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Overview
A Real Christian: The Life of John Wesley fills a void in available books in Wesleyan studies by providing a brief, solid biography that focuses on Wesley himself. While exploring Wesley's ancestry, birth, death, and every major biographical and theological event between, Collins also explores the theme of John Wesley's spiritual growth and maturation.
Wesley came to the conclusion that real Christians are those whose inward (and outward) lives have been transformed by the bountiful sanctifying grace of God -- what he termed real Christianity--and this he strove to obtain for himself. Real Christianity, as Wesley understood it, embraces both works of piety and mercy, the person and the social.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781426721953 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Abingdon Press |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
A Real Christian
The Life of John Wesley
By Kenneth J. Collins
Abingdon Press
Copyright © 1999 Abingdon PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4267-2195-3
CHAPTER 1
The Family Circle
Samuel Wesley was born at Whitchurch in 1662, the year in which the Church of England enforced the Act of Uniformity and thereby required the use of the Book of Common Prayer in all her parishes. Compelled by conscience and by Puritan sensibilities, both Samuel's father and grandfather lost their positions in the church during Bartholomew-tide of that year.
Growing up in a dissenting home, Samuel was serious, devout, and keenly interested in religious affairs. Like many other children of dissent, he was educated at the Free School, Dorchester, until he was fifteen. While still a boy, however, Samuel rejected the Puritan heritage of his family, having considered these matters very carefully, and in 1683 made his way to Oxford and enrolled at Exeter College as a servitor—a poor scholar who would meet his costs, in part, by serving older students. A good student with a scholarly bent, Samuel received his bachelor of arts degree in June 1688, and his masters degree from Cambridge in 1694. His acceptance into the Anglican Church was reaffirmed, and his gifts and graces for ministry were acknowledged in his ordination to deacon in 1688, by Dr. Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, and to the priesthood in 1689 by Dr. Compton, the Bishop of London.
As a young man, in 1682 Samuel Wesley had the good fortune to meet Susanna Annesley, perhaps for the first time at the wedding of Susanna's sister to John Dunton, the noted bookseller. That Samuel and Susanna themselves would eventually marry comes as no surprise when we consider their similar background and interests. Like Samuel, Susanna was raised in a dissenting home. Her father, Samuel Annesley, was a principal leader of the Nonconformists and was Vicar of St. Giles, Cripplegate, until he was ejected in 1662. Like Samuel, Susanna decided, as a youth, to make her way back to the Anglican Church to the chagrin of her family. And like Samuel, Susanna was both pious and disciplined, giving herself only "as much time for recreation as [she] spent in private devotion."
In 1691, shortly after their marriage, Samuel and Susanna moved to the rectory at South Ormsby in Lincolnshire, a position secured for them through the good graces of the Marquis of Normanby. During this period Samuel added to his meager income by publishing in the Athenian Gazette and elsewhere. Around 1696 or so, the Wesleys moved from South Ormsby to Epworth in Lincolnshire where Samuel served as rector. There is evidence that Samuel believed he had received this appointment at the request of Queen Mary herself in appreciation for a work that he had published in defense of the Glorious Revolution. However, since Queen Mary died in 1694, nearly two years before the appointment at Epworth, the queen must have expressed her intention on this matter shortly before her demise—if Samuel's reckoning was indeed correct.
At any rate, Samuel, who was a Tory in politics, not only affirmed the divine right of monarchs, but believed, as we have just seen, in the legitimacy of the rule of William of Orange and of his queen, Mary, the daughter of James II of England. Samuel's young wife, however, of equally strong convictions, was a Jacobite at heart and held that James II and his son James III and not King William were the lawful rulers of England. One evening in 1702, Samuel observed that Susanna had not said "Amen" to his prayer for the king. Such silence roiled Samuel, and upon learning of Susanna's Jacobite sympathies he rashly vowed, "Sukey, if that be the case, we must part, for if we have two Kings, we must have two beds." With the kind of stubbornness that emerges only from a deeply principled person, Samuel abandoned his wife and children and headed for London. For how long Samuel forsook his family is a point well disputed, but what is clear is that the neglectful husband and father eventually returned to the Epworth rectory without having received the assurances from Susanna that he had demanded in his vow. On June 17 (28), 1703,3 within a year of Samuel's return, John Wesley was born.
The Wesley family was large, even by eighteenth-century standards, and consisted of nineteen children, of whom John was the fifteenth. Unfortunately, due to the poor medical practices of the day, of these many children nine died as infants. Given such circumstances, Samuel was often hard-pressed to support his family from the modest salary at Epworth and from what little money he could garner from his writings. Moreover, his inability to handle what money he had—evident on numerous occasions—complicated matters, and so Samuel was frequently in debt. During the local elections of 1705, for example, he came out forcefully for certain candidates. Upon learning more about their actual positions, the Epworth rector quickly and publicly changed his mind. Such a reversal of support sparked the ire of several people in Epworth, and one of Samuel's parishioners, to get even, called in a loan that Samuel was unable to repay. Soon he was arrested and placed in the debtor's prison at Lincoln Castle.
