Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T07:52:59.285Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A “Religious Society under Heaven”: John Wesley and the Identity of Methodism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Frederick Dreyer
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Methodism figures as a kind of puzzle in the history of eighteenth-century England. Even writers who are not unsympathetic to John Wesley sometimes find his thought incoherent and confused. “The truth should be faced,” writes Frank Baker, “that Wesley (like most of us) was a bundle of contradictions.” Albert Outler celebrates Wesley's merits not as a thinker but as a popularizer of other men's doctrines. His Wesley was “by talent and intent, a folk-theologian: an eclectic who had mastered the secret of plastic synthesis, simple profundity, the common touch.” One man's eclecticism, however, is another man's humbug. The very qualities that Outler admires are those that E. P. Thompson condemns in The Making of the English Working Class. Here Methodist theology is dismissed as “opportunist, anti-intellectual, and otiose.” Wesley “appears to have dispensed with the best and selected unhesitatingly the worst elements of Puritanism.” In doctrinal terms Methodism was not a plastic synthesis but “a mule.” What offends Thompson is not so much Wesley's incoherence as the social ambivalence of the movement that he had created. In class terms Methodism was, Thompson says, “hermaphroditic.” It attracted both masters and men. It catered to hostile social interests. It served a “dual role, as the religion of both the exploiters and the exploited.” The belief that Methodism is socially incomprehensible and perhaps in some sense socially illegitimate is not original with Thompson. Early statements of this assumption can be found in Richard Niebuhr's The Social Sources of Denominationalism and in John and Barbara Hammond's The Town Labourer.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , January 1986 , pp. 62 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Wesley, John, The Works of John Wesley, ed. Baker, Frank, 3 vols. to date (Oxford, 1975–), 25:3Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Oxford Works); Outler, Albert C., ed., John Wesley, Library of Protestant Thought (New York, 1964), p. 119Google Scholar; Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1966), pp. 39, 362, 375Google Scholar; Niebuhr, H. Richard, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (New York, 1957), pp. 69–74Google Scholar; Hammond, J. L. and Hammond, Barbara, The Town Labourer, 1760–1832: The New Civilization, 2d ed. (London, 1925), pp. 284–85Google Scholar.

2 Troeltsch, Ernst, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, trans. Wyon, Olive, 2 vols. (London, 1931), 1:82, 331–41Google Scholar; Baker, Frank, John Wesley and the Church of England (London, 1970), p. 137Google Scholar; Semmel, Bernard, The Methodist Revolution (New York, 1973), pp. 20–21, 188Google Scholar.

3 Wesley, John, The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley A.M. … ed. Telford, John. 8 vols. (London, 1931), 8:196Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Letters).

4 Ibid., 7:343–44; Wesley, John, The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley …, ed. Curnock, Nehemiah, 8 vols. (London, 1909–1916), 7:46Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Journal).

5 Letters, 2:25Google Scholar; Oxford Works, 11:126Google Scholar.

6 Martin, David A., “The Denomination,” British Journal of Sociology 12 (1962): 1–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wach, Joachim, Sociology of Religion (Chicago, 1944), 173–81Google Scholar; Hill, Michael, “Methodism as a Religious Order: A Question of Categories,” in Sociological Yearbook of Religion in Britain 6 (1973): 91–99Google Scholar.

7 Letters, 3:36Google Scholar; Wesley, John, The Works of John Wesley, ed. Jackson, Thomas, 3d ed., 14 vols. (1872; reprint, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1979), 7:281, 13:228Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Works).

8 Letters, 6:60Google Scholar; Stoeffler, F. Ernst, German Pietism during the Eighteenth Century (Leiden, 1973), p. 156Google Scholar; Langton, Edward, History of the Moravian Church (London, 1956), pp. 87–88Google Scholar; Towlson, Clifford W., Moravian and Methodist (London, 1957), pp. 18, 30, 34, 89Google Scholar; Wach, p. 173.

9 Hill, p. 94; Works, 11:333Google Scholar; Letters, 2:294Google Scholar.

10 Works, 8:340Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., p. 270; Journal, 7:389Google Scholar.

12 Works, 13:266Google Scholar, 7:276; Bowmer, John C., “The Relations between the Society of Friends and Early Methodism,” London Quarterly and Holborn Review 175 (April 1950): 150Google Scholar.

13 Journal, 7:345Google Scholar; Works, 5:502Google Scholar.

14 Letters, 4:216Google Scholar; Journal, 4:64Google Scholar.

15 Oxford Works, 11:77Google Scholar; Baker, Frank, “John Wesley's Churchmanship,” London Quarterly and Holborn Review 185 (October 1960): 214Google Scholar; Watson, David Lowes, “The Origins and Significance of the Early Methodist Class Meeting” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1978), p. 175Google Scholar; Letters, 3:32Google Scholar.

16 Letters, 2:233–34Google Scholar; Works, 6:397Google Scholar.

17 Letters, 2:293Google Scholar; Works, 5:78; 6:199, 397Google Scholar; Journal, 5:244Google Scholar; for a recent discussion of Wesley's idea of saving faith, see Dreyer, Frederick, “Faith and Experience in the Thought of John Wesley,” American Historical Review 88 (1983): 12–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Nuttal, Geoffrey F., Visible Saints: The Congregational Way, 1640–1660 (Oxford, 1957), pp. 111–15, 131–32Google Scholar; Works, 10:204–59, 284–98Google Scholar; Letters, 2:196–304, 4:273Google Scholar.

