John Wesley
“No single figure influenced so many minds, no single voice touched so many hearts. No other man did such a life’s work for England.” These words are an apt description of the person of John Wesley; a man whose life spanned the eighteenth century and left an indelible mark on the pages of church history.
The fifteenth of nineteen children, John was born in 1703 to Samuel and Susannah Wesley. His father was a poor but scholarly and godly man who served as rector at Epsworth. His mother, Susannah, a godly woman and devoted mother, disciplined her children well, requiring six hours of study each day in languages, history, and mathematics, and regulated their activities by the clock, a habit which stayed with John throughout his life.
John graduated from Oxford University in 1724, after which he taught Greek for a while, and assisted his father in the ministry for three years. When he returned to Oxford, he joined the Holy Club, which his younger brother, Charles, had formed. They attempted to follow the method of study recommended by the University, and thus were branded “Methodists” by the jealous but lazier students. This club gradually increased in number, and their activities became increasingly religious. They set aside two days a week for fasting and prayer, visited the sick, gave all they could to charity, and spent much time in Bible study and self-examination. So many good works, and yet John had no peace with God.
Just before Samuel Wesley died in 1735, he urged John to be certain of his salvation. “Son, the inward witness is the strongest proof of Christianity.” John realized he had no inner witness. The same year he went to Georgia as a missionary to the Indians, hoping to earn his own salvation. Crossing to America, a storm nearly sank their ship and John realized he was afraid to die. Moravian Christians on the same ship peacefully sang hymns through the storm, and he wondered whence they got their strength. The leader of the group pressed John about his salvation. These events deeply impressed him and he later wrote, “I came to America to convert the Indians, but who shall convert me? I have but a fair summer religion.”
After two years in Georgia he returned, a failure, to England. Charles, his brother, had fallen ill and when John arrived to comfort him, Peter Bohler, a Moravian, was questioning Charles about his faith. Two days later, at Peter’s urging to “preach faith until you have faith,” John preached to a condemned prisoner on the way to the gallows. The prisoner believed and the transformation from fear to confidence startled John. “When will it happen to me?” John wondered.
Charles was saved May 20, 1738, and on the 24th John unwillingly went to a meeting of a Christian society on Aldersgate Street. While someone was reading from Luther’s preface to Romans, the truth suddenly became crystal clear to John. He wrote, “...through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed...I did trust in Christ alone for salvation.”
Following his conversion Wesley lost no time. He visited Count Zinzendorf, the leader of the Moravians, for a short while in Germany. Then he worked together with George Whitefield until George left for America. It was not long before the churches closed their doors to John with his evangelical message and he was preaching in the fields and streets just like Whitefield. He rode from town to town, preaching several times every day.
To establish the hundreds of new believers, he organized societies in each town, and assigned the people to smaller groups under a leader responsible to Wesley. Charles wrote numerous hymns, which welded the societies together in fellowship and doctrine. From these groups John appointed some as lay preachers and evangelists, which multiplied his ministry. In 1769 he sent two of these to the American colonies, and later Francis Asbury followed as general superintendent. Not counting his American followers, before his death there were 130,000 enrolled in his societies.
John Wesley must have been the busiest man in England for the 53 years of his life after his conversion. He rode on horseback a quarter of a million miles, preached 42,000 sermons and wrote over 200 books. He rose every morning at 4:00 a.m. or earlier, often to preach before dawn to men on the way to work. God gifted him with stamina and health, so that at 80 years he could say “I feel as fit as when I was 25.”
All this work that John did had a permanent effect on England. Historians credit him with saving England from revolution of the type which rocked France. The nation was given “a moral and spiritual bath in the century when she needed it the most.” Though he himself never left the Church of England, he is credited with the founding of the Methodist Church, which is still the largest single denomination in America.
The only blemishes we might find in his career would be his unhappy marriage and his Arminian doctrine. He married at 47, to a widow with four children; however, he was too set in his ways to keep her. It was over doctrine that he parted ways with the Moravians and George Whitefield. Wesley preached that sinless perfection might be attained, and that God did not predestinate any to Hell. He declared that such a decree never existed and if it did none but the Devil could thank God for it. In spite of this stand, he and Whitefield remained personal friends, showing something of his measure.
Philip Schaff has said, “A greater man and more abundant in self-denying and apostolic labors has not risen in the Protestant churches since the death of Calvin than John Wesley, whose ‘parish was the world.’ He is the most spectacular man the Anglo-Saxon race has produced.” John Wesley died in 1791.