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John Wesley and the Community of Goods

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2016

John Walsh
John Walsh*
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Oxford
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Extract

And all that believed were together, and had all things common. And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. And they continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.

Acts 2. 44–5.

Among the strangest of the rumours circulating about early Methodism was the charge that it promoted the notion of Christian communism—‘the community of goods’. In the early summer of 1739 Lord Egmonc, one of the Georgia Trustees, got wind of the story and after hearing Whiteficld preach at Blackheath pressed him whether, among other eccentricities, he held that ‘all things should be in common’. The same year two anti-Methodist pamphlets raised the same issue, and in 1740 it surfaced again in the papers when another former Oxford Methodist, Benjamin Ingham, was accused by his local vicar of helping to foment a violent riot of Dewsbury cloth workers by ‘preaching up … a community of goods, as was practised by the Primitive Christians’. Ingham was said to urge a sharing of wealth so drastic that his brother had remarked in disgust, ‘if I mind our Ben, he would preach me out of all I have’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History Subsidia , Volume 7: Protestant Evangelicalism , 1990 , pp. 25 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1990 

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References

1 HMC, Egmont Diary, 3 (London, 1923), p. 69.

2 Bowman, W., The Imposture of Methodism Displayed (Wakefield, 1740), p. 61Google Scholar.

3 The Weekly Miscellany (London), 26 July 1740.

4 See Viner, J., The Role of Providence in the Social Order (Philadelphia, 1972), p. 88Google Scholar.

5 The Whole Duty of Man (1748 edn.), p. 382; Sprat, T., Sermons Preached on Several Occasions (London, 1710), p. 93Google Scholar.

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7 Newton, J., Works, 6 vols (London, 1816), 3, p. 83Google Scholar. Cf.Scott, T., The Holy Bible with Explanatory Notes (London, 1823), 5, p. 32Google Scholar; Simeon, C., Horae Homileticae, 16 vols (London, 1819-28), 8, pp. 268–70Google Scholar; Sumner, J. B., A Practical Exposition of the Acts of the Apostles (London, 1836), pp. 75–6Google Scholar.

8 Whitby, D., A Paraphrase and Commentary on the New Testament, 2 vols (London, 1703), 1, p. 609Google Scholar. For the similar interpretation of a modern scholar, see Goppelt, L., Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Times, translation (London, 1970), pp. 49–50Google Scholar.

9 Burkitt, W., Expository Notes on the New Testament, 11th edn. (London, 1739)Google Scholar, unpaginated, on Acts 2.43.

10 See Bishop Burnet‘s comments on this Article; Burnet, G., An Exposition of the Thirty Nine Articles (London, 1699), pp. 391–2Google Scholar.

11 As, for instance, in Lewis Stephens, The Great Duty of Charity (London, 1721); Finch, R. P., A Sermon Preached before the Sons of the Clergy (London, 1768)Google Scholar.

12 See Hengel, M., Property and Riches in the Early Church (London, 1974)Google Scholar.

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15 Reeves, W., The Apologies of Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Minutius Felix, 2 vols (London, 1709), 1Google Scholar, Epistle Dedicatory.

16 See the valuable observations on this theme prefacing Wesley, J., Sermons I, ed. Outler, A. C. (1984), pp. 59, 74–6Google Scholar. Professor Outler’s magnificent four-volume edition of the Sermons comprises volumes 1–4 of The Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley (Nashville, 1984). This is a continuation of The Oxford Edition of Wesley’s Works, in which several of the pro jected 34 volumes appeared between 1975 and 1983. This composite edition is to be distinguished from the previous standard edition, The Works of the Rev John Wesley, edited by Thomas Jackson, of which I have used the 3rd edn., 14 vols (London, 1872), widely available in the Zondervan photographic reproduction. All references to Wesley‘s Works are to the Jackson edition and are indicated as such.

Professor Ted Campbell of Duke University is currently working on patristic influences on Wesley’s thought.

17 Wesley, Works, ed. Jackson, 13, p. 272.

18 Wesley, Letters 1 1721–1739, ed. F. Baker (Oxford, 1980), p. 246 (vol. 25 in The Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley). So far two volumes of Letters have appeared in this fine edition, covering the period 1721–55. For those of later years I have usee Wesley, J., Letters, ed. Telford, J., 8 vols (London, 1931)Google Scholar.

19 See Heitzenrater, R., John Wesley and the Oxford Methodists, 1725–1735 (Duke Ph.D. thesis, 1972), pp. 160Google Scholar ff.; Baker, F., John Wesley and the Church of England (London, 1970), pp. 31–3Google Scholar.

20 Wesley, Sermons I, p. 74.

21 The Christian Library, ed.J. Wesley, 15 vols, 2nd edn. (London, 1819–21), 1, Preface, p. iii.

22 For Chrysostom, see Wesley, , Letters I 1721–1739, p. 171Google Scholar. For the influence of‘Macarius’ and Ephrem Syrus on Wesley, see John Wesley, ed. A. C. Outler (New York, 1964), pp. 9–10, 30–1, 251–2.

