Wesley, JOHN, was born on June 17 (o.s.), 1703, in Epworth Rectory, his father being the rector of that little Lincolnshire market-town. He was descended from a long line of English gentry and clergy; the Duke of Wellington (q.v.) belonged to a collateral branch of the same family. On the maternal side he was related to the more cultured and refined representatives of English Nonconformity, his mother's father being Dr Samuel Annesley, 'the St Paul of the Nonconformists.' In 1714 John Wesley was nominated on the foundation of Charterhouse School by the Duke of Buckingham. In 1720 he was elected to Christ Church, Oxford, of which House his brothers Samuel and Charles were also members. Wesley soon began to display an extraordinary conscientiousness and an ascetic tendency; Thomas à Kempis and Jeremy Taylor had much influence over him. He finally resolved to enter the church, and was ordained deacon in Christ Church Cathedral in 1725, and admitted to priest's orders in the same place in 1728. In 1726 he was unanimously elected fellow of Lincoln
College, and in the same year he was chosen Greek lecturer and moderator of the classes. In 1727 he left Oxford to assist his father, but returned in 1729, becoming a zealous tutor. During his absence his brother Charles and two or three other young men began to attract special attention by what was at that time regarded as a quite fanatical religious earnestness. A young gentleman of Christ Church, struck by the exact regularity of their lives and studies, exclaimed, 'Here is a new sect of Methodists sprung up.' Many years after, Wesley defined Methodist as a man who arranges his life according to 'the method laid down in the New Testament.' The two Wesleys, James Hervey, and George Whitefield were the most distinguished of the Oxford Methodists. In 1732 Wesley formed the personal acquaintance of William Law, and was for a time much influenced by mystical theology. In 1735 Wesley's father died, and in the same year Wesley undertook a mission to Georgia under the direction of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. At that time Wesley was a High Churchman of the most rigid type. He had two daily services. He divided morning prayer, taking the Litany as a separate office. He inculcated severe fasting and confession before communion. He made a point of celebrating the holy communion weekly. He even refused the holy communion to all who were not episcopally baptised. He insisted upon baptism by immersion. He rebaptised the children of Dissenters. He refused to bury all who had not received Episcopalian baptism. At this moment in his career he seemed to be on the point of anticipating the work of Cardinal Newman by a century. But events were about to happen which would take him ultimately to the opposite pole of the ecclesiastical world. On his voyage to Georgia he had been greatly impressed by the perfect fearlessness of the Moravians when in momentary danger of shipwreck. His irritating ecclesiastical intolerance, and an unfortunate love-affair, produced strife and misunderstanding, and he returned to England in 1738. In London he met the Moravian missionary, Peter Böhler, and after much prayerful intercourse with him, was convinced that Christian faith was not an intellectual acceptance of orthodox opinions, but a vital act, and afterwards a habit of soul by which man, under the supernatural impulse of the Spirit of God, trusts in Christ, enters into living union with Christ, and then abides in Christ, so that he no longer lives, but Christ lives in him, as the vine lives in the branch, and as the controlling mind lives in the body. Then came the ever memorable 24th of May 1738, when Methodism as history knows it was born. The decisive moment is described in his Journal:
'In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation, and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. I began to pray with all my might for those who had in a more especial manner spitefully used me and persecuted me. I then testified openly to all there what I now first felt.'
The Rubicon was crossed. The sweeping aside of ecclesiastical traditions, the rejection of Apostolical Succession, the ordination with his own hands of presbyters and bishops, the final organisation of a separate and fully-equipped church, were all logically involved in what took place that night. It is difficult for us to realise now the heathen condition of England at that time; no language can describe the degradation of the masses of the people. The clergy unwittingly rendered a great service by closing their pulpits against Wesley; their intolerance, the example of Whitefield, and the needs of men drove him into the open air. He made the great innovation first at Bristol, where he preached to 3000 persons. England has never seen anything like his open-air work. During his itinerary of half a century 10,000, 20,000, and even 30,000 people would come together and wait patiently for hours until the great evangelist appeared on horseback upon the scene. He bestowed little labour either upon fashionable localities or upon sparsely populated agricultural districts. He gave his time and strength to neighbourhoods where the working-class abounded; hence the mass of his converts were colliers, miners, foundrymen, weavers, spinners, fishermen, artisans, yeomen, and day-labourers in towns. He never journeyed less than 4500 miles in one year; he always rose at four and preached at five, as well as two or even three times later. Until his seventieth year all his journeys were done on horseback, and he rode sixty or seventy miles day after day, as well as preached several times. Terrible persecutions broke out, and his life was frequently in danger; but he completely outlived all persecution, and the itineraries of his old age were triumphal processions from one end of the country to the other. During the fifty years of his unparalleled apostolate he travelled 250,000 miles and preached 40,000 sermons. Yet he managed to do a prodigious amount of literary work.
