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Imprisonment and Release in the Writings of the Wesleys

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Tim Macquiban
Tim Macquiban*
Affiliation:
Sarum College, Salisbury
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Extract

This essay focuses on repentance, with respect to one particular aspect of the work and witness of the Methodists as exemplified in the writings of their founders, John and Charles Wesley (1703–91 and 1707–88 respectively). A predominant motif of their preaching and hymn-writing came from the experience of working with condemned prisoners in Oxford and London gaols, an experience which became paradigmatic for the evangelical conversionist stance of the movement. The metaphors of imprisonment and freedom were realities arising from the physical conditions of the few, pressed upon a general population perceived to be languishing in spiritual stupor and captivity as the kairos of Gospel revelation called all those under sentence of death to repentance: This is the time, no more delay; This is the Lord’s appointed day’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 40: Retribution, Repentance, and Reconciliation , 2004 , pp. 240 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2004

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References

1 Hymns and Psalms, prepared by representatives of the British Methodist Conference (Peterborough, 1983), 460.

2 Snyder, T. Richard, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Punishment (Grand Rapids, MI, 2001), 2 Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., 11–15.

4 Griffith, Lee, The Fall of the Prison (Grand Rapids, MI, 1993), 188 Google Scholar.

5 McConville, Sean, A History of English Prison Administration, 1750–1877 (London, 1981), 49 Google Scholar.

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7 Ibid., 74, with reference to Kingsmill in 1854.

8 Rule, John, Albion’s People: English Society 1714–1815 (Harlow, 1992), 227 Google Scholar.

9 Ibid., 240, 245.

10 Hay, Douglas, Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1975), 13 Google Scholar.

11 ‘Clive Emsley, Crime and Society in England 1750–1900 (2nd edn, London, 1996), 259.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid., 260.

14 Hay, Albion’s Tree, 87.

15 McConville, English Prison Administration, 74.

16 Emsley, Crime, 10.

17 Maldwyn Edwards, Family Circle: a Study of the Epworth Household in Relation to John and Charles Wesley (London, 1949; repr. 1961), 19.

18 Edwards, Family Circle, 103.

19 [Samuel Wesley the Younger], The Prisons Open’d: a Poem occasion’d by the late glorious proceedings of the Committee appointed to enquire into the State of the Goals [sic] of this Kingdom (London, 1729), tide page.

20 Ibid., 8.

21 The Journal of the Revd Charles Wesley, ed. Thomas Jackson, 2 vols (London, 1849), 1 : x.

22 Ibid., viii-xxvii.

23 Heitzenrater, Richard, Wesley and the People Called Methodists (Nashville, TN, 1995), 40 Google Scholar.

24 Edwards, Family Circle, 35.

25 This idea was expressed in an unpublished paper by Peter Forsaith, ‘Christmas Dinners for Wretched Sinners: the Wesleys’ Ministry in Oxford Castle’, delivered at the Research Seminar, Wesley and Methodist Studies Centre, Westminster Institute, Oxford, in October 2002.

26 The Sermons of Charles Wesley: a Critical Edition, ed. Kenneth G. C. Newport (Oxford, 2001), 48.

27 Ibid., 132.

28 Ibid., 57.

29 Ibid., 117–23, 130–45, 303–6.

30 Ibid., 117.

31 Ibid., 120.

32 Ibid.

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35 Rattenbury, Charles Wesley’s Hymns, 253.

36 Ibid., 240–2.

37 Watson, English Hymn, 222.

38 CH 125, vv. 4–5.

39 CH 28, vv. 1, 3.

40 CH 482, V. 3.

41 Seen. 21.

42 Sermons of Charles Wesley, 48, 57.

43 Ibid., 57.

44 Ibid., 144. The quotation is printed in verse, perhaps because it came from a hymn.

45 Ibid., 213.

46 Ibid.

47 The Works of John Wesley: the Bicentennial Edition, ed. Albert C. Outler et al, 26 vols (Nashville, TN, 1975-), 1: 122–4.

48 Ibid., 1:258.

49 Ibid., 1:253–8.

50 Ibid., 1: 386 (‘Sermon on the Mount’ sermon).

51 Ibid., 4: 525.

52 Ibid., 4: 371–7.

53 Heitzenrater, People Called Methodists, 156–7.

54 Church, Leslie F., More About the Early Methodist People (London, 1949), 201 Google Scholar; The Work of John Wesley, ed. Thomas Jackson, 14. vols (London, 1831; tepr. Grand Rapids, Ml, 1958–9), 11:179–82.

55 [John Fletcher], The Penitent Thief: or, a Narrative of two women fearing God, who visited in prison, a highway-man, executed at Stafford, April the 3rd, 1773, with a letter to a condemned malefactor (London, 1773), 35–6.

56 Ibid.

57 See Lewis, D. M., s.v., in Larsen, Timothy, ed.. Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals (Leicester, 2003), 721–5 Google Scholar.