23 Cave, W., Primitive Christianity (London, 1673)Google Scholar; Horneck, A., The Happy Ascetick…to which is added a Letter to a Person of Quality concerning the Holy Lives of the Primitive Christians (London, 1681)Google Scholar; Fleury, Claude, An Historical Account of the Manners and Behaviour of the Christians in the Church (London, 1698)Google Scholar. For Wesley‘s abridgements of Horneck and Fleury, see below, nn. 26 and 29.

24 Wesley, Works, 8, ed. Jackson, pp. 250–63.

25 Ibid., pp. 340–7; see the comment in Sermons I, p. 74.

26 [ Fleury, C.], The Manners of the Ancient Christians, extracted from a French Author [by Wesley, J.], (Bristol, 1749), p. 7Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., p.21.

28 Fleury, Historical Account, p. 73.

29 Horneck, A., Letter to a Person of Quality concerning the Lives of the Primitive Christians, abridged in Wesley’s Christian Library, 16, p. 425Google Scholar.

30 Wesley, Letters 1, p. 352.

31 Nelson, R., An Address to Persons of Quality and Estate (London, 1715), pp. 229–30Google Scholar.

32 By the 1730s the authority of the Fathers was yielding ground to the claims of ‘reason’. Antiquity had suffered in the ‘battle of the ancients and the moderns’ which had been taking place in the previous decades; see Bennett, , ‘Patristic tradition’, pp. 72–4Google Scholar.

33 Law, W., A Practical Treatise upon Christian Perfection (London, 1726), p. 191Google Scholar.

34 Ibid., p. 99.

35 Ibid., p. 134.

36 Law, W., The Spirit of Prayer, part i (London, 1750), p. 86Google Scholar.

37 Ibid.

38 Trapp, J., The Nature, Folly, Sin and Danger of being Righteous overmuch, 2nd edn. (London, 1739), p. 15Google Scholar.

39 Brownsword, J., The Case of the rich young Man in the Gospel all and giving it to the Poor… endeavoured to be set in a clear light (London, 1739), p. 11Google Scholar.

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41 Overton, J. H., William Law, Nonjuror and Mystic (London, 1881), p. 80Google Scholar.

42 Wesley, , Journal, ed. Curnock, N., 8 vols (London, 1909-16), 1, pp. 468–9Google Scholar.

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44 Wesley, , Sermons II, pp. 268Google Scholar ff.

45 Ibid., pp. 286, 295; Sermons III, p. 619.

46 Wesley, , Sermons II, p. 560Google Scholar.

47 Wesley, Sermons II, p. 286; Wesley, J., The Appeals to Men of Reason and Religion, ed. Cragg, G. R. (Oxford, 1975) [vol. II in Bicentennial edn of Works], p. 87Google Scholar; Wesley, J., Letters, ed. Telford, 5, pp. 108–9Google Scholar.

48 North, E. M., Early Methodist Philanthropy (1914), p. 122Google Scholar n.

49 Wesley, Sermons III, p. 276. He conceded that ‘allowance’ should be made for those who owed considerable sums of money to others; ‘their affairs are frequently so entangled that it is not possible to determine with any exactness how much they are worth’; Sermons IV, p. 179.

50 Wesley, Sermons I, p. 627.

51 Wesley, Appeals, pp. 90–1. The poem was reprinted in Charles Wesley’s Hymns and Sacred Poems, 2 vols (Bristol, 1749), 2, p. 337, and in The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, ed. G. Osborn, II vols (London, 1868–77), 5, P. 480.

52 Wesley, Sermons II, p. 455.

53 Wesley, Appeals, p. 91.

54 Wesley, Sermons II, p. 455.

55 For the ‘Mystery of Godliness’ see I Timothy 3. 16; for the ‘Mystery of Iniquity’, II Thessalonians 2. 7. For their place in Wesley’s view of early Christianity see his sermon on ‘The Mystery of Iniquity’ in Sermons II, pp. 452–70.

56 Ibid., pp. 456–7.

57 Ibid., p. 460.

58 Ibid., p. 463.

59 Wesley, Sermons III, p. 582; Letters I, p. 405.

60 Wesley, Letters I, p. 441.

61 Wesley, Sermons I, p. 617.

62 Wesley, Journal, 2, pp. 117, 122, 125.

63 Beck, W. and Ball, T. F., The London Friends’ Meeting (London, 1869), pp. 361–74Google Scholar; Bolam, D. W., Unbroken Community (Saffron Walden, 1952), pp. 2–17Google Scholar.

64 PWHS, II (1924), p. 29.

65 Wesley, Sermons I, p. 622. Jesus ‘saw it needful to enjoin this in one particular case, that of the young rich ruler. But he never laid it down for a general rule, to all rich men, in all succeeding generations’. Wesley dissociated himself firmly from John of Leyden; Works, ed. Jackson, 8, p. 445.

66 Reeves, W., Apologies, I, pp. 333, 335Google Scholar.

67 Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, 2 vols (London, 1862), I, p. 23.

