
    [Show full text]