The Young People's Wesley Part 7

While preaching at Moorfield a mob met him, broke down the table on which he stood, and in various ways abused and insulted him. Nothing daunted, he mounted a stone wall near by and exhorted the people until silence was restored. He often found himself here in the midst of a sea of human pa.s.sion, the crowds frequently numbering from twenty to forty thousand.

At Sheffield h.e.l.l from beneath seemed moved to meet him at his coming.

As he was wont to do, he took his stand out of doors and faced the crowd. In the midst of his sermon a military officer rushed upon him, brandishing a sword, and threatening his life. Wesley faced him, threw open his breast, and bade him do as he liked. The officer cowered.

The preaching house was completely demolished over the heads of the devout worshipers. Wesley says: "It was a glorious time. Many found the Spirit of glory and of G.o.d resting upon them." The next day, nothing daunted, he was in the midst of the town, preaching the great salvation.

The mob a.s.sembled, followed him to his lodgings, smashed in the windows, and threatened to take his life. But while the mob was howling without like beasts of prey Wesley was so little disturbed that he fell into a quiet slumber.

At Wednesbury an organized mob went to nearly all the Methodist families in town, beating and abusing men, women, and children. They spoiled their wearing apparel and cut open their beds and scattered the contents, leaving whole families houseless and homeless in midwinter and under the peltings of a pitiless storm. The people were informed that if they would sign a paper agreeing never to read or sing or pray together, or hear the Methodists preach again, their houses should not be demolished. A few complied, but the greater number answered, "We have already lost our goods, and nothing more can follow but the loss of our lives, which we will lose also rather than wrong our consciences."

A few days after, Wesley rode boldly into Wednesbury, and in a public park in the center of the town proclaimed to an immense crowd "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever." The mob a.s.sembled, arrested him, and dragged him before a magistrate, who inquired, "What have Mr. Wesley and the Methodists done?"

"Why, plaze your worship," cried one, "they sing psalms all day and make folks get up at five o'clock in the morning. Now, what would your worship advise us to do?" "Go home," replied the magistrate, "and be quiet."

Not satisfied with this, they hurried him off to another magistrate. A few friends followed, but were soon beaten back by a Walsall mob, which rushed upon them like wild beasts. All but four of Wesley's friends were vanquished. These stood by him to the last. One of these was a brave woman whose English blood boiled over. She is said to have knocked down four Walsall men one after another, and would have laid them all sprawling at her feet had not four brawny men seized her and held her while a fifth beat her until they were quite ashamed to be seen--five men beating one woman!

The mob tried to throw Wesley down, that they might trample him under their feet. They struck at him with clubs, and must have nearly killed him had they hit him. They cried, "Knock his brains out!" "Drown him!"

"Kill the dog!" "Throw him into the river!" One cried, "Crucify him!

crucify him!"

During all this Wesley was calm. It only came into his mind, he says, that if they should throw him into the river it might spoil the papers in his pocket. He finally escaped out of their hands, and, meeting his brother at Nottingham, Charles says that he "_looked_ like a soldier of Christ. His clothes were torn to tatters." Subsequently the leader of that mob was converted, and being asked by Charles Wesley what he thought of his brother, "I think," said he, "that he was a _mon_ of G.o.d, and G.o.d was with him, when so many of us could not kill one _mon_!"

While preaching at Roughlee a drunken rabble a.s.sembled, led on by a G.o.dless constable. Wesley was arrested and taken before a magistrate. On the way he was struck on the face and head, and clubs were flourished about his person with threats of murder. The justice demanded that he promise not to come to Roughlee again. Wesley answered that he would sooner cut off his head than make such a promise. As he departed from the magistrate the mob followed, cursing him and throwing stones. Wesley was beaten to the earth and forced back into the house. Mr. Mackford, who came with Mr. Wesley from Newcastle, was dragged by the hair of his head, and sustained injuries from which he never fully recovered. Some of the Methodists present were beaten with clubs, others trampled in the mire; one was forced to leap from a rock ten or twelve feet high into the river, and others escaped with their lives under a shower of missiles. The magistrate witnessed all this with apparent satisfaction, without any attempt to stay the murderous tide.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAMUEL WESLEY'S GRAVE, UPON WHICH JOHN PREACHED HIS FAMOUS SERMON.]

At another place a crowd a.s.sembled, arrested a number of Methodists, and dragged them before a magistrate, who inquired, "What have the Methodists done?" "Why, your worship," said one, "these people profess to be better than anybody else. They pray all the time, by day and by night." "Is that all they have done?" asked the magistrate. "No, sir,"

answered an old man, "may it please your worship, they have converted my wife. Till she went with them she had such a tongue! Now she is as quiet as a lamb." "Carry them back, carry them back," said the magistrate, "and let them convert all the scolds in town!" At Bristol the mob cursed and swore and shouted while the preacher declared the Gospel. A Catholic priest in the congregation shouted, "Thou art a hypocrite, a devil, an enemy to the Church."

