Samuel Wesley, whose mother was a niece of Thomas Fuller, the church historian, was in his earliest years thrown by family circumstances among the party of the dissenters; but he abandoned them in disgust, and entered at Exeter College, Oxford, in 1684. He afterwards obtained the livings of Epworth and Wroote, in Lincolnshire; and at the former of those places, June 17, 1703, was born his second son John. Six years afterwards, the house was set on fire by some refractory parishioners, and the boy was forgotten in the first confusion. He was presently discovered at a window, and by great exertion rescued at the very moment which promised to be his last. John Wesley saw the hand of Providence in this preservation, and made it in after life a subject of reflection and gratitude.

At the age of seventeen he was removed from the Charterhouse School, where he had made some proficiency, to Christchurch, Oxford; and the reputation by which he was then distinguished was that of a skilful logician and acute disputant. He was destined for the Church; and when the time for ordination arrived, after some faint scruples which he professed respecting the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed and the supposed Calvinistic tendency discoverable in the Articles had been removed, he entered into orders; and, as the book which had especially excited him on the most serious meditation to undertake that office was Jeremy Taylor’s ‘Rules of Holy Living and Dying,’ so was it with the deepest earnestness that his resolution was taken, and with a fixed determination to dedicate his life and his death, his whole thoughts, feelings and energies, to the service of God. Accordingly, in the selection of his acquaintance, he avoided all who did not embrace his principles; and having now obtained a fellowship at Lincoln College, he had the means of assembling round him a little society of religious friends or disciples, over whom his superior talents and piety gave him a natural influence. These, through their strict and methodical manner of living, acquired from their fellow-students the appellation of Methodists,—a name derived from the schools of ancient science, and thus destined, through its capricious application by a few thoughtless boys, to designate a large and vital portion of the Christian world.

About this time Wesley entered upon his parochial duties as his father’s curate at Epworth^[4], and presently afterwards, on the approaching death of that respectable person, he was strongly urged by his family to obtain, as he probably might have done, the next presentation for himself. Had he yielded to their solicitations, he might have passed his days in humble and peaceful obscurity; but his mind was too large for the limits of a country parish, and he already felt that he was intended to serve his Maker in a larger field. So, evading the arguments and withstanding the entreaties of his friends, he went back to reside for a while upon his fellowship at Oxford.

In the year 1735 he engaged in the more public exercise of the ministry in the character of a missionary. He set sail for the new colony of Georgia in America; he had the countenance of the civil authorities, and the object which he principally professed was the conversion of the Indians. His habits at this period were deeply tinged with ascetism. In his extreme self-denial and mortification, in respect to diet, clothing, and the ordinary comforts of life, he affected a more than monastic austerity, and realized the tales of eremitical fanaticism. He even declaimed against the study of classical authors, and discouraged, as sinful, any application to profane literature. And the extravagance of his zeal took a direction, such indeed as might be expected from his birth and education, but ill adapted to recommend him to the affections of the colonists. He adhered, with the obstinacy of a bigot, to the rubric of the Church; he refused to administer baptism except by immersion; he withheld the communion from a pious dissenter, unless he should first consent to be rebaptized; he declined to perform the burial service over another; and while he was exciting much enmity by this excessive strictness, he formed an indiscreet, though innocent, connexion with a young woman named Sophia Causton, which led him into difficulty, and occasioned, after some ludicrous and some very serious scenes, his sudden and not very creditable departure from America.

He remained there a year and nine months without making, so far as we learn, a single attempt to introduce Christianity among the Indians. He alleged that the Indians had expressed no wish for conversion; and if his conscience was indeed thus easily satisfied, he was yet very far removed from Christian perfection. Thus much indeed he certainly appears to have learnt from this first experiment on his own powers, that he was not yet qualified for the office of missionary; for he felt that he, who would have converted others, was not yet converted himself.

