Wesley and the People Called Methodists: Second Edition - Softcover

Heitzenrater, Richard P.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 142674224X ISBN 13: 9781426742248

Publisher: Abingdon Press, 2013

Synopsis

This second edition of Richard P. Heitzenrater's groundbreaking survey of the Wesleyan movement is the story of the many people who contributed to the theology, organization, and mission of Methodism. This updated version addresses recent research from the past twenty years; includes an extensive bibliography; and fleshes out such topics as the means of grace; Conference: "Large" Minutes: Charles Wesley: Wesley and America; ordination; prison ministry; apostolic church; music; children; Susanna and Samuel Wesley; the Christian library; itinerancy; connectionalism; doctrinal standards; and John Wesley as historian, Oxford don, and preacher.

About this title

About the Author

Richard P. Heitzenrater is William Kellon Quick Professor Emeritus of Church History and Wesleyan Studies at Duke Divinity School in Durham, NC, and general editor emeritus of the Bicentennial Edition of The Works of John Wesley.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

WESLEY AND THE PEOPLE CALLED METHODISTS

By Richard P. Heitzenrater

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 2013 Abingdon Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4267-4224-8

Contents

Prefatory Comments to the Second Edition...................................
ix
Preface to the First Edition...............................................
xi
1. Methodism and the Christian Heritage in England.........................
1
2. The Rise of Methodism (1725–39).........................................
37
3. The Revival Begins (1739–44)............................................
107
4. Consolidation of the Movement (1744–58).................................
163
5. The Maturing of Methodism (1758–75).....................................
223
6. Tensions and Transitions (1775–91)......................................
291
Epilogue...................................................................
345
Selected Bibliography......................................................
363
Index......................................................................
371

CHAPTER 1

Methodism and the ChristianHeritage in England

John Wesley, the Oxford don, frequently walked the eightmiles from the University to the hamlet of Stanton Harcourt topreach for the local vicar, his friend John Gambold. He could nothave foreseen the way in which his preaching in that quiet pastoralsetting might later be seen as a manifest confluence of forcesthat converge upon and express themselves in Wesley himself andin the Methodist movement he began during the second quarterof the eighteenth century. One of those occasions does, however,provide for us a striking historical vignette that captures much ofthe nature and dynamic of the origins of the Wesleyan revival.

On a late spring day in 1738, when Wesley preached "Salvationby Faith" in this little rural church, the past, present, and future ofEnglish religion met in an intriguing conjunction of forces. Thelong course of English ecclesiastical history met the force of a newconcern for renewal, both individual and institutional. A long traditionof propositional certainty of faith met the power of a personalexperience of faith. An institution built by and for theestablishment met a concern for the souls and bodies of the disenfranchised.Although the preacher and his host were both alreadyknown as Methodists at the time, none of the small congregationon that Sunday morning in Stanton Harcourt could have knownthat Gambold, the host vicar, would eventually become aMoravian bishop and that Wesley, the guest preacher, wouldshortly become the leader of an evangelical revival that would,during his lifetime, spread across the lands and become a transatlanticmovement.

Relatively unspoiled in the rural preserve of Oxfordshire, theeleventh-century church of St. Michael in Stanton Harcourt containsin its very stone and mortar the traditions of its RomanCatholic founders. Seclusion was, however, not able to protect orpreserve the faith of the members or the fabric of the buildingfrom the iconoclastic zeal of the Anglican and Puritan reformers—thecarvings in wood, stone, and brass managed to survive moreintact than either the stained glass or the Roman faith of themedieval patrons. The wooden rood-screen, still in place today, asit was in Wesley's day, is the oldest extant in England, a relic ofmedieval Catholicism dating from the thirteenth century. But thestone carvings preserve in their chips and missing appendages themarks of destructive zeal typical of the Henrician reformers. Mostof the monumental brasses remain intact, but occasional indentionsin the stone with orphaned brass rivets are vivid remindersof the Cromwellian zealots who thought the brass more appropriatefor bullets than burials. The medieval stained glass is gone, theunrecapturable victim of several generations of sixteenth- andseventeenth-century reformers who exemplified the typicalProtestant shift in spiritual and aesthetic sensitivity away fromthings representative or mystical.