He wrote short grammars in the English, French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages; a Compendium of Logic; extracts, for use in Kingswood School and elsewhere, from Phædrus, Ovid, Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, Persius, Martial, and Sallust; a complete English Dictionary; commentaries on the whole of the Old and New Testaments; a short Roman History; a History of England from the earliest times to the death of George II.; a concise Ecclesiastical History, from the birth of Christ to the beginning of the last century, in 4 vols.; a Compendium of Social Philosophy, in 5 vols.; a Christian Library, consisting of extracts from all the great theological writers of the universal church. This library of 50 vols. was prepared especially for the benefit of his itinerant preachers, and consisted of representatives of all the leading writers, ancient, mediæval, Puritan, and modern. In addition to this he prepared many editions of the Imitation of Christ, and of the principal works of such writers as Bunyan, Baxter, Principal Edwards, Rutherford, Law, Madame Guyon, and others; endless abridged biographies; and, singularly enough, an abridged edition of a famous novel of the time, Brooke's Fool of Quality, or The History of Henry, Earl of Mordland. He also wrote a curious book, which he entitled Primitive Physic, or an Easy and Natural Method of Curing most Diseases. He further prepared numerous collections of psalms, hymns, and sacred songs, with several works on music and collections of tunes. In addition, he published his own Sermons and Journals, and started in 1778 a monthly magazine which still exists. His works were so popular that, to use his own language, he 'unawares became rich.' He made not less than £30,000, every penny of which he distributed in charity during his life.
In addition to his literary and evangelistic work Wesley was a great philanthropist. He founded an orphans' home at Newcastle, charity schools in London, and a dispensary in Bristol. One of the most curious delusions that has ever persisted in Christendom is the notion that he continued to be theologically or ecclesiastically a High Churchman. There is much more ground in his later career for the contention of Dean Stanley that he was the founder of the Broad Church. Under his direction the Conference in 1770 adopted resolutions which produced an outburst of furious indignation on the part of his orthodox Calvinistic friends. These resolutions stated explicitly that the heathen who had never heard of Christ could be saved if they feared God and worked righteousness according to the light they had. On another occasion he wrote in his Journal that he had been reading the meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and that he was no doubt one of the 'many' who would 'come from the east and the west and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob' in the kingdom of God, while nominal Christians were 'shut out.' He spoke in the strongest terms of the 'execrable wretches' who wrangled at the various church councils, and actually added: 'Surely Mohammedanism was let loose to reform the Christians! I know not but Constantinople has gained by the change.' On the other hand, he spoke of Ignatius Loyola as one of the greatest of men. As early as 1745 he expressed the conviction that bishops and presbyters are essentially one order, and that originally every Christian congregation was a church independent of all others. From this conviction he never departed. When in 1784 he ordained presbyters and a bishop for America, his brother Charles, who did retain High Church convictions, wrote the most earnest expostulations. To these John Wesley replied in the following sentences: 'I firmly believe I am a scriptural ἐπίσκοπος as much as any man in England or in Europe; for the uninterrupted succession I know to be a fable, which no man ever did or can prove.' In harmony with these convictions he himself ordained ministers for Scotland, for the colonies, and ultimately for England. No doubt he greatly loved the church in which he was born, and deeply deplored the providential circumstances which compelled him to vary more and more from her doctrines and practices. He took upon himself with the utmost reluctance the responsibility of organising a separate church. But the most striking feature of his life as a theologian was his readiness in the last resort, whatever it cost him, to adapt his creed to indisputable facts. He was the first great religious leader in modern times who heartily accepted the Baconian principle of verification in the region of theology. He was essentially a scientific theologian. The keynote of his career is found in the characteristic exclamation, 'Church or no church, the people must be saved.'
Wesley died on March 2, 1791, in the eighty-eighth year of his age. Almost his last words were 'the best of all is, God is with us.' The organisation, doctrine, and present condition of the societies founded by him will be found at METHODISTS.
See the Life by Tyerman (1870; new ed. 1876), and those by Southey (1820; new ed. 1889), Miss Wedgwood (1870), Urlin (1870), Rigg (1875), Telford (1886), Overton (1891), Kirton, Bevan, and others. There are Lives of Charles Wesley by Jackson (1841-49) and Telford (1886); of Samuel Wesley, the elder brother, by Tyerman (3 vols. 1866); of their mother, by Kirk (1866) and Clark (1886); and of the Wesley family, by Stevenson (1876).
WESLEY, CHARLES, his brother, was born at Epworth, December 18, 1707, had his education at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford, became one of the Oxford Methodists, 'found rest to his soul' on Whitsunday 1737, and was throughout life indefatigable licutenant to his greater brother, especially in Bristol and London. He died in London, March 29, 1788. He is said to have written 6500 hymns. The number of books of poetry published by the brothers, in conjunction or separately, 1738-86, was sixty-three. It is usual to ascribe all the translations from the German to John, the original hymns to Charles, except such as are traceable to John through his Journals and other works. The Poetical Works of the pair, officially edited for the Wesleyan Methodist Conference, fills thirteen volumes (1868-72). Many of Charles Wesley's hymns are exquisite poetry as well as devotion. It is enough to name 'Jesu, Lover of my Soul,' and 'O for a thousand tongues to sing.'