With her economic condition uncertain, Susanna had good cause for concern. Fortunately, Archbishop Sharpe, in many ways a kind and generous man, rallied support among the clergy on Samuel's behalf and eventually paid off his immediate debts. During Samuel's imprisonment, the archbishop had visited Susanna at the rectory and asked whether her situation were so bad that "she had ever wanted bread." Susanna replied forthrightly and in a way that epitomized her condition at Epworth: "My Lord, I will freely own to your Grace, that strictly speaking, I never did want bread. But then, I had so much care to get it, before it was eat, and to pay for it after, as has often made it very unpleasant to me."
With her husband occasionally gone at Convocation, and with several children clamoring for her attention, Susanna had many opportunities to exercise strong leadership in the family. Something of a disciplinarian, she cared for her children according to rule and method. All of the Wesley children, for instance, except Kezzy, were taught to read when they were five years old, and a single day was allotted to the task of learning the alphabet, a task John and others accomplished quite easily though Mary and Anne took a day and a half. Moreover, on each day of the week, Susanna had a private talk with one of her children according to a fixed pattern: on Monday with Mollie, on Tuesday with Hetty, on Wednesday with Nancy, on Thursday with John, on Friday with Patty, on Saturday with Charles, and on Sunday with Emilia and Sukey. Six hours a day were spent at school where instruction was serious and thorough and where loud talking and boisterous playing were strictly forbidden.
Reflecting in his later years, John Wesley was so impressed with his mother's educational practices that he asked her to collect the principal rules she had practiced in their family. In a letter to her son on July 24, 1732, Susanna detailed her method and underscored that element which is absolutely necessary for the inculcation of piety and for the proper foundation of a religious education:
In order to form the minds of children, the first thing to be done is to conquer their will.... I insist upon conquering the wills of children betimes, because this is the only foundation for a religious education. When this is thoroughly done, then a child is capable of being governed by the reason of its parent, till its own understanding comes to maturity.
In addition, Susanna listed the various "bylaws" which were a part of the Epworth household:
1. Whoever was charged with a fault, of which they were guilty, if they would ingenuously confess it, and promise to amend, should not be beaten. This rule prevented a great deal of lying.
2. That no sinful action, as lying, pilfering, playing at church, or on the Lord's day, disobedience, quarreling, etc., should ever pass unpunished.
3. That no child should ever be chid or beat twice for the same fault.
4. That every signal act of obedience ... should be always commended, and frequently rewarded, according to the merits of the cause.
5. That if ever any child performed an act of obedience, or did anything with an intention to please, though the performance was not well, yet the obedience and intention should be kindly accepted, and the child with sweetness directed how to do better for the future.
6. That propriety be inviolably preserved, and none suffered to invade the property of another in the smallest matter, though it were but of the value of a farthing, or a pin.
7. That promises be strictly observed; and a gift once bestowed, and so the right passed away from the donor, be not resumed.
8. That no girl be taught to work till she can read very well; and then that she be kept to her work with the same application, and for the same time, that she was held to in reading. This rule also is much to be observed; for the putting children to learn sewing before they can read perfectly is the very reason why so few women can read fit to be heard, and never to be well understood.
In light of such precepts, modern writers have often criticized Susanna's educational practices as unduly harsh and rigorous. But John Wesley, himself, evidently did not think so. In fact, in his later years Wesley repeatedly cautioned against the unholy triumvirate of "pride, self-will, and love of the world," especially in his sermons, as well as against the pernicious nature of self-will in particular, that desire to live according to human autonomy where one's own will and desires, rather than the gracious and loving will of God, become the chief guides of life.
Despite this regularity of discipline, the home life of the Wesley family was disrupted from time to time by unusual events. In 1701, for example, their barn—though reputedly well constructed—simply collapsed. The next year part of the rectory was burned, and in 1704 fire destroyed all the flax that had been planted to ease the financial burden of the family. The most noteworthy of these unusual events, however, and the most dangerous of all, was the fire that swept through the Epworth rectory on February 9, 1709. At midnight, Samuel was awakened by a cry from the street, "Fire!" He opened his bedroom door and found the house filled with smoke. After waking Susanna and his two eldest daughters, Samuel raced for the nursery where the maid was sleeping with five children. Startled by his entrance and smelling the smoke, the maid grabbed the youngest child, Charles, and urged the others to follow her lead. The three older children did so, but John remained fast asleep.