These are a few examples of what occurred almost daily, and that for many years. At Poole, at Lichfield, at St. Ives, at Grimsby, at Cork, at Wenlock, at Athlone, at Dudley, and at many other places he encountered similar opposition, until the presence of a Methodist preacher was the signal for a mob. Many of the preachers were impressed into the army on the pretense that their occupation was irregular and their lives vagabondish. But wherever they went they were true to G.o.d and to the faith as they felt it in their hearts.

The cause of all this opposition was the preaching of justification by faith, entire sanctification, and the urging of clergy and laity to a holy life. Thomas Olivers tells Richard Hill that the man he had maligned was one who had published a hundred volumes, who had traveled yearly five thousand miles, preached yearly about one thousand sermons, visited as many sick beds as he had preached sermons, and written twice as many letters; and who, though now between seventy and eighty years of age, absolutely refused to abate in the smallest degree these mighty labors; but might be seen at this very time, with his silver locks about his ears, and with a meager, worn-out, skeleton body, smiling at storms and tempests, at such difficulties and dangers as "I believe would be absolutely intolerable to _you_, sir, in conjunction with any _four_ of your most flaming ministers."

Such is John Wesley in his persecutions. We who claim to be followers of Wesley, and who glory in the rich fruit of these unexampled labors, sufferings, and sacrifices, might with propriety inquire whether we would be willing to endure such toil and "despise such shame," that we might transmit to the children of a future generation the rich inheritance which we enjoy.

The Church needs such men in these times--genuine reformers, men who will dare to proclaim the whole counsel of G.o.d, though for doing so they may be maligned, traduced, misrepresented, and their names even cast out as evil; men who will lovingly but unflinchingly face the incoming tide of worldliness with the old Wesleyan weapons of faith and prayer until holiness triumphs.

Writing to Alexander Mather, Wesley says: "Give me but one hundred men who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but G.o.d, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen, such alone will overthrow the kingdom of Satan and build up the kingdom of G.o.d upon earth."

CHAPTER XI.

WESLEY AND HIS THEOLOGY.

MR. WESLEY was well versed in every phase of the theology of his times.

Indeed, he was one of the best-read men of his age. That system of scriptural truth which he formulated has stood the test of the most searching criticism, being bitterly a.s.sailed on all sides. His theology has the advantage of having been forged in the hottest fires of controversy which have been witnessed during the last two centuries. And it is not presumption in us to say that it has revolutionized, in some marked features, the religious opinions of orthodox Christendom. This is manifest to all who have carefully observed the drift of religious sentiment.

The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England seem framed to meet different forms of religious faith, as the seventeenth and thirty-first articles clearly show.

Among the regular clergy were many high-toned Calvinists, and nearly all Dissenters were of the same faith.

In 1770 Wesley's Conference met, and after a long and earnest discussion of the subject came to the decision that they had "leaned too much toward Calvinism." When the Minutes of this Conference were made public they created great excitement, for it was a blow at the prevailing belief of the times. Three cla.s.ses rushed to the defense of what they regarded as truth: 1. The Calvinistic Methodists, who had been a.s.sociated with Wesley, and regarded him as their leader. 2. The Church party, strong and influential. 3. The Dissenters; these were nearly all Calvinists. Between these parties there had been formerly no special sympathy, but they united to antagonize Wesley.

Against all these Wesley stood, as he says, "_Athanasius contra mundum_"

("Athanasius against the world"). With him was a.s.sociated Rev. John Fletcher, the saintly vicar of Madeley. As a controversialist he was peerless, and as a saintly character modern times have not produced his superior.

The conflict was long and bitter. It was conducted on the one side by Rev. and Hon. Walter Shirley, Hon. Richard Hill, his brother, the famous Rowland Hill, Rev. Mr. Beveridge, and Rev. Augustus Toplady; and on the other side by Mr. Wesley, but mainly by Mr. Fletcher. It was admitted by all fair-minded men that the Damascus blade of the hero of Madeley won in the conflict and was master of the situation. Fletcher's _Checks to Antinomianism_ was the result. These have stood for more than a hundred years a bulwark against the baneful errors which they seek to overthrow.

These plumed warriors have long since adjusted their dogmatic differences, for harmony is the law of that world in which they live.

