The first "Conference" — Who were present — Extension of Methodism — Subsequent Conferences — Kingswood school — Wesley's loves and marriage — Break with his brother Charles — Personal authority and its effects upon the brothers — Apology for the course of John
— Philosophy of the situation.
A new chapter in Methodist history opens. The first Conference was convened by Wesley at the Foundry, London, June 25, 1744. Some considerable difference of opinion obtains as to who were invited and who were present on the memorable occasion. Watson gives no intimation. Moore says generally, "He summoned annually a considerable number of the preachers." Whitehead records:
"June 20th, he returned to London, where he met his brother, two or three other clergymen, and a few of the preachers, whom he had appointed to come from various parts to confer with them on the affairs of the society." He italicizes the word confer, and it is significant as suggesting the official[1]
name of these after convocations. Stevens says, "He wrote letters to several clergymen and to his lay assistants, inviting them to meet him in London, and to give him their advice respecting the best method of carrying on the work of God." He gives the names of the four clergymen of the National[2]
Church, who with the brothers Wesley, as good an authority as Jackson says, composed the first Wesleyan Conference. But Stevens gives the names of four of the lay-preachers who were also present, Maxwell, Richards, Bennet, and Downes. There is no evidence that more were either present or invited than is intimated in Stevens' statement. The Conference remained in session for five[3]
days and discussed a wide range of subjects; doctrine, teaching, discipline, and a seminary for laborers in the cause. The interview took the form of conversations, questions and answers, which were afterward published. The Plan of appointments had not yet come into vogue; Wesley sent his workers at pleasure, and recalled them at will. The meeting adjourned without making provision for any future assembling, but they followed in order; and Wesley lived to attend and preside over forty-seven of these Conferences.
Methodism had now extended over England from Land's End to Newcastle, and the whole area was traversed by Wesley, superintending the work amid persecutions and sufferings shared fully by his brother and his devoted helpers. Some of them were impressed for the army, others met heroic deaths, either directly or indirectly, the result of their consecration to their divine minister and the cause of religion as represented by Methodism. The new religion broke out in the army of Flanders on the Continent. Some of the soldiers had taken it at home and now began preach, and hundreds were converted, a moral miracle, as the depravity of this soldiery is perpetuated in the legend —
"They swore like the army in Flanders." Not a few of these converts died in Christian triumph on the field of battle. Meanwhile, August 1, 1745, the second Conference was held at Bristol and continued two days, Whitehead says, "with as many of the preachers as could conveniently be present." It was much in character with the first meeting, and all that is known of it is preserved in the "Minutes of the Conversations" which were published together in 1747. England was threatened with an invasion by the Pretender, but amid the commotion Methodism grew and had its signal triumphs in divers
places. Stevens says the third Conference was held on the 12th of May, 1745, but does not give the place, while by Moore and Whitehead it is not mentioned, probably because it was so lacking in importance that Wesley himself makes no reference to it in his Journal. The fourth Conference was held, according to Whitehead, from June 15th to 20th, 1747, and the place is given as the Foundry by Stevens. It was numerically the largest held. At the session of 1745 Marmaduke Gwynne, a layman, attended by invitation, and at that of 1746, the question was propounded: Who are proper persons to attend any Conference? And the answer was, besides the preachers conveniently at hand, the most prudent and devoted of the Band leaders of the town where the session was held, and any pious and judicious stranger who might be in the town should be invited. It will be seen from the[4]
dates, that an annual feature had not been adopted; the Conferences met when and where Wesley thought it expedient to call one.
On the 2d of June, 1748, the fifth was held at Tower-Hill chapel, London, and it was not reconvened until November 16, 1749, in London. On the 8th of March, 1750, the seventh was held;
but there are no traces of its minutes, and from this time to 1765 there are records of but two. A little more than a decade had elapsed since the first as an epoch of Methodism. Meantime, Wesley's views from reflection and reading had undergone considerable change as to Episcopacy, and doctrinal points were more clearly settled. Quarterly meetings were held for the circuits, books were distributed by the preachers as colporteurs, and Wesley concluded his "Christian Library " in fifty volumes, It was little more than a careful compilation of other books, and occasion will occur in the future for larger reference to a prevailing practice of plagiarizing by leading men of literary reputation. A lay ministry had accomplished a wonderful work throughout the British Islands. In fine, Wesleyan Methodism had taken on an organic form, though adhering to the National Church.
The Kingswood school was opened in 1748. Wesley's marriage with Miss Grace Murray had miscarried through the interference of his brother Charles. It is alleged she was engaged to one of the helpers, Bennet, and to whom she was married, much to Wesley's disappointment, soon after.