Most of the family gathered outside the rapidly burning rectory. Some children had escaped through windows, others through a small door that led to the garden, but John was nowhere to be seen. Thinking it was morning due to the light from the blaze, John finally awoke and called out for the maid. His cries were heard from the street, and Samuel darted back into the house and attempted to mount the burning stairs, which quickly gave way under his weight. Fearing John was lost, Samuel knelt down in the hall and commended his soul to God. Meanwhile, seeing the flames lick the ceiling of his room, John attempted to flee through a doorway, but found it impossible. He then climbed onto a chest near the window and was spotted by those in the yard. A ladder was called for. One man stood on top of the shoulders of another and reached for the child. At the very moment John Wesley was in his rescuer's arms, the roof came crashing down and fell inward, sending debris, smoke, and flames into the night sky. With this turn of events, Samuel cried out with a sense of relief: "Come, neighbours, let us kneel down: let us give thanks to God! he has given me all my eight children: let the house go, I am rich enough."
Though John was to remember these events well, it was Susanna Wesley who first clearly discerned the providential care of God in the deliverance of February 9. Thus, shortly after the fire she professed: "I do intend to be more particularly careful of the soul of this child, that thou hast so mercifully provided for, than ever I have been, that I may do my endeavor to instill into his mind the principles of thy true religion and virtue." In a similar fashion, the fire revealed to John Wesley not only God's superintending providence, but also that the Lord had perhaps a special plan, a noble purpose, for his life. Such thoughts emboldened and invigorated John with a strong sense of mission early in life. In fact, at one point he had an emblem of a house in flames placed under one of his portraits with a caption that read: "Is not this a brand plucked out of the burning" (Zech. 3:2), though later he added a disclaimer about all of this.
To be sure, there has been much speculation by Wesley's biographers, both past and present, about the cause of the inferno on February 9—the chief suspicion being arson by malicious neighbors—but there is little that can be affirmed with certainty. What is clear is that Samuel had irritated many of the inhabitants on the island of Axholme, where Epworth was situated, by calling for the draining of the marshes, an act that many believed would undermine their livelihood. Fifty years earlier, the people of Epworth had tried to stifle the efforts of the Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden—whom William of Orange had sent to drain the land—by burning his crops, beating his workers, and breaking down the dams he had built. Such animosity, in other words, had a history, and it led John Wesley, at least, to surmise in later life that the fire had been deliberately set by his neighbors. But we will never know for sure. Indeed, some historians conjecture that the fire may have been due to "a certain carelessness on the part of the Rector."
In any case, many of Samuel's relationships, both near and far, were strained to say the least, due chiefly to his strongly held opinions and to his frequent indebtedness. For example, his own curate, Mr. Inman, who preached on occasion during Samuel's absence at Convocation, refused to depart from the well-worn topic that Christians ought to pay their debts. Whether the text was Romans 1:19 or Matthew 5:19 made little difference; the message was the same: pay your debts. Was it, then, that the rector of Epworth had owed his curate some money? And was this curate intent on embarrassing the rector until he got it? So matters stood when in 1712 Samuel again asked Inman to assume the responsibilities of the Epworth parish. Not surprisingly, the dull curate sallied forth with yet another harangue on the obligation of Christians to pay their debts. Susanna, sensing the displeasure of the congregation as well as the absence of sound spiritual care, decided to begin holding evening services in her kitchen (which started out as prayers for her family, and soon after many neighbors asked if they could participate) in order to minister to the needs of the people. In these services, which were well attended, psalms were sung, prayers were read, and a sermon drawn from Samuel's library shelves was recited by Susanna to the edification of all. Inman, chafing under Susanna's able and steady leadership, especially since her evening services were better attended than his morning ones, wrote a letter to Samuel and complained bitterly about Susanna's inappropriate actions.
Conventional in many respects, and concerned with good order, Samuel asked his wife to end these informal gatherings which so inflamed his curate. Susanna, not easily dissuaded in anything, considered the matter carefully and responded to her husband's request by engaging in some serious theological reflection—reflection that Samuel, himself, ultimately found convincing. Susanna wrote:
If you do, after all, think fit to dissolve this assembly, do not tell me that you desire me to do it, for that will not satisfy my conscience; but send me your positive command, in such full and express terms as may absolve me from all guilt and punishment, for neglecting this opportunity of doing good, when you and I shall appear before the great and awful tribunal of our LORD JESUS CHRIST.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Real Christian by Kenneth J. Collins. Copyright © 1999 Abingdon Press. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
1. The Family Circle,2. The Point of It All,
3. The Education of a Virtuous and Affectionate Man,
4. The Makings of a Saint,
5. Methodism Distinguished,
6. Settling Down,
7. Challenges Without and Within,
8. Fearing God and Honoring the King,
9. Building a Legacy,
10. God Is with Us,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,