Wesley had sailed to America in the society of some Moravian missionaries, whose exalted piety had wrought deeply on his feelings, and given them some influence over his conduct. On his return to England, while he was already impressed with some sense of his own unworthiness, he became closely connected with Peter Boehler, a man of talents and authority, and a Moravian. Through his instructions Wesley became thoroughly convinced of his own unbelief, and began to pray, with all the ardour of his enthusiastic soul, for an instantaneous conversion. It was not long before he believed that this blessing was vouchsafed to him. On the evening of the 24th of May, 1738, as one of a society in Aldersgate Street was reading in his presence Luther’s ‘Preface to the Epistle to the Romans,’—“About a quarter before nine,” says Wesley, “while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed; I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” Howbeit, when he returned home, he had still some more struggles with the evil one, and was again buffeted by temptations; but he was now triumphant through earnest prayer. “And herein,” he adds, “I found the difference between this and my former state chiefly to consist. I was striving, yea fighting, with all my might under the law, as well as under grace; but then I was sometimes, if not often, conquered; now I am always conqueror.” This is justly considered as a remarkable day in the history of methodism; and Wesley himself attached so much importance to the change that had been wrought in him, that he scrupled not to proclaim, to the great scandal of some of his unregenerate friends, that he had never been a Christian until then.

His first act after his conversion was to set out on a visit to the celebrated Moravian colony, established under the patronage of Count Zinzendorf, at Herrnhut in Lusatia. There he employed a fortnight in examining the doctrines and discipline of that sect, and then returned, as he went, on foot. “I would gladly have spent my life here; but my Master calling me to labour in another part of the vineyard, I was constrained to take my leave of this happy place.” Yet he perceived clearly enough the imperfections in their method; and his intercourse with their noble patron was not such as to flatter the ambition, or even the independence, of his character. But he had acquired a knowledge of their system, and was thus qualified to apply to his own purposes any part of it which might hereafter serve them.

Wesley returned from his visit to Germany burning with religious enthusiasm, and presently entered into the path which Whitefield, his friend and disciple, had opened for him. The latter, who was a few years younger than Wesley, and like him educated at Oxford, and in orders, had begun a short time before to address the people in the open air, at Kingswood near Bristol. Wesley, after some little hesitation, proceeding from his respect for ecclesiastical practice and discipline, followed his example, and commenced his field-preaching in the same place. Here was the first indication of any approach to a separation from the Church, and thus in fact were laid the foundations of the sect of Methodists; yet such was not the design, perhaps, of either of its founders,—certainly not of Wesley. His scheme, if indeed he had then proposed to himself any fixed scheme, was rather to awaken the spirit of religion slumbering within the Church,—to revive the dying embers of vital Christianity,—to infuse into the languid system new life and energy,—to place before the eyes of the people the essentials of their faith, and to rouse their religious instructors to a proper view of their profession and sense of their duty. It was rather an order than a sect that he designed to found; an order subsidiary to the Church, in rivalry indeed with the ancient branches of the Establishment, but filled with no hostile spirit, and having no final object but its regeneration. Such as were the Mendicants in respect to the Roman Church; severe in their reproaches against the indolence and degeneracy of the clergy, whether regular or secular; severe in their own professions, and for a season in their piety and practice too; making their earnest appeals to the lower classes, and turning their influence with them to their own aggrandizement; yet so far removed from schism, so far from harbouring any ill designs against the papacy, as to be the warmest zealots of the Vatican, and the most faithful ministers of all its projects:—such (so far as the change in civil and ecclesiastical principles would permit) the disciples of Wesley were probably designed to have become, in respect to the English Church, by the original intention of their master. At any rate, it was certain that the emulation, which he could not fail to rouse, would in the end be serviceable to the interests of true religion; and it is very possible that, in the depth of his enthusiasm, he held every other consideration to be entirely subordinate to this.

The first effects of his public preaching have not been surpassed by any thing that we read in the history of fanaticism. On one occasion, as he was inculcating the doctrine of universal redemption, “immediately one, and another, and another, sank to the earth; they dropped down on every side as thunderstruck.” Sometimes, as he began to preach, numbers of his believers fell into violent fits and lay struggling in convulsions around him. At other times his voice was lost amidst the groans and cries of his distracted hearers. Wesley encouraged the storm which he had raised; he shared the fanaticism which he imparted; and in these deplorable spectacles of human imbecility he saw nothing but the hand of God confirming by miraculous interposition the holiness of his mission.