68 Wesley declined to give detailed rules to the members of the select societies because they had ‘the best rule of all in their hearts (the rule of love)’; Works, ed. Jackson, 8, p. 261. Much the same is said by Wesley of the first Christians at Jerusalem; Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament (London, 1755), p. 295. This suggests that he saw a correlation between the two groups.

69 Wesley, Works, ed. Jackson, 8, p. 260.

70 It is conceivable that Wesley read into Acts 4. 31, which described those who initiated the original sharing of goods at Jerusalem as ‘filled with the Holy Ghost’, the implication that they were entirely sanctified.

71 Wesley, , Sermons I, pp. 19–80Google Scholar. The sermon was preached on 24 August 1744.

72 Wesley, , Notes Upon the New Testament, p. 295Google Scholar. Wesley’s suggestion that early Christian communalism disappeared because the love sustaining it grew cold resembles his explanation for the disappearance of the miraculous gifts—the charismata—possessed by the first Christians. There is some evidence to suggest that Wesley did not rule out a restoration of some of these. Wesley cites Chrysostom in support of the idea that lack of faith was a cause of the withering of the miraculous powers of healing; Letters, ed. Telford, 2, p. 313.

73 Wesley, , Notes upon the New Testament, p. 295Google Scholar.

74 Wesley, , Letters, ed. Telford, 8, p. 238Google Scholar.

75 For this episode, see Gunter, S. W., The Limits of ‘Love Divine’ (Nashville, 1989), pp. 215–6Google Scholar; Tyerman, L., The Life of the Rev. J. Wesley, 3 vols, 2nd edn. (London, 1872), 2, pp. 431–66Google Scholar.

76 Wesley, , Sermons III, pp. 265Google Scholar ff.

77 See Outler’s comment in Wesley, Sermons III, p. 265 n. on the long history of this distinction between the ‘two orders’. It is clearly visible in Law’s, William Serious Call, p. 134Google Scholar, where it is attributed to Eusebius. See also Law’s Christian Perfection, pp. 12–13.

78 Wesley, , Sermons III, p. 275Google Scholar.

79 Ibid, p. 276.

80 The Rules of the Band Societies contain the injunction ‘to give alms of such things as you possess and that to the uttermost’; Wesley, , Works, ed. Jackson, 8, p. 274Google Scholar.

81 For Methodist philanthropy in Wesley’s lifetime, see Marquardt, M., Praxis und Prinzipien der Sozialethik John Wesleys (Göttingen, 1977)Google Scholar; Warner, W.J., The Wesleyan Movement in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1930), pp. 204–47Google Scholar; Wearmouth, R. F., Methodism and the Common People in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1945), pp. 205–16Google Scholar; Hynson, L. O., To Reform the Nation. Theological Foundations of Wesley’s Ethics (Grand Rapids, 1984)Google Scholar. For Quaker loan funds, see Lloyd, A., Quaker Social History 1669–1738 (London, 1950), p. 40Google Scholar.

82 Wesley, , Worla, ed. Jackson, 8, p. 262Google Scholar.

83 Wesley, , Journal, 3, p. 501Google Scholar.

84 See Kingdon, R. M., ‘Laissez Faire or Government Control: a Problem for John Wesley’, ChH, 26 (1957). pp. 342–52Google Scholar.

85 Wesley, , Letters, ed. Telford, 4, p. 291Google Scholar.

86 Howell Harris’s Visits to London, ed. T Beynon (Aberystwyth, 1960), p. 89. Cf. Wesley, , Notes on the New Testament, p. 305Google Scholar; ‘the Church being then like a family’. See Meeks, W. A., The First Urban Christians (New Haven and London, 1983), pp. 86–8Google Scholar, for a discussion of this theme.

87 Wesley, , Sermons IV, p. 93Google Scholar.

88 The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on the Acts of the Apostles, trans., A Library of the Fathers, 2 vols (Oxford, 1851–2), pp. 161–3.

89 Bolam, , Unbroken Community, p. 2Google Scholar.

90 Wesley, , Sermons II, p. 492Google Scholar.

91 Ibid., pp. 493, 525.

92 Wesley, , Sermons III, p. 514Google Scholar; Sermons II, p. 562.

93 McKendrick, N., Brewer, J., and Plumb, J. H., eds, The Birth of a Consumer Society (London, 1982), pp. 13–33Google Scholar.

94 Smith, Adam, The Wealth of Nations, ed. Cannan, E., 2 vols (London, 1961), 2, p. 179Google Scholar.

95 Wesley, , Sermons IV, pp. 95–6Google Scholar.

96 Wesley, , Sermons II, p. 561Google Scholar.

97 Wesley, , Sermons III, p. 260Google Scholar; IV, p. 183.

98 Tyerman, , Life of J. Wesley, 3, p. 621Google Scholar.

99 Wesley, , Sermons III, p. 254Google Scholar.

100 Wesley, , Sermons IV, p. 93Google Scholar.

101 Wesley, , Sermons II, p. 525Google Scholar. For his reactions to the French Revolution, see Letters, ed. Telford, 8, pp. 199, 204.

102 Wesley, , Sermons II, pp. 493–5Google Scholar.