V

QUEEN CAROLINE

71

worldlings like Horace Walpole and Lord Hervey, our main informants, must be regarded with the gravest suspicion. As a matter of fact, the Church is indebted to Caroline for some of the very best bishops of the time, men who would have been an honour to the Bench in any age. It was through her recommendation that Joseph Butler, Thomas Secker, Thomas Sherlock, John Potter, and George Berkeley were made bishops; and it was not her fault that the apostolic Thomas Wilson was not translated from his island-see to a wider and more important sphere in England, but simply because the good man was wedded to the bishopric which he adored, and refused "to leave his wife in his old age because she was poor."

The death of the Queen in 1737 prevented her from seeing the fruit of her labours, but the admirable Bishop of Gloucester, Martin Benson, who did not even owe his elevation to her, said no more than the truth when he wrote to the no less admirable Bishop Berkeley: "The Queen's death is a severe blow. Those who would not be persuaded while she lived how sincere a friend she was to our Church and Constitution, have since her death been fully persuaded of it." The death of this remarkable woman brings us pretty nearly to the end of our period. She died November 20, 1737, and the spring of 1738 introduces us to a new period in our history.

AUTHORITIES. -Canon Overton's The Non-Jurors, their Lives, Principles, and Writings (1902) supplements but does not supersede the earlier work of Lathbury. The Life of Atterbury has yet to be written. See, however, the article in the Dictionary of National Biography, and an excellent account of him by Canon H. C. Beeching in Cornhill, August 1905. William Law's works are readily consulted in the modern nine-volume edition of Moreton. See also Christopher Walton's (unpublished) Notes and Materials for a Biography of William Law. It is very occasionally to be procured second-hand at a rather high price. Each copy contains manuscript emendations and additions from the hand of the author. There is a unique collection (made by Walton) of works relating to William Law in Dr. Williams's Library. John Wesley's Journal (of which a new and more complete edition is promised) is the authority on himself and his work. Tyerman's Life (published in 1870) is full and accurate. Julia Wedgwood's John Wesley (also published in 1870) has more insight than Tyerman and ought to be reprinted. Tyerman's The Oxford Methodists gives a full account of the other members of the Oxford Society. The Somers Tracts, vol. xiii., are valuable as showing the political feeling during this period, as are also Lord Hervey's Memoirs of the Reign of George II. for Queen Caroline and her influence.

SECOND PERIOD, 1738-1760

CHAPTER VI

THE EARLY PHASES OF THE WESLEYAN MOVEMENT

Intellectual

WHEN the year 1738 set in it was assuredly high time that the emotional (as distinguished from the intellectual) element in Christianity should have its due prominence and spiritual given to it, that the appeal should be made to the forces. heart as well as to the head. The assailants of Christianity from all quarters had effectually been disposed of by the work of its champions, culminating in the masterpiece of Bishop Butler, and it should never be forgotten that without that work what followed could never have happened. There has been far too great a tendency to look down as from an eminence upon the Apologists or evidence-writers, to treat them as mere scavengers who, at best, only cleared away the rubbish before the great work of erecting the spiritual fabric began. It is the old story of the swinging back of the pendulum. The intellectual aids having perhaps been rated too high, began to be rated too low, and it is not until we come to the closing years of the century that we find Christian apologetics of anything like the same value as those we noticed in a former chapter.

Meanwhile, however, the Apologists had done their work, and another kind of work was urgently needed. Το use the striking and apposite simile of a modern writer,1

1 Bishop Fitzgerald on The Study of the Evidences of Christianity in “ Aids to Faith," p. 43.

CHAP. VI

EARLY METHODISM

73

the state of the Church was like that of a prince who employs all his time and strength and resources in raising fortresses about a territory which he does not carefully govern; or like a landlord who lives but to accumulate muniments of an estate which he neglects to till. Christianity on its speculative side had been proved up to the hilt. Christianity on its practical side was becoming less and less a motive force for life and action. This anomalous state

could not long continue. Given that Christianity is proved, it must exercise a practical influence. The change was bound to come, and the turn of the tide may fairly be dated from the year 1738; for though many qualifications, exceptions, and explanations may be needed, still, broadly speaking, John Wesley must surely be regarded as the prime mover of the Evangelical revival, and it was not till 1738 that John Wesley's life-work really began.

t

First

Methodism.