We shall proceed to give a brief statement of the fundamental doctrines held and advocated by Mr. Wesley, omitting any merely speculative opinions regarded by him as nonessential:

I. THE DEITY OF CHRIST.

While Mr. Wesley had charity for doubters, he held with great firmness _the supreme divinity and G.o.dhead of Christ_. "The _Word existed_," he says, "without any beginning. He was when all things began to be, whatever had a beginning. He was the Word which the Father begat or spoke from eternity." "The Word was with G.o.d, therefore distinct from G.o.d the Father. The word rendered _with_ denotes a perpetual tendency, as it were, of the Son to the Father in unity of essence. He was with G.o.d alone, because nothing beside G.o.d had then any being. And the Word was G.o.d--supreme, eternal, independent. There was no creature in respect of which he could be styled G.o.d in a relative sense. Therefore he is styled so in the absolute sense."[E]

II. THE FALL AND CORRUPTION OF MAN.

In regard to the fall and consequent corruption of human nature, Mr.

Wesley accepted the faith of the Church of England, which is as follows: "Original, or birth, sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk), but it is the corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature is inclined to evil, and that continually." He taught that sin was both _original_ and _actual_, sin of the _heart_ and sin of the _life_, or _outward_ sin and _inward_ sin.

Of actual, or outward, sin he says: "Nothing is sin, strictly speaking, but a voluntary transgression of a known law of G.o.d. Therefore, every voluntary breach of the law of love is sin, and nothing else, if we speak properly." Speaking of a believer being freed from the actual commission of sin, he says: "I understand his of 'inward sin,' any sinful temper, pa.s.sion, or affection, such as pride, self-will, love of the world." Mr. Wesley's views on this subject cannot be harmonized, except we admit his definition of sin--sin as an _outward_ act, expressed by the voluntary commission of sin; and sin as a _state_ or _condition_ of the heart, expressed by the text, "All unrighteousness is sin."

Mr. Wesley's view of sin is no Unitarian view, but sin in all its destructive effects upon the human heart, holding it in its "unwilling grasp;" the soul "drinking in iniquity like water;" the "soul dead in trespa.s.ses and sin," and being "dragged at sin's chariot wheels," until in utter despair he cries, "O, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?" At this point there comes deliverance to the soul.

III. GENERAL OR UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION.

By this Mr. Wesley meant that the atonement was for each member of the human family, except when rejected by voluntary choice. As a consequence of this doctrine of general redemption he lays down two axioms, of which he never loses sight in his preaching. Says Mr. Fletcher: 1. "All our salvation is of G.o.d in Christ, and therefore of _grace_; all opportunities, inclinations, and power to believe, being bestowed upon us of mere grace--grace most absolutely free." 2. "He a.s.serted with equal confidence that, according to the Gospel dispensation, all our d.a.m.nation is of ourself, by our obstinate unbelief and avoidable unfaithfulness, as we may neglect so great salvation." These points he made clear from the Word of G.o.d.

It must be admitted that Calvinism has greatly changed in the last hundred years, both in Europe and America. We doubt if any can be found who would attempt, in these times, to defend the doctrine which Messrs.

Shirley, Hill, and Toplady attempted to defend in Wesley's time. Mr.

Toplady said: "Whatever comes to pa.s.s, comes to pa.s.s by virtue of the absolute, omnipotent will of G.o.d, which is the primary and supreme cause of all things." "If so, it may be objected," he says, "that whatever is, is right. Consequences cannot be helped." "Whatever a man does," he says, "he does necessarily, though not with any sensible compulsion; and that we can only do what G.o.d, from eternity, willed and foreknew we should." Surely, this does not differ from "whatsoever is, is right."

The doctrine of foreknowledge, with Mr. Toplady, included the doctrine of election and decrees. He said: "As G.o.d does not will that each individual of mankind should be saved, so neither did he will that Christ should properly and immediately die for each individual of mankind; whence it follows that, though the blood of Christ, from its intrinsic dignity, was sufficient for the redemption of all men, yet, in consequence of his Father's appointment, he shed it intentionally, and therefore effectually and immediately, for the elect only."

Mr. Wesley said, in reply to these strange utterances, that their doctrine represented Christ "as a hypocrite, a deceiver of the people, a man void of common sincerity; for it cannot be denied that he everywhere speaks as if he was willing that all men should be saved--provided the possibility. Therefore, to say that he was not willing that all men should be saved--that he had provided no such possibility--is to represent him as a hypocrite and deceiver." "You cannot deny," says Wesley, "that he says, 'Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' If you say unto me, He calls those that cannot come, those whom he knows to be unable to come, those whom he can make able to come, but will not, how is it possible to describe greater insincerity? You represent him as mocking his helpless creatures by offering what he never intended to give. You describe him as saying one thing and meaning another--as pretending a love which he had not. Him, in whose mouth was no guile, you make full of deceit, void of common sincerity."

In this manner the conflict went on until the theology of the ages, on this subject, has been revolutionized.

The Wesleyan doctrine of foreknowledge and free agency may be stated in a few words. It is, in substance, as follows:

1. The freedom of a moral agent is freedom to follow his own choice, where he is held responsible for his conduct.

2. The foreknowledge of G.o.d is a divine perception of what that agent will choose to do in a given case of responsibility. In this there is no conflict between freedom and foreknowledge.