Wesley remembered this interference of his brother and it marked the interruption of the harmony which for twenty years had existed between them. It may be in place here for the simple mention of his entanglement with Miss Hopkey of Savannah while he was yet in Georgia. It was broken off for reasons touching which his biographers greatly differ, but it was among the causes that hastened his return to England. Some years before his marriage he had written a tract favoring celibacy as more conducive to spiritual life, but he had evidently made no resolution not to marry. He formed the acquaintance of Mrs. Vizelle, a young widow of independent fortune with accomplishments, and a professor of religion withal. He took care that her fortune should be settled upon herself, and that it should be agreed that he was not to surcease in his labors and travels as superintendent of the United Societies. But it proved an ill-starred marriage. She soon tired of itinerating with him, and in her efforts to overrule him for a location in the ministry she became abusive and violent in her treatment, and finally left him with word that she never expected to return. Wesley makes the characteristic record "I have not left her; I have not put her away; I will not call her back." In 1781, some thirty years afterward, she died, leaving her fortune to an only son by a former marriage and a ring to Wesley. Grace Bennet long survived her husband, who became a dissenting minister; and late in life an interview at her request took place between her and Wesley in the presence of a mutual friend.
It was a tender interview; they parted, and Wesley was never afterward heard to allude to her.
As might be expected Wesley had not only his fightings without but his troubles within the Societies. There were signs of disaffection, and the preachers were restive under the yoke of the brothers, and their dependence upon the National Church. He freely unburdened his mind to Edward Perronet, and Tyerman cites from their correspondence fragments of John's dissatisfaction. "Charles and you behave as I want you to do. But you cannot or wilt not preach where I desire. Others can and will preach where I desire; but they do not behave as I want them to do. I have a fine time between the one and the other . . . I have not one preacher with me, and not six in England, whose wills are broken enough to serve me as sons in the Gospel." He seemed to forget that he was dealing with[5]
free-born Englishmen, and that:
"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."
More perplexing than these things, the ostensible division of authority with his brother Charles in some things did not work well. In November, 1751, they met at Shoreham and in the presence of Perronet talked it over with much candor and love. An agreement was drawn up defining their respective rights with the lay-preachers. Whitehead says John signed them with reluctance, but nothing came of it as a settlement. "Mr. Wesley would not submit to any control in admitting preachers into the connection, in appointing them to the different circuits, or in governing the societies. It appears to me that after the first difference with his brother, who disappointed his intended marriage, he made up his mind not to suffer either a superior, or an equal in these respects.
From that time he seemed determined to be 'aut Caesar aut nihil.' " Moore says this imputation of[6]
Whitehead was based on a "heathenish principle," and finds a motive and apology for John's breaking the engagement in that he found Charles "was unable to execute so large an engagement with efficiency." This was probably so, if competing with him in laborious travel is made a factor,[7]
but the truth after all is found in Whitehead's deduction: in such a work there could not be two masters. And so it proved. Charles, in despair of sharing in the substance of official authority, determined that he could not be his brother's shadow and retired; though for thirty years after he did all in his power to help the societies, and in all emergencies threw himself into the breach, as during his brother's serious illness in the autumn of 1753, when the consumptive symptoms returned and Wesley in anticipation of a fatal termination wrote his own epitaph.
Our limitations will not allow even a sketch of the introduction of Methodism in Ireland from 1747; except to embalm the names of John Smith, Robert Swindells, and Thomas Walsh of his lay-preachers as well as Christopher Hopper, John Jane, and Duncan Wright. In 1754 Wesley read with deep interest the Life of Baxter and was moved to record his sympathy with the Dissenters in their persecutions by the clergy of the National Church; and this led Whitehead to philosophize as follows: "It is natural to observe here what the history of mankind uniformly shows, that, where the people have no balance of power in the government of the Church or of religious societies, to be used as a check against, any undue influence of their teachers, the ministers, or preachers of the Gospel, become in the end haughty, tyrannical, and intolerant; and their councils, assemblies, or conferences degenerate into mere combinations against the natural rights and liberties of those over whom they assume any authority." The language is prophetic as to Methodism and its peculiar[8]
regime and prejudiced the Conference party against him, provoking the open opposition of Dr. Coke and Henry Moore. It may be fairly offset by the following judicious observation of Stevens,
"Discipline and authority such as Wesley alone among the founders seemed capable of establishing,
were necessary for an enduring organization of the various crude elements which Methodism gathered from the degraded masses of the English populace." As much has already been conceded[9]
in these pages at least as to the clerical leaders of the great religious revival. Of the three preeminent ones he alone possessed in a large degree the organizing faculty. But it must be observed that nearly all the factions in early Methodism with which he had to contend were fomented by inferior men among the ambitious preachers.