But however elated the preacher might be by these spiritual triumphs, however confident in the immediate aid and favour of God, he did not neglect such human means as occurred to him for securing and advancing his conquests. At a very early period he divided his followers at Bristol into male and female bands, for purposes of mutual confession and prayer, in imitation of one part of the Moravian discipline. The establishment of love feasts was equally early. Presently Friday was set apart by him for prayer and fasting; and a house was erected (likewise at Bristol) for the meeting of his disciples. Things were already advancing towards schism. The directors of the church discouraged the extravagance of the teacher, and pitied the madness of the people. Many clergymen, with praiseworthy discretion, refused their pulpits to men who might turn them to such strange purposes. And this gave a pretext to Wesley for seeking means of instructing the people independent of the Church.

In the mean time he discovered that there were differences between himself and those with whom he had hitherto been most closely connected—differences the more difficult to reconcile, because they concerned points of doctrine—the one with the Moravians, the other with Whitefield and his followers. For the arrangement of the former, Count Zinzendorf came in person to England, and had some conferences with Wesley—but he no longer found in him a timid disciple, or obsequious admirer. Wesley defended fearlessly the opinions which he professed, concerning Christian perfection and the means of grace; and as no concession was possible on the other side, the controversy ended in an entire and final breach between him and the Moravians. The dispute with Whitefield, occasioned by the predestinarian doctrines now nakedly advanced by him, was conducted with considerable bitterness, and came to a similar termination. Not that the separation was in this case so complete as to preclude a temporary reconciliation, which was effected some years afterwards; but the difference was clearly proved to be real and irreconcileable; and the permanent division of methodism may in fact be dated from the year 1740.

From this time Wesley, having shaken off two connexions which had embarrassed more than they had strengthened him, became the sole head and mover of a considerable religious party: and he immediately applied his talents to give it organization and perpetuity. He divided his followers into classes, each under the direction of a leader. He caused pecuniary contributions to be collected from the individuals composing those classes, so as to establish a permanent fund for the support of his society, bearing an exact proportion to the number of its members. He appointed itinerant preachers, and instructed them to preach in the open air, under the plea that they were excluded from the pulpits of the Church. And lastly and reluctantly,—for he still retained much affection for that Church, and could not be blind to the consequences of the measure,—he committed the office of preaching to laymen. In the first instance, indeed, he conceded to them no more than the privilege of expounding the Gospel; but seeing how soon they deviated from exposition into preaching, he thought it wiser at once to acknowledge the latter as a part of his system, and thus acquire the power of preventing, as far as might be, its abuse. These men were, for the most part, humbly born and ill educated. But their zeal supplied, in popular estimation, the place of learning; and their habits of poverty enabled them to endure the privations incident to the missionary of a new sect. Thus were their labours attended with great success; and this was essentially promoted by a very sage provision of Wesley, that no confession of faith should be required on admission into his community. The door was thus open to all mankind. The new member was never called upon to secede from the body to which he had previously belonged. He might bear what denomination he chose among the visible members of Christ’s Church, so long as he renounced his vices and his pleasures, and engaged with a regenerate heart in the work of his salvation.

At this time (about 1742) Wesley and his disciples attained that degree of importance, which qualified them to become objects of persecution. It was among the lower classes that they had thrown the torch of fanaticism, and it was from the same that the outrages which now assailed them proceeded. On two or three occasions the person of the master himself was in some danger from popular fury; and it may perhaps have been preserved by his singular presence of mind, and the awe which he knew how to inspire into his fellow creatures. But these violent eruptions of indignation, as they were founded on no semblance of reason, and opposed by the civil authorities, were partial and of short duration; and as the rumours of them were much exaggerated at the time, their influence, as far as they had any, was probably favorable to the progress of methodism. Some calumnies that were raised against Wesley from more respectable quarters, touching his tendency to papacy and his disaffection to the reigning dynasty, arising from entire misunderstanding or pure malevolence, were immediately repelled, and speedily silenced and forgotten.

In the year 1744 Wesley invited his brother Charles, four other clergymen who co-operated with him, and four of his lay-preachers to a Conference: this was the origin of the assembly or council, which was afterwards held annually, and became the governing body, for the regulation of the general affairs of the society. Four years subsequently, a school was opened at Kingswood, for the education chiefly of the sons of the preachers. In the extreme severity of some of the rules which he imposed on this establishment, Wesley seems to have been guided by an ambitious design to set apart his own people from the rest of the community, rather than by the common principles of education, or the common feelings of nature. And so jealous was he of any other influence being exerted on his children, that they were not allowed to be absent from the school, not even for a day, from their first admission till their final removal from it. Notwithstanding however the peculiarity and, as he thought, the purity of his system, he met with many difficulties and reverses, in his first attempts to place it on a permanent foundation.

