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The People Called Methodists 3. Polity

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The People Called Methodists 3. Polity SEVEN THE PEOPLE CALLED METHODISTS 3. POLITY FRANK BAKER Duke University, North Carolina, U.S.A. SEVEN THE PEOPLE CALLED METHODISTS 3. POLITY ON Wednesday, October 17, 1787, after rising as usual at 4 a.m. for an hour's Bible-reading, meditation and prayer, and then conducting public worship in the Methodist preaching-house at Witney, an apparently frail old man of eighty-four put the finishing touches to a sermon on which he had been engaged throughout the few days of his 'little tour in Oxford­ shire'. John Wesley was summarizing for the last time the story of the rise and growth of Methodism. The sermon was entitled 'God's Vineyard'. He described how 'two young clergymen, not very remarkable anyway, of middle age, having a tolerable measure of health, though rather weak than strong, began, about fifty years ago, to call sinners to repentance'. Driven from the parish churches into the open air both by official opposition and the multitude of their hearers, they were led to recruit lay assistants for their rapidly increasing work. Wesley began a fresh paragraph to enforce an essential point: It may be observed, that these clergymen, all this time, had no plan at all. They only went hither and thither, wherever they had a prospect of saving souls from death. But when more and more asked, 'What must I do to be saved?' they were desired to meet all together. Twelve came the first Thursday night; forty the next; soon after, a hundred. And they continued to increase till, three or four and twenty years ago, the London Society amounted to about 2,800_' l These sentences contain the key to the organization of the Methodist Societies. These Societies were brought into being, not according to any predetermined plan, but as expedients forced upon a man ready to utilize almost any methods to accomplish what he regarded as a divine mission. The accumulating complexities of Methodist organization arose in the same way. There was no master plan to form a new sect, only the urgent demand to meet another aspect of spiritual need, even though this fre­ quently involved the solution of another ecclesiastical problem. Each situation was approached with a prayerful heart and an open mind, un­ swayed by prejudice, by an undue regard for precedents, or by any in­ flexible convictions about the pattern of Methodist polity. The eventual 1. Works (1829), VII.206-7. See also Sermons, VIII. (1788), pp. 258- 62, and Arm. Mag. 1789, pp. 6ff, 62ff, where it is dated Witney, October 17, 1787; cf. Journal, VII.334. 213 214 HISTORY OF THE METHODIST CHURCH IN GREAT BRITAIN expedient might be derived from ecclesiastical practice ancient or modern, from church or sect; it might equally well come from the committee-room or the law court, from Parliament or prayer meeting. It might be the result of 'pure chance'. Wesley was not concerned about the source, so long as the projected method of furthering the purpose of God in Methodism met his own peculiar brand of churchmanship-and worked. Only an overpowering urge could thus drive into imaginative, bold and controversial experiment a man who by nature was conservative, reticent, studious, meditative and deliberate-apparently much more fitted for the cloister or the quadrangle than the market-place. This driving spiritual motive was two-sided-the longing for a personal religion, both in himself and in others, and the speedy realization that this could only be preserved, and with many people might only be secured, through a living Christian fellowship. Around this spiritual urge many doctrinal, moral, social and cultural concepts rapidly clustered. Methodism of this character really began with the Holy Club at Oxford in 1729, as Wesley himself constantly avowed. But its momentum was furnished by the dynamic religious experience which came to the two Wes­ ley brothers in May 1738, for each of them a climactic episode in a long spiritual search. And both men realized that they must endeavour to share this experience. They now possessed-or were possessed by-a spiritual impetus that was not to be halted by the lifted eyebrow or the raised fist, by episcopal displeasure, magisterial threats or mob frenzy. In all this, as in the Holy Club itself, initiative and enthusiasm might be furnished by Charles Wesley, but the execution was in the hands of his elder brother. Usually Charles not only acquiesced in John's leadership but actively sought it. In the few (though important) matters whereon their views differed radically, Charles would not normally enter into open conflict with John, but having registered a protest would refuse to impede where he could not conscientiously assist. It is therefore with John Wesley that we are particularly concerned. The only checks which