19 Letters, 3:9Google Scholar; Works, 6:400Google Scholar.

20 Letters, 3:35Google Scholar; Journal, 2:361–62Google Scholar; Works, 7:184Google Scholar.

21 Works, 5:491Google Scholar; Letters, 4:333Google Scholar; Journal, 4:415Google Scholar.

22 Letters, 5:17Google Scholar; Journal, 4:536Google Scholar; Works, 11:428Google Scholar.

23 Crippen, T. G., ed., “The Covenant and Confession of Faith of the Church of Christ, Meeting in Blanket-Row, Kingston-upon-Hull,” Transactions of the Congregational Historical Society 9 (1926): 253Google Scholar; Nuttal, pp. 71–80; Davies, Horton, Worship and Theology in England from Watts and Wesley to Maurice, 1690–1850 (Princeton, N.J., 1961), pp. 196–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Letters, 2:298, 302Google Scholar.

24 Works, 8:321Google Scholar; Letters, 8:136Google Scholar.

25 Letters, 8:91Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., 2:239.

27 Works, 8:311, 313Google Scholar.

28 Ibid., pp. 311–12; Letters, 6:375–76Google Scholar.

29 Letters, 3:188Google Scholar; Tyerman, Luke, The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., Founder of the Methodists, 3 vols. (New York, 1872), 3:496–98, 574–76Google Scholar; Works, 7:277Google Scholar.

30 Works, 5:77–78, 497, 499Google Scholar; 10:113; Letters, 3:36Google Scholar.

31 Works, 6:73–74Google Scholar.

32 Letters, 1:158Google Scholar; Journal, 3:434Google Scholar.

33 Letters, 1:274, 349–50Google Scholar; 2:55.

34 Journal, 2:212, 3:494Google Scholar; Works, 5:488Google Scholar; Letters, 3:186Google Scholar.

35 Journal, 3:232Google Scholar; Letters, 7:238Google Scholar; Works, 5:497–99Google Scholar.

36 Letters, 6:284Google Scholar; Journal, 4:438Google Scholar.

37 Letters, 3:182Google Scholar; Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, From the First Held in London by the Late Rev. John Wesley A.M., in the Year 1744 (London, 1862), p. 36Google Scholar.

38 Letters, 3:182Google Scholar; Works, 10:88, 140Google Scholar; Minutes of the Methodist Conferences …, p. 36Google Scholar.

39 Works, 7:65Google Scholar; Oxford Works, 26:19Google Scholar.

40 Works, 7:424Google Scholar; Journal, 1:275, 419–20Google Scholar; 4:97; Letters 2:387Google Scholar.

41 Works, 14:223Google Scholar; Journal, 3:243Google Scholar.

42 Works, 11:37–38Google Scholar; Minutes of the Methodist Conferences …, pp. 27–28Google Scholar.

43 Works, 6:150Google Scholar.

44 Letters, 7:316Google Scholar; 8:66, 71, 92, 126.

45 Pike, David, “The Religious Societies, 1678–1738, Parts 1, 2,” Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 35 (1965): 15–20Google Scholar; 35 (1965): 32–38; Simon, John S., John Wesley and the Religious Societies (London, 1921)Google Scholar.

46 For a more extensive discussion of the Feoffees, see Hill, Christopher, Economic Problems of the Church from Archbishop Whitgift to the Long Parliament (Oxford, 1956), pp. 252–67Google Scholar; Jones, Gareth, History of the Law of Charity, 1532–1827 (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 68–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Calder, Isabel, ed., Activities of the Puritan Faction of the Church of England (London, 1957)Google Scholar. For the legal organization of Methodism, see Simon, John S., “John Wesley's ‘Deed of Declaration,’” Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 12 (1919): 81–92Google Scholar; Perkins, E. Benson, Methodist Preaching Houses and the Law (London, 1952)Google Scholar.

47 Calder, p. 137.

48 Holdsworth, William, A History of English Law, ed. Goodhart, A. L. and Hanbury, H. G., 7th ed., 16 vols. (London, 1956), 8:200–201, 382–83Google Scholar.

49 Calder, p. 124.

50 Gierke, Otto, Natural Law and the Theory of Society, 1500 to 1800, trans. Barker, Ernest (Boston, 1957), pp. 95–137Google Scholar; Cassirer, Ernst, Die Philosophie der Aufklärung, 3d ed. (Tübingen, 1973), p. 26Google Scholar; for Burke's commitment to natural law jurisprudence, see Dreyer, Frederick, Burke's Politics: A Study in Whig Orthodoxy (Waterloo, 1979)Google Scholar, and “Legitimacy and Usurpation in the Thought of Edmund Burke,” Albion 12 (1980): 257–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Gierke, p. 107.

52 Ibid., pp. 95–137.

53 Mason, H. T., ed. and trans., The Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence (Manchester, 1967), pp. 94, 120Google Scholar.

54 Locke, John, The Second Treatise of Civil Government and Letter concerning Toleration, ed. Gough, J. W. (Oxford, 1948), p. 129Google Scholar.

55 Hindley, J. Clifford, “The Philosophy of Enthusiasm: A Study in the Origins of ‘Experimental Theology,’ Parts 1, 2,” London Quarterly and Holborn Review 182 (April 1957): 99–109Google Scholar; 182 (July 1957): 199–210; Dreyer, , “Faith and Experience in the Thought of John Wesley” (n. 17 above), pp. 12–30Google Scholar; and Brantley, Richard E., Locke, Wesley and the Method of English Romanticism (Gainesville, Fla., 1984)Google Scholar.

56 Hoadly, Benjamin, The Nature of the Kingdom of God, or Church of Christ (London, 1717)Google Scholar.

57 Warburton, William, The Works of the Right Reverend William Warburton, 12 vols. (London, 1811), 7:170–71Google Scholar.

58 Paley, William, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, 26th ed., 2 vols. (London, 1817), 2:312–13Google Scholar.

59 Dreyer, Frederick, “Burke's Religion,” Studies in Burke and His Time 17 (1976): 199–212Google Scholar.