When Wesley climbed the steps of the pulpit of St. Michael'son June 11, 1738, those visual reminders of his Church's historywere spread before his eyes, signs of the power and glory, the stormand stress, the triumphs and failures that the Church in Englandhad experienced in the previous centuries and in which Wesleyhimself had participated in his own pilgrimage of faith. A firmrootage in the early Christian tradition, a meditative spiritualitytypical of the medieval Pietists, an unembarrassed adherence tothe Church of England, a moral conviction drawn from thePuritan ethos—these had left their mark on the mind and heart ofWesley, as they had also on the fabric of St. Michael's.

The ideas and forces that gave shape and direction to earlyMethodism are by and large manifest in the various upheavals ofReformation England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.To understand the Wesleyan movement, we must first sift the soilthat gave it life, look for the seeds from which it sprang, andnotice the resources that sustained and nourished it.

The English Reformation:The Church in England to the Church of England

England was introduced to Christianity in the sixth century bySt. Augustine of Canterbury, whose strategy was to convert theSaxon king Ethelbert, whose queen, Bertha, was a Christian.The English monarchs have since then played an important rolein the religious affairs of the British Isles. The interface betweenreligion and politics was certainly not without friction. Thomas àBecket's confrontations with Henry II, Anselm's compromise inthe investiture controversy, John Ball's sermon against Richard II,and a host of other incidents testify to the continuing tensionbetween church and crown. But the essential relationship of thetwo seemed to both somehow necessary and natural, if not divinelyordained, throughout most of England's history.

The influence of the Church of Rome, Augustine's legacy tomedieval England, faced many tests in the lands north of theChannel. In the feudal period, the monarchy challenged the pope'sprerogative to invest English bishops (who were in fact themonarch's vassals). In the early days of parliament, protectionist(if not xenophobic) tendencies resulted in several acts restrainingthe powers of, or appeals to, foreign powers such as the pope; arising national self-consciousness, congenitally anti-French, ledJohn Wycliffe to claim the Bible as an alternate authority to thepope, who was (during much of the fourteenth century) underFrench influence. An insular mindset pervaded the consciousnessof the developing English nation. It is not surprising that SirThomas More would portray the ideal community, in Utopia, asan island kingdom. It is also no surprise that the English, the naturalboundaries of their consciousness defined in part by the ever-presentshoreline (never more than seventy-five miles away) andtheir developing national identity centered in large part in theirmonarchy, would eventually develop a religious establishmentthat was unabashedly nationalistic, legally centered in the monarchy,and strongly antipapal.

The monarchy is the central feature of English history throughat least the eighteenth century. This is perhaps most evident duringthe period of the English Reformation, the time of Henry VIII,Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. Although religious reformersgained some renown for their ideas and programs, especially onthe continent, the implementation of their reforms depended inlarge part upon the wishes and whims of the political power structure—inmany areas, such as Germany, France, and England, thefate of reform movements hinged upon the positive or negativeinclinations of individual monarchs or princes. The Reformationin England goes through a series of stages, determined in large partby the attitudes of the monarchs, shaped to some degree by theadvice of courtiers, and put in place in every case by acts ofParliament.

Henry VIII took the first major step—separating the Englishchurch from the Church of Rome and establishing it under themonarch. A series of personal and political problems movedHenry from a position of "Defender of the Faith," supporting thepapacy against the writings of Luther (in the Assertion of the SevenSacraments, 1521), to a stance a decade later of declaring himselfthe head of the Church of England. The Erastian form of governmentestablished by the Reformation Parliament (1532–35)declared Henry VIII to be head of both church and state inEngland (Act of Supremacy) and made the Church of Englandthe official religion of the state and an integral part of the politicalstructure. These actions set the boundaries of power for thefuture—all matters of church doctrine, structure, and policywould have to pass through Parliament. In addition to these stepsthat asserted English ecclesiastical independence, Parliament(with the encouragement and guidance of Henry's counselor,Thomas Cromwell) also vented its antipapalism by reiterating theprohibitions of earlier parliaments against interference in Englishaffairs by foreign powers, including most obviously the See ofRome.