It is safe to conjecture that Wesley could have strengthened himself against all of this class if he had taken more account of the laity in his councils. It has been found that, in the Conferences he assembled from 1744 to 1765 and onward, he invited of the preachers whom he would, and allowed a sitting to any prominent Band leader or member in the place of its meeting of his selection also.
But down to his decease, in 1791, they figure but furtively in any of these consultations. The whole history of Methodism proves how loyal they have been to the preachers and how conservative of the methods adopted. What an opportunity it was for a scriptural beginning according to New Testament precedents. What if he had invited a few prominent laymen of the Societies in London, Bristol, Newcastle, and Leeds, and so in an enlarging circle as the societies multiplied and the preachers increased? They would probably have added little light in doctrinal and speculative discussions which occupied so much of the time of these early Conferences, but as to discipline and local needs, the Kingswood school and the temporalities generally, would they not have been helpful? Was it because he had broken away from the Moravian regulations with their apostolical example of consulting the brethren in all emergencies at Fetter Lane? If these things occurred to him, they were dismissed as trammels upon his administration. He was providentially directed. Plainly he was so convinced. But doubts will arise when it is considered that it has no countenance in the methods of the primitive churches under the guidance of the Apostles, and it was the fruitful source of numerous divisions in the United Societies after his decease. If the Deed of Declaration had included one hundred laymen as well as a hundred preachers; eminently prudent, as it was to hold property, a pure temporality; it is not too much to declare in the light of all the facts of history that Methodism, the world over, would have been as fully a unit of organization, as it is of doctrine and means of grace.
The proofs of this postulate will appear in the current places. There is no key, however, to the anomalous conditions, unless it be found in the dictum of Tyerman which is freely accepted:
"Wesley was not a designing man; cunning he had none; he was a man of one idea; his sole aim was to save souls. This was the philosophy of his life. All his actions had reference to this. He had no preconceived plans; and hence it is needless to speculate about his motives. The man is best known by what he did; not by what philosophers may suspect he thought." [10] His parental relation to his helpers and the societies determined the bias of his actions, and under its molding influence there was no need that he should preconceive plans. In him resided the motive power of the whole, and it needed no invention to adjust the subordinate parts; wheel came to wheel and cog to cog by a kind of natural selection. And it is not easy to criticize it on the score of efficiency alone, and the system can be freely condoned during the life of Wesley. Criticism holds only as to the trend of such a system as developed in the fundamental error of its entailment by the Deed of Declaration.
*************************************
ENDNOTES 1 "Life of Wesley," Vol. II. p.111.
2 "History of Methodism," Vol. I. p.211.
3 Minute of the First Conference of 1744. "Q. Shall any of our lay brethren be present at this Conference? A. We agree to invite from time to time such as we think proper. Q. Which of them shall we invite today? A. The four mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, who were accordingly brought in." Found in "Chronological History of the People called Methodists of the Connection of the late John Wesley, from their Rise in the year 1729 to their last Conference in 1812," by William Myles. London, 3d edition, enlarged. Printed at the conference office, 14, City Road, 1813, 8vo, 487 pp., sheep. In Peabody Library, Baltimore, Md. It is noteworthy that the foregoing minute is not found in the "Minutes of Several Conversations between the Rev. John Wesley and the Preachers in connection with him from the year 1744 to 1800." Leeds, England, 1803, 12mo, sheep." Also in the Peabody Library of Baltimore. In these Minutes the following does occur, and it never has been found by the writer reproduced anywhere else. It is important as showing the ascetic and celibate principles of Wesley in that day: "Touch not a woman, be as loving as you will, but the custom of the country is nothing to us."
The Bennet mentioned by Stevens, one of Wesley's helpers, made a copy of the minutes of the early conferences, which was kept in the family for several generations, but has been recently published by the Wesleyan Conference, 1897. He mentions as present at the Conference of 1744 only the following: John Wesley, Charles Wesley, John Hodges, Henry Piers, Samuel Taylor, and John Meriton. Evidently, others were present, and it detracts from the value of this historical "find" by John Bennet. See compend of the pamphlet in N.Y. Christian Advocate for December 9 and 16, 1897.
4 Stevens' 'History of Methodism," Vol. I. p.315.
5 Tyerman's "Life," Vol. II. p.85.
6 Whitehead's "Life," Vol. II. p.167.
7 Moore's "Life of Wesley," Vol. II. p.150.
8 Whitehead's "Life of Wesley," Vol. II. p.173.
9 "History of Methodism," Vol. I. p.392.
10 Tyerman's "Life," Preface Vol. I. p.5.
*************************************
METHODIST REFORM Edward J. Drinkhouse, M.D., D.D.
Volume I