ADVERTISEMENT.

VARIOUS Lives or Memoirs of the Founder of Methodism have already been laid before the public. But it has been frequently remarked that such of these as contain the most approved accounts of Mr. Wesley, have been carried out to a length which obstructs their circulation, by the intermixture of details comparatively uninteresting beyond the immediate circle of Wesleyan Methodism. The present Life, therefore, without any design to supersede larger publications, has been prepared with more special reference to general readers. But, as it is contracted within moderate limits chiefly by the exclusion of extraneous matter, it will, it is hoped, be found sufficiently comprehensive to give the reader an adequate view of the life, labors, and opinions of the eminent individual who is its subject; and to afford the means of correcting the most material errors and misrepresentations which have had currency respecting him. On several points the author has had the advantage of consulting unpublished papers, not known to preceding biographers, and which have enabled him to place some particulars in a more satisfactory light. London, May 10, 1831.

ADVERTISEMENT TO THIS EDITION.

IN this edition, translations are given of such passages in the dead languages as are left untranslated in the London edition. It is enlarged, too, and we hope enriched, by a variety of notes, on points of peculiar importance in an American edition. The price, nevertheless, is so extremely low as to be justified solely by the confident anticipation of very extensive sales. The profits, if any-as of all other publications from the Methodist Episcopal Press-will be scrupulously applied to the spread of the Gospel, and to strictly-charitable objects.

6

THE LIFE

OF

REV. JOHN WESLEY, A. M.

CHAPTER I.

JOHN and CHARLES WESLEY, the chief founders of that religious body now commonly known by the name of the Wesleyan Methodists, were the sons of Rev. Samuel Wesley, rector of Epworth, in Lincolnshire.

Of this clergyman, and his wife, Mrs. Susannah Wesley, who was the daughter of Rev. Dr. Annesley, as well as of the ancestors of both, an interesting account will be found in Dr. Adam Clarke's "Memoirs of the Wesley Family," and in the "Life of Mr. John Wesley" by Dr. Whitehead, and the more recent one by Mr. Moore. They will be noticed here only so far as a general knowledge of their character may be necessary to assist our judgment as to the opinions and conduct of their more celebrated sons.

The rector of Epworth, like his excellent wife, had descended from parents distinguished for learning, piety, and non-conformity. His father dying while he was young, he forsook the Dissenters at an early period of life; and his conversion carried him into High Church principles, and political toryism. He was not, however, so rigid in the former as to prevent him from encouraging the early zeal of his sons, John and Charles, at Oxford, although it was even then somewhat irregular, when tried by the strictest rules of Church order and custom; and his toryism, sufficiently high in theory, was yet of that class which regarded

the rights of the subject tenderly in practice. He refused flattering overtures made by the adherents of James II, to induce him to support the measures of the court, and wrote in favor of the revolution of 1688; admiring it, probably, less in a political view than as rescuing a Protestant Church from the dangerous influence of a Popish head. For this service he was presented with the living of Epworth, in Lincolnshire, to which, a few years afterward, was added that of Wroote, in the same county.

He held the living of Epworth upward of forty years, and was distinguished for the zeal and fidelity with which he discharged his parish duties. Of his talents and learning, his remaining works afford honorable evidence.

Mrs. Susannah Wesley, the mother of Mr. John Wesley, was, as might be expected from the eminent character of Dr. Samuel Annesley, her father, educated with great care. Like her husband, she also, at an early period of life, renounced non-conformity, and became a member of the Established Church, after, as her biographers tell us, she had read and mastered the whole controversy on the subject of separation; of which, however, great as were her natural and acquired talents, she must, at the age of thirteen years, have been a very imperfect judge. The serious habits impressed upon both by their education, did not forsake them; "they feared God, and wrought righteousness;" but we may perhaps account for that obscurity in the views of each on several great points of evangelical religion, and especially on justification by faith, and the offices of the Holy Spirit, which hung over their minds for many years, and indeed till toward the close of life, from this early change of their religious connections. Their theological reading, according to the fashion of the Church people of that day, was now directed rather to the writings of those divines of the English Church who were tinctured more or less with a Pelagianized Arminianism, than to the

works of its founders; their successors, the Puritans; or of those eminent men among the Non-Conformists, whose views of discipline they had renounced. They had parted with Calvinism; but, like many others, they renounced with it, for want of spiritual discrimination, those truths which were as fully maintained in the theology of Arminius, and in that of their eminent son, who revived, and more fully illustrated it, as in the writings of the most judicious and spiritual Calvinistic divines themselves. Taylor, Tillotson, and Bull, who became their oracles, were Arminians of a different class.

The advantage of such a parentage to the Wesleys was great. From their earliest years they had an example in the father of all that could render a clergyman respectable and influential; and in the mother there was a sanctified wisdom, a masculine understanding, and an acquired knowledge, which they regarded with just deference after they became men and scholars. The influence of a piety so steadfast and uniform, joined to such qualities, and softened by maternal tenderness, could scarcely fail to produce effect. The firm and manly character, the practical sense, the active and unwearied habits of the father, with the calm, reflecting, and stable qualities of the mother, were in particular inherited by Mr. John Wesley, and in him were most happily blended. A large portion of the ecclesiastical principles and prejudices of the rector of Epworth was also transmitted to his three sons; but while Samuel and Charles retained them least impaired, in John, as we shall see, they sustained in future life considerable modifications.

Samuel, the eldest son, was born in 1692; John, in 1703; and Charles, in 1708.

Samuel Wesley, junior, was educated at Westminster school, and in 1711 was elected to Christ Church, Oxford. He was eminent for his learning, and was an excellent

poet, with great power of satire, and an elegant wit. He held a considerable rank among the literary men of the day, and finally settled as head master of the free school of Tiverton, in Devonshire, where he died in 1739, in his forty-ninth year.

Mrs. Wesley was the instructress of her children in their early years. "I can find," says Dr. Whitehead, "no evidence that the boys were ever put to any school in the country, their mother having a very bad opinion of the common methods of instructing and governing children.” She was particularly led, it would seem, to interest herself in John, who, when he was about six years old, had a providential and singular escape from being burned to death, upon the parsonage house being consumed. There is a striking passage in one of her private meditations, which contains a reference to this event, and indicates that she considered it as laying her under a spécial obligation "to be more particularly careful of the soul of a child whom God had so mercifully provided for." The effect of this special care on the part of the mother was, that, under the Divine blessing, he became early serious; for at the age of eight years he was admitted by his father to partake of the sacrament. In 1714 he was placed at the Charter House, "where he was noticed for his diligence, and progress in learning." (Whitehead's Life.) "Here, for his quietness, regularity, and application, he became a favorite with the master, Dr. Walker; and through life he retained so great a predilection for the place, that on his annual visit to London, he made it a custom to walk through the scene of his boyhood. To most men, every year would render a pilgrimage of this kind more painful than the last,

* The memory of his deliverance, on this occasion, is preserved in one of his early portraits, which has, below the head, the representation of a house in flames, with the motto, "Is not this a brand plucked from the burning?"