Theologically, the Henrician church was not typicallyProtestant in the Lutheran or Calvinist sense. The first officialstatement of the English faith, the Ten Articles of Religion(1536), was a fairly brief statement of traditional beliefs, omittingthe (by this time) typical Protestant bias against transubstantiation,celibacy of the clergy, and so on. The two most notablechanges in the transition from Church in England to Church ofEngland were in polity and liturgy—the monarch rather than thepope was now the head of the church, and the service was to bein English rather than Latin. A revision of the doctrinal statementin 1539, the Six Articles, reflects an even more conservativetrend in the Henrician church, reaffirming the doctrine of transubstantiationand reasserting the need for a celibate clergy. Thesoteriological doctrines, such as justification, good works, grace,and so on, as published in The King's Book (1543), are typical ofthe more irenic compromises arrived at by the Protestant andRoman Catholic negotiators at the colloquies of 1539–1541 onthe continent (for example, the Regensburg Book).

The early attempts at doctrinal formulation were revised andextended by Henry's closest religious advisor, ArchbishopThomas Cranmer, at the close of the monarch's reign. His firstimportant step was to publish a collection of sermons or homiliesthat would present models of correct theological exposition forthe clergy. The first Book of Homilies (1546) contained twenty-onesermons that could be read from the pulpits to assure that thepeople would on occasion hear solid interpretation of orthodoxdoctrines, regardless of the homiletical or doctrinal inadequacy ofthe local parish priest or curate.

During the reign of Edward VI, the influence of the continentalreformers became more noticeable, both at the royal court and inthe countryside. Cranmer himself was not untouched by thisdevelopment. In 1532, he had secretly married MargaretOsiander, the niece of Andreas Osiander the Lutheran reformer,and brought to England some of the continental theologians,mostly Calvinist and noticeably irenic, such as Martin Bucer andPeter Martyr. The Archbishop's next major production was theofficial prayer book for the church—the Book of CommonPrayer (1549, rev. 1552). By an act of Parliament, the BCPbecame the official liturgy of the established church. Cranmer alsohelped develop a revised doctrinal statement, the Forty-TwoArticles, which was much more Protestant than any previousEnglish standard of orthodoxy. The Calvinistic bent of theseArticles can be seen in their assertion of supralapsarian predestination(decreed by God before the Fall) and their clear oppositionto good works apart from a proper faith in Christ. These Articlesreceived royal acceptance in June 1553, less than a month beforeEdward VI died and his sister Mary acceded to the throne.

As a result of its history and nature, the Church of Englandwould continue to assume a position somewhere between themore radical views of continental Protestantism and the more traditionalviews of Roman Catholicism. The reign of Mary was reallytoo short to effect a permanent return to Roman Catholicism inEngland. The incipient Protestantism of Edward's reign, culminatingtwenty years of slow shifts in the religious winds ofEngland, seems to have pervaded the country sufficiently to presenta broad challenge to Mary's program of religious reformation,effected as usual by acts of Parliament. Even her firm-handed disposalof the opposition through the traditional methods used earlierby her father and later by her sister, in the end worked againsther. The persons she forced into exile because of their Protestantinclinations came back to England at her death with a reformingzeal that saw even the Henrician church as having need of furtherreform. And the execution of those who stayed in England servednot only to solidify the opposition to Mary in her own day, butalso to provide her most unfortunate legacy—the nickname"bloody" Mary. In particular, the burning of the three bishops,Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, ignited a lasting spark for the continuingspirit of anti-Roman reform in England, a spark fanned bythe writings of John Foxe, Thomas Cartwright, and others.

