185 METHODISM I. WESLEYAN METHODISM. fTlHE history of Wesleyan Methodism embraces (1) the I Methodism of Oxford, which was strictly Anglican and rigidly rubrical, though it was also more than rubrical; (2) the evangelical Methodism of the Wesleys after their conversion (in 1738), of which the Wesleyan doctrines of conversion and sanctification were the manifesto and inspiration, while preaching and the class-meeting were the great motive and organizing forces, a movement which before Wesley s death had developed into a form contain ing, at least in embryo, all the elements of a distinct church organization, although in its general designation and deliberate claims it purported to be only an unattached spiritual society ; and (3) Wesleyan Methodism since the death of Wesley, which, by steps at first rapid and after wards, though leisurely, distinct and consecutive, assumed an independent position, and has grown into complete development as a church. 1. Oxford Methodism. This began in November 1729, when John Wesley, returning to Oxford from Lincolnshire, where he had been serving his father as curate, found that his brother Charles, then at Christ Church, had induced a few other students to join him in observing weekly com munion. John Wesley s accession lent weight and character to the infant association. Their first bond of association, besides the weekly communion, was the common study of the Greek Testament, with which they joined regular fasting, the observance of stated hours for private devotion, the visitation of the sick, of the poor, and of prisoners, and the instruction of neglected children. They never themselves adopted any common designation, but of the variety of derisive names they received from outsiders that of " Methodists " prevailed, a sobriquet the fitness of which, indeed, as descriptive of one unchanging and insepar able feature of Wesley s character (which he impressed also on his followers), was undeniable. This first Oxford Methodism was very churchly. Between 1733 and 1735, however, a new phase was devel oped. Its adherents became increasingly patristic in their sympathies and tendencies, and Wesley came much under the influence of William Law. In regard to this period of his history, Wesley himself says that he " Bent the bow too far, by making antiquity a coordinate, rather than a subordinate, rule with Scripture, by admitting several doubtful writings, by extending antiquity too far, by believing more practices to have been universal in the ancient church than ever were so, by not considering that the decrees of a provincial synod could bind only that province, and the decrees of a general synod only those provinces, whose representatives met therein, that most of those decrees were adapted to particular times and occasions, and, consequently, when those occasions ceased, must cease to bind even those provinces." It was in 1736, during his residence in Georgia, whither he had gone as a missionary of the Propagation Society, that he learnt those lessons. Notwithstanding his ascetic severity and his rubrical punctilios, the foundations of his High-Churchmanship were gradually giving way. When he returned to England he had already accepted the doctrine of " salvation by faith," although he had not as yet learned that view of the nature of faith which he was afterwards to teach for half a century. He had, however, as in the journal of his homeward voyage he tells us, learned, " in the ends of the earth," that he " who went to America to convert others was never himself converted to God." In this result his Oxford Methodism came to an end. The original Methodism of Oxford never at any one time seems to have numbered as many as thirty adherents. There was a set called "Methodists," but there was no organization, no common bond of special doctrine or of discipline ; there were habits and usages mutually agreed upon, but there was no official authority, only personal influence. The general features of the fraternity, if frater nity it may be called, seem to suggest closer analogies with the "Tractarian" school in its earlier stages than with anything else in modern history, and the personal ascendency of John Wesley may remind us in some measure of the influence exercised a century later by J. H. Newman. There was no more any germ of permanent organization in the Oxford Methodism of 1735 than in the patristic and "Tractarian" school of Oxford of 1833. 1 2. Methodism after Wesley s Conversion. John Wesley landed at Deal, on his return from Georgia, on February 1, 1738. His journals on the homeward voyage, says Miss Wedgwood, 2 " chronicle for us that deep dissatisfac tion which is felt whenever an earnest nature wakes up to the incompleteness of a traditional religion; and his after life, compared with his two years in Georgia, makes it evident that, he passed at this time into a new spiritual region." "By Peter Bohler, 3 in the hands of the great God," he writes in his journal, " I was, on March 5, fully convinced of the want of that faith whereby we are saved." This "conviction" was followed on March 24 of the same year (1738) by his "conversion." Like most good men of that age in England, Wesley, before he came under the influence of his Moravian teacher, had regarded faith as a union of intellectual belief and of voluntary self-submission the belief of the creeds and submission to the laws of Christ and to the rules and services of the church, acted out day by day and hour by hour, in all the prescribed means and services of the church and in the general duties of life. From this conception of faith the element of the supernatural was wanting, and equally that of personal trust for salvation on the atone ment of Christ. The work of Bohler was to convince Wesley that such faith as this, even though there might be more or less of divine influence unconsciously mingling with its attainment and exercise, was essentially nothing else than an intellectual and moral act or habit, a natural operation and result altogether different from the true spiritual faith of a Christian. This conviction led him a few days afterwards to stand up at the house of the Rev. Mr Hutton, College Street, Westminster, and declare that five days before he had not been a Christian. When warned not thus to despise the benefits of sacramental grace, he rejoined, " When we renounce everything but faith and get into Christ, then, and not till then, have we reason to believe that we are Christians." It is true that for several years after this he remained High-Church in 1 One evidence of this is to be found in the early and wide diverg ence of the various members of the Oxford Methodist company, after their brief association at the university came to an end. We know which way the Wesleys went ; we know also the separate path that their-friend Whitefield made for himself. John Clayton, the Jacobite churchman, settled at Manchester, renounced the Wesleys after they began their evangelical movement, and remained an unbending High- Churchman to the end. Benjamin Ingham became a great evangelist in Yorkshire, founded societies, and, with his societies or churches, took the decisive step of leaving the Church of England and embracing the position of avowed Dissent. The saintly Gambold, a poet as well as a theologian and preacher, became a Moravian bishop. James Hervey was in after life a famous evangelical clergyman, holding Low " and Calvinistic views. These were the chief of the Method ists of Oxford. 2 John Wesley and the Evangelical Reaction of the 18th Century. 3 A disciple of Zinzendorf, who had settled in London.
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