Before touching upon the career of this remarkable man, two cautions must be given :-1. If any one expects that from the beginning of the Evangelical revival in its earlier form of Methodism, an improvement in the state of the Church will be perceptible, he will be disappointed. result of It is quite the reverse. The immediate effects of Methodism upon the Church were rather to make churchmen set their faces all the more against the religion of feeling than to attract them to it; and though it is difficult to generalise on such a subject, the state of religion in the Church does not appear to have been any better at the end of our second period than it was at the beginning. 2. When John Wesley is placed at the head of those who directed men's thoughts from the intellectual to the emotional side of Christianity, it is not meant that he made light of intellect. He was far too sensible to do John Wesley that. He was a highly trained man, and kept himself well abreast of all the intellectual movements of the day. But, like all those who sympathised with the Evangelical revival, he held that it required another faculty than reason to apprehend religious truth. "Go on, gentlemen," he said to the Deists, in writing to Dr. Middleton, "and prosper. Shame these nominal Christians out of that poor superstition which they call Christianity. Reason, rally, laugh them out

and learning.

of their dead empty forms, void of spirit, of faith and love. Press on, push your victories, till you have conquered all that know not God. And then He, Whom neither they nor you know now, shall rise and gird Himself with strength, and go forth in His almighty love, and sweetly conquer you altogether."

The

The Society of which John Wesley was the founder hardly comes within our scope. The oft-told tale of his wonderful life and of the equally wonderful organisation he Wesleyan established, which has now attained to such gigantic Society. proportions, penetrating into all parts of the world, need not here be repeated. It is told in a hundred books, which are, of course, in substantial agreement as to the main facts, though they differ widely as to the inferences to be drawn from those facts. Moreover, it is impossible. not to come to the conclusion that from the very first the Wesleyan movement, so far as it concerned organisation, never was and never could have been a Church movement. It is, of course, true that both John and Charles Wesley were themselves churchmen, and never for one moment desired any separation from the Church; nay, that they both ardently and even passionately deprecated any such separation. It is also true that almost all the chief leaders were clergymen of the Church of England. George Whitefield, John Fletcher, Thomas Coke, the two Wesleys, Vincent Perronet, Vicar of Shoreham (1693-1785)—take away these, and what becomes of early Methodism? It is a body without a head. It is also true that the United Societies were intended by John Wesley to be handmaids, not rivals, helps and not hindrances, in fact continuations of the religious societies with which he had been familiar from his youth, and which were really what his own Societies are supposed to have been. It has frequently been asserted indeed, though never satisfactorily proved, that John Wesley himself so regarded them. Precautions were taken to keep these religious Methodism societies within Church lines, which were wholly religious absent in Wesley's rules. Thus the rules of Anthony Horneck of the Savoy Chapel provided that the Church prayers were to be read; a psalm might be sung; religious discourse was optional, controversy was strictly forbidden; the subject for discussion was to be practical,

and the

societies.

VI SEPARATIST TENDENCY OF WESLEYANISM 75

Each member

and was to be chosen by the clergyman. paid 6d. to the alms-box at every weekly meeting, and on Whit-Tuesday the money was distributed among the poor. The rules of life commended to all members called upon them to love one another, to speak evil of no man, to wrong no man, to pray, if possible, seven times a day, to keep close to the Church of England. They were called upon to communicate regularly. In Paterson's account of the London churches, also, mention is made of regular weekly services, of services in preparation for Holy Communion, and of weekly or monthly lectures, kept up in each case by a religious society.

Separatist

It is true that Wesley's commanding influence not only prevented any formal separation from the Church during his lifetime, but also secured the punctual attendance, at least for some time, at the public worship in the parish churches "of all" (to use his own expression) "who regarded his opinion"; that is, in other words, of all Methodists, for with them his word was law. But all this seems beside the mark. The real question is, What was the tendency of the movement from the very beginning? Where did the followers of Wesley find their religion? Where was the true motive power? Surely not in the Church system, but in their own separate organisations. It is fully admitted that they were tendency. often repelled where they should have been welcomed, and that John Wesley especially was misunderstood both as to his motives and as to his measures. But is it possible that almost everybody, outside the select circle, which was at first a very small one, should have been utterly mistaken as to the meaning of it all? It is purely a modern notion that the Wesleyan movement ever was, or ever was intended to be, except by Wesley, a Church movement. Contemporary writers of all classes seem to be agreed on this point-the excellent Walker of Truro, an Evangelical before Evangelicalism, and John Berridge, the eccentric Vicar of Everton, in Bedfordshire, whose church was the scene of many of Wesley's labours, not less than Butler and Sherlock and Warburton and Lavington. The testimony of such men as Walker and Berridge, who were assuredly not prejudiced against what may be called emotionalism, is