Mary's untimely death, without heirs, left the throne to her sister,Elizabeth, whose political savvy and religious inclinations (orlack thereof) led to the Elizabethan Settlement—a series of parliamentaryacts (1559) that defined once again the nature of andrelationship between the English crown and church. Elizabeth'sdesire was to turn the clock back to the time of her father, HenryVIII. The march of time and events would not permit that. Theintervening years had seen the rise of Calvin in Geneva and theredefinition of Roman Catholicism at Trent. She found it necessaryto confront both realities in her own country—the reinstitutedRoman faith of her sister's reign and the revitalized Calvinismof the returning Marian exiles. The latter brought with them twobooks that would influence the English-speaking world for generations—JohnFoxe's Book of Martyrs and the Geneva Bible.

The first of these was a detailed description, in the tradition ofthe "lives of the saints," of the martyrdom of those persecutedunder Mary's reign. The blatant anti-Catholic tone of the book isexemplified in the conclusion of the account of a pregnantwoman who was burned at the stake and whose unborn child burstunexpectedly into the fire, first to be retrieved but then to be castback into the flames, as Foxe says, "to make up the number ofthose countless innocents who by their tragic death display to thewhole world the Herodian cruelty of this graceless generation ofCatholic tormentors." The widespread popularity of Foxe's work islargely responsible for implanting in the English consciousness avibrant anti-Catholic sentiment.

The Marian exiles also came carrying their Calvinist bibles asthe handbook for church reform. The Geneva (or "Breeches")Bible—small in size compared with the editions of the officialBishops' Bible; printed in clear Roman type rather than the heavyblack-lettering of previous English bibles; verses numbered forconvenience—was considered not only a source of devotionalstudy and Protestant (anti-Catholic) theological interpretation,but also in good Calvinist terms a practical guidebook for churchreform. The returning Marian exiles had already determined fromtheir place of exile that the Church of England, even in itsHenrician or Edwardian form, needed further reform of its Romantendencies. Hence some English Calvinists became known popularlyas Puritans and worked to effect reforms that would purifythe church of its nonscriptural corruptions. They saw no scripturalsupport for such things as vestments in worship services, or archbishops(much less monarchs) in ecclesiastical leadership.

The task of the religious settlement under Elizabeth was toestablish a balanced approach that would protect the nationalchurch, formed (if not fully "reformed") under Henry, from the traditional"catholic" claims of Rome on the one side and from themore radical "reform" tendencies of the Puritans on the other, astance traditionally expressed as the via media ("middle way")between Rome and Geneva. Elizabeth's role in this process was notdetermined so much by strong personal religious sentiments, ifindeed she had any, as by her political astuteness: she was, in thisas in most matters, thoroughly politique. Her concern was to establishstability in her reign, following the turmoil of her siblings'reigns. A unified country would need a settled order in the church.

The parliamentary measures that settled the religious questionunder Elizabeth used the Henrician church as a model and set thebasic framework for English religion for generations to come. A newAct of Supremacy (1559) established Elizabeth as head of state and"Supreme Governor" of the church, carefully chosen words thatindicated an appreciation for the problems Henry had encounteredin proclaiming himself "head" of the church (in the light of Eph.5:23 and Col. 1:18). The Act of Uniformity (1559) defined thestandards for liturgy and doctrine—requiring that churches use theBook of Common Prayer, requiring clergy and other officials tosubscribe to the doctrines in the Thirty-Nine Articles ofReligion, and providing a standard exposition of accepted teachingsin an enlarged Book of Homilies (to be read regularly frompulpits across the realm). These three basic sources of theologicalidentity came primarily from the pen of Thomas Cranmer adecade earlier; the BCP and the Articles were only slightly revisedfrom the Edwardean prayer book and Articles, and the homilieswere doubled in number from the edition first produced in 1546.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Abingdon Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 142674224X
• ISBN 13: 9781426742248
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 406