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John Wesley and Conyers Middleton on Divine Intervention in History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Ted A. Campbell
Ted A. Campbell
Affiliation:
Mr. Campbell is assistant professor of church history in the Divinity School, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
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Extract

In early January of 1749 John Wesley canceled a previously scheduled trip to Rotterdam in order to write a seventy-nine-page open letter to the Reverend Dr. Conyers Middleton on the subject of miracles in the early, post-apostolic church. The letter is one of Wesley's longest original writings, but it has never been studied critically. In it, Wesley's relationship to intellectual currents of his age become particularly clear, both because of the subject with which it is concerned (God's intervention in history) and because of the interlocutor to whom it is addressed (Conyers Middleton of Cambridge University).

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , March 1986 , pp. 39 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1986

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References

1. A series of works in this century have considered Wesley's life and thought in relation to Pietism, institutional Anglicanism, the Puritans, Continental Reformers, and others. Some studies in particular have examined Wesley's relationship to the intellectual currents of his age, focusing on his epistemology of religious experience. This subject was taken up in earlier studies by Workman, Herbert Brook and Lee, Umphrey: Workman, , The Place of Methodism in the Catholic Church, 2d ed. (London, 1921)Google Scholar; Lee, , John Wesley and Modern Religion (Nashville, 1936).Google Scholar More recently, Wesley's relationship to Enlightenment thought has been examined in an article by Dreyer, Frederick entitled “Faith and Experience in the Thought of John Wesley,” American Historical Review 88 (1983): 12–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. SirStephen, Leslie, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 3d ed. (reprint ed., New York, 1962), 1: 157–163.Google Scholar

3. Ibid., 1: 223–224.

4. Stephen, Leslie, Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. “Middleton, Conyers,” 13: 343–348,Google Scholar and History of English Thought, 1: 213–230; Gay, Peter, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, vol. 1, The Rise of Modern Paganism (New York, 1966), pp. 40, 106, 259.Google Scholar

5. Middleton, Conyers, A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers which are Supposed to have Subsisted in the Christian Church through Several Successive Centuries (London, 1749 [sic]), pp. 214–232.Google Scholar This (first) edition of the Free Inquiry includes the Introductory Discourse following (and numbered sequentially after) the preface, pp. xxxvii-cxli. Wesley's page-number references to the Free Inquiry and the Introductory Discourse correspond to the pagination of this edition.

6. Ibid., p. 197.

7. Ibid., p. xxxvii.

8. Ibid., p. 72; see p. 72–190.

9. Ibid., pp. xxxvii, 3.

10. Ibid., pp. 2–10; quotation on p. 9.

11. Ibid., pp. 10–21.

12. Ibid., pp. 190–193.

13. Ibid., pp. 21–26.

14. Ibid., pp. 26–71.

15. Ibid., pp. 71–190.

16. Gay, , Enlightenment, 1: 380.Google Scholar

17. Stephen, , History of English Thought, 1: 223.Google Scholar

18. Ibid., 1:220–223M.

19. Middleton, verso of half-title page, and title page; Wesley, , Journal 1749/01/02, in The Works of the Reverend John Wesley, A. M., Jackson, Thomas, ed., 14 vols. (London, 1872), 2: 128Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Jackson); Curnock, Nehemiah, ed., The Journal of the Reverend John Wesley, A. M., 8 vols. (New York, 1938), 3: 390Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Carnock); compare Outler, Albert C., John Wesley, Library of Protestant Thought (Oxford, 1964), pp. 181–183.Google Scholar

20. John Wesley, “A Letter to the Reverend Dr. Conyers Middleton,” in Jackson 10: 1, 79; Journal 1749/01/28, in Jackson 2: 128, Curnock 3: 390.

21. My doctoral dissertation outlines Wesley's works in 1748 and 1749 which preceded the publication of the “Letter to Conyers Middleton”: Campbell, Ted A., “John Wesley's Conceptions and Uses of Christian Antiquity” (Ph.D. diss., Southern Methodist University, 1984), pp. 105–109.Google Scholar

22. Ibid., pp. 118–121.

23. Journal 1749/01/28, in Jackson 2: 128.

24. Letters 1750/01/12 to “Amicus Veritatis,” in The Letters of the Reverend John Wesley, A.M., John Telford, ed., 8 vols. (London, 1931), 3:28Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Telford); compare Journal 1771/08/12, in Jackson 3: 441.

25. Wesley, , “A Plain Account of Kingswood School” (1781)Google Scholar, par. 18, in Jackson 13: 298.

26. “Letter to Conyers Middleton,” preface 1, in Jackson 10:1.

27. Ibid., in Jackson 10:1–2.

28. Ibid., sec. 4, in Jackson 10:38; 5.5.1, in Jackson 10:52.

29. Ibid., sec. 1, in Jackson 10:16–24.

30. Ibid., sec. 3, in Jackson 10:20–38.

31. Ibid., sec. 4, in Jackson 10:38–59.

32. Ibid., Sec. 6, in Jackson 10:67–79; quotations from 6.3.11 and 6.3.12.

33. “Letter to Conyers Middleton,” 2[:8], in Jackson 10:27.

34. Wesley's sermons in the last decade of his life, for instance, show that he had taken a more pessimistic view of the life of the church in the earliest centuries; see Campbell, pp. 134–137. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that he changed his mind about the cessation of the miraculous gifts in the age of Constantine.

35. Ibid., preface 3–4, in Jackson 10:1–2.

36. See Campbell, p. 201.

37. Middleton's arguments had been preceded by those of Jean Daillé in particular; see Stephen, , History of English Thought, 1: 226.Google Scholar Although Wesley may not have had access to works critical of Middleton, Wesley held sympathy with those works, even as reported by Middleton himself; Wesley, “Letter to Conyers Middleton,” sec. 5, in Jackson, 10: 59–66.

38. Middleton, for example, associated the accounts of miraculous powers with “all that rage of fierce Bigots, hypocritical Zealots, and interested Politicians; and of all, whose credit or fortunes in any manner depend upon the establishment of error and ignorance among men”; preface, p. viii. On Wesley's attitude toward Middleton, see the quotation from the first paragraph of the “Letter to Conyers Middleton,” cited above, n. 26.

39. Middleton's strictures were especially directed toward Roman Catholicism: “My sole view therefore is, to expose the vanity of those extravagant honors, and that idolotrous worship, which are paid to [the early Christian saints] by the Church of Rome”; ibid., p. 213. Middleton also singled out “modern Fanatics,” including the “Methodist, Moravian, and French Prophet”; p. 197.

40. Wesley especially pressed the argument that Middleton's impugnation of mid-secondcentury and later accounts of miracles implied an impugnation of the scriptural miracles: see the quotation from the first paragraph of the “Letter to Conyers Middleton” cited above, n. 26, and 6.1 in Jackson 10:59–60.

41. Stephen, , History of English Thought, 2: 369.Google Scholar

42. Wesley, , “An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion,” par. 6–7, The Appeals to Men of Reason and Religion and Certain Related Open Letters, in The Works of John Wesley, vol. 11, ed. Cragg, Gerald R. (Oxford, 1975), pp. 46–47;Google ScholarSermons 18, in Jackson 5: 212–223; Letters 1745/12/30 to “John Smith,” par. 13, Telford 2:64.