Roger Steer

Two remarkable Wesleys

On a Sunday afternoon in April, while staying with family in Hackney and after watching our grandchildren compete in a Park Run in London Fields, we walked to Wesley’s Chapel in City Road. The chapel was  built in 1778 by John Wesley who is regarded as the founder of Methodism. Wesley persuaded the architect George Dance the Younger, the surveyor of the City of London, to design the building, and described his chapel as ‘perfectly neat but not fine’. It is a good example of Georgian architecture and was the first Methodist preaching house to allow for the celebration of Holy Communion.

John Wesley never left the Church of England. The early Methodists were simply Christians, usually Anglican, who wanted to meet regularly in small societies to encourage one another to live out what they saw as genuine Christianity. They had no intention of becoming a new denomination. Wesley himself was the son of Samuel Wesley, the high church rector of Epworth, Lincolnshire. At one stage in his life, Wesley believed that when the Methodists left the Church of England, then God would leave them. While it is true that Wesley organised the first Methodist Conference as early as 1741, this was not a Conference to run a new denomination but, as he found Anglican churches closing to him, a gathering to organise his growing band of lay preachers whom he encouraged to preach the gospel throughout the length and breadth of England.

Wesley’s work of travelling and preaching took him throughout Britain, covering an estimated 250,000 miles, mainly on horseback. Not always well received, he frequently faced mobs, stoning and hostile Anglican clergy. Eventually, however, he became a respected national figure. Although I have never found a reference to him coming to Ilfracombe, he often preached to large crowds in Cornwall. Altogether he preached over 40,000 sermons as well as writing thousands of letters.

John Wesley thought nothing of preaching four or five times a day. He was a prolific writer, writing his sermons as he rode and publishing many books and pamphlets in support of his concerns. Personal magnetism and an enormous capacity for self-discipline and organisation helped him control the growing movement he had begun. He mixed easily in a variety of company and impressed that devout Anglican and wit, Samuel Johnson, with his conversation – though Johnson complained that conversations with Wesley always ended too soon as the preacher always had somewhere he needed to get to.

Wesley was interested in medicine, and wrote the Primitive Physick: or An Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases for those with no access to medical help. He even used a machine which produced an electric shock to help people suffering from depression. He campaigned for prison reform, helped to pay prisoners’ debts, and hired teachers for the children of debtors. He started lending societies, advancing small amounts of working capital to those wanting to start their own businesses. When England was under threat from Napoleon he offered to raise a private regiment since he believed that the country was not well enough defended!

While Wesley always claimed that he didn’t enjoy controversy, he was often drawn into it due to opposition to what he was doing. When, curiously, Bishop Lavington of Exeter compared Methodists to Papists, Wesley, sadly, didn’t treat the Bishop with the courtesy he normally showed his opponents: ‘Any scribbler with a middling share of low wit, not encumbered with good nature or modesty, may raise a laugh on those whom he cannot confute, and run them down whom he dares not look in the face… it is high time, sir, you should leave your skulking place. Come out, and let us look each other in the face.’ The controversy continued for another two years and, in August 1762, a fortnight before the Bishop’s death, Wesley was in Exeter. He preached on Southernhay Green, to an ‘extremely quiet congregation’. At the cathedral he heard a ‘useful sermon’, and noted in his diary that the ‘whole service was performed with great seriousness and decency. Such an organ I never saw or heard before, so large, beautiful, and so finely toned; and the music of “Glory Be to God in the Highest” I think exceeded the Messiah itself. I was well pleased to partake of the Lord’s supper with my old opponent, Bishop Lavington. Oh, may we sit down together in the kingdom of our Father!’

It is fascinating that John Wesley was so impressed by the magnificent organ at Exeter cathedral. For 74 years later, Samuel Sebastian Wesley, the composer of many hymn tunes including Aurelia to which we sing ‘The Church’s one foundation’, became the organist and ‘succentor’ at the cathedral. As succentor he would have helped with the preparation and conduct of the liturgy. Samuel Sebastian was the grandson of John Wesley’s brother Charles. So the descendant of a famous Methodist hymn writer took on a major role in Exeter cathedral! Samuel is buried in Exeter. I hope that Bishop Lavington would have approved!