might restrain John Wesley from a course to which he believed himself driven by spiritual necessity, and against which the prudential reasoning of his brother and other trusted helpers proved unavailing, were provided by the teaching of the Bible and the practice of the Church, particularly the Church of the Apostles and of the first three Christian centuries. Unfortunately the most perfect Church of which he had personal experience, the Church of England, did not measure up to the Church of the New Testament and the ante-Nicene Fathers. From both sources, however, he was confirmed in his belief that the outward patterns of ecclesiastical organization mattered far less than spiritual efficacy. He found in the Bible what he regarded as the chief axiom of the Pr~test~nt Reformation, 'the grand principle of every man's right to private Judgement', but he did not find the sins of heresy and schism, which THE PEOPLE CALLED METHODISTS: 3. POLITY 215 'were invented merely to deprive mankind of the benefit of private judge­ ments, and a liberty of conscience' .2 Wesley therefore felt free to indulge in ecclesiastical experiments whenever driven thereto by his spiritual urge. All his twelve reasons against the separation of Methodism from the Church of England were prudential, merely showing that to separate was not expedient. Only Charles Wesley's endorsement claimed that it was 'neither expedient nor lawful'.3 Yet John Wesley would flout established Anglican authority only under extreme spiritual pressure, when no outlet offered through ortho­ dox channels. The seeds of the Methodist Church, however, were present in that initial spiritual urge, finding fruitful soil in the consecrated catholi­ city of an organizing genius who would draw upon the resources of all men, but would call no man master. From the days of the Holy Club at Oxford, Wesley was convinced of the need for Christians to assemble together, not only for public wor­ ship, but for more intimate spiritual conversation. One of the text-books of the Holy Club was The Country Parson's Advice to his Parishioners, first published in 1680, wherein Wesley approvingly read: If good men of the Church will unite together in the several parts of the kingdom, disposing themselves into friendly societies, and engaging each other, in their respective combinations, to be helpful to each other in all good Christian ways, it will be the most effectual means for restoring our decaying Christianity to its primitive life and vigour, and the supporting of our tottering and sinking Church. In a letter to the London Magazine for December 1760, Wesley adduced this advice as the origin not only of the Oxford Methodists but of the Methodist Societies in general. Here we see the primary source not only of Wesley's most important method, the 'society', but of its motive, to restore to the Church its 'primitive life and vigour'.4 The anonymous 'country parson' wrote from a knowledge of the Religious Societies recently founded in London, Westminster and else­ where under the influence of Dr Anthony Horneck. These Societies, best known to us through Dr Josiah Woodward's Account of them (1698), were intended solely for spiritually-minded churchmen, though they did succeed in winning some Dissenters back to the Anglican fold. From the Religious Societies sprang in turn the Societies for the Reformation of Manners (circa 1691), the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (1698) and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (1701). John Wesley was born with religious societies in his blood. In 1700 his father had published an enthusiastic plea for their more widespread adop- 2. Works V.496; VIII.30; MS. Min. 1744, p. 12; 1747, pp. 39-40, 46-47; Letters 11.77-78, 96; Notes 011 N.T., I Cor. xi. 18. 3. MS. Min. 1744, pp. 12, 13; 1747, p. 47; Works, VII.208; XIII.225- 32. 4. Letters, IV.119. 216 HISTORY OF THE METHODIST C H U R CH I N GREA T BRITAIN tion, and had himself founded one at Epworth in February 1701/2.5 Ten years later, during the rector's absence at Convocation, Mrs Wesley entered this field . She threw open her family prayers first to a trickle, and then to a torrent, of eager parishioners, until two hundred of them were regularly worshipping in the rectory kitchen. Even though this was not a religious society in quite the sense that Dr Woodward or Samuel Wesley would have used the term, Susanna Wesley did sometimes speak of this Sunday evening gathering as 'our society'. These occasions may have enforced in John Wesley's mind the principle that God might well summon sincere Christians to fellowship and worship outside the walls of the parish church and under the leadership of laymen or even women. 6 By this time the religious societies themselves were forsaking their original pattern of assemblies for ordered worship conducted by the parish priest.
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