We may pass over the circumstances of his unfortunate marriage, which ended, after a few months of discord and vexation, in a hasty but final separation. His wife, after proving herself his foulest slanderer and bitterest enemy, presently deserted him. “Non eam reliqui (says Wesley)—non dimisi—non revocabo.” “I have not left her—I have not put her away—I will not recall her.” The same calmness of temper and perfect self-possession, which so remarkably distinguished him in his public proceedings, seem not to have abandoned him even in the more pressing severity of his domestic trials.

Neither have we space to notice the controversies which he carried on with two of the most eminent divines of his time, bishops Lavington and Warburton; since Wesley, though engaged in dispute with the prelates of the Church, and very frequent and bitter in the reproaches which he cast against its ministers, still adhered to its communion, and had yet committed no act declaratory of absolute independence. But later in life he advanced farther towards schism. First of all, as he did not assume for his lay-preachers the power of administering the sacrament, he caused several to be ordained by one Erasmus, a Greek Bishop of Arcadia—thus evading the spiritual authority, which he could not contest, and which he did not yet venture to dispense with. But this was a feeble resource, unworthy of his courage, and unavailing to his purposes. A stronger measure followed. His disciples were very numerous in America, and it was desirable to send out to them a head, invested with the highest spiritual authority. Dr. Coke, an “evangelical” clergyman, was selected for that office, and Wesley took upon himself to invest him with the requisite dignity. These letters of ordination are dated September 2, 1784, and announce in substance, that Wesley thought himself providentially called, at that time, to set apart some persons for the work of the ministry in America; and therefore, under the protection of Almighty God, and with a single eye to his glory, had that day set apart, as a superintendent, by the imposition of his hands and prayer, Thomas Coke, a doctor of civil law, and a presbyter of the Church of England.

In this affair, it was weak in Wesley to plead (as he did) a seasonable conviction, that in the true primitive Church the order of bishop and presbyter were one and the same—for if Wesley exercised as presbyter episcopal authority, so, under the same plea, might Dr. Coke have exercised it, without any imposition of Wesley’s hands. This was a shallow pretence, which could scarcely have deceived himself. The fact was, that Wesley, now acting as the sole head of a separate religious party, assumed the prerogatives of the highest ecclesiastical dignity; and resolved that all the privileges of his ministers should emanate from himself. This is properly considered as a second important epoch in the history of methodism.

Wesley was then eighty-one years old, and he lived for seven years longer, in the perfect enjoyment of his health and exercise of his faculties, almost to the very end. He died March 2, 1791: leaving no property, except the copyright and current editions of his works, which he bequeathed for the use of the connexion. The whole number of his followers, at the time of his decease, is stated at about 135,000, of whom more than 57,600 were Americans. In the United Kingdoms, his principal success had been in some of the large towns in England and in Ireland. But he complains of the coldness with which his preaching was, for the most part, received by the agricultural classes generally, and by the entire Scotch nation—facts which may however be accounted for, without supposing any religious obduracy either in the one or the other.

Thus did Wesley live to fix and consolidate, by the calmer deliberation of his later years, the effects, which might otherwise have been transient, of his early enthusiasm. It required many talents, as well as many virtues, to accomplish this—and Wesley was abundantly endowed with both. The natural ardour and eagerness of his character was moderated by great sagacity and calm judgment, a conciliating and forgiving temper. If he loved power, he did not covet money; but bestowed all that he had upon the poor. Doubtless his original object was simply to awaken the dormant spirit of vital Christianity; and if spiritual ambition, fomented by the general discouragement which he received from the clergy, seduced him too readily—though reluctantly and in opposition to his own professions, and even to his own intentions—into what did in fact amount to schism; yet the breach is not even now irreparable, if only his better spirit shall preside in the councils of his disciples, and be met with a kindred feeling of religious moderation by the directors of the Established Church.