In an ‘Open Letter on John Wesley’ (Banner of Truth, May, 1979, p.30), the late Rev. J. P. MacQueen is censured for his denunciation of the Arminian leader in an article in the Free Presbyterian Magazine, November, 1978, p.297. That an avowedly Reformed magazine should criticise a detractor of Wesley is in itself surely symptomatic of great change within the Trust, especially in view of its former strong denunciation of Wesley (Banner of Truth no. 47, p.24). Let us, however, attend to the criticisms.
First, Rev. MacQueen’s statement that ‘anything of permanent value’ in the Evangelical Revival ‘must be attributed . . . to the Rev. George Whitefield, outstandingly’ is challenged. If the Banner of Truth wishes to prove that it was Wesley, and not Whitefield, who preached the great doctrines of grace by which the Holy Spirit brought thousands into the kingdom of God, it is welcome to try. Suffice to say that Wesley himself acknowledged Whitefield’s foremost place in that mighty work of God. ‘Have we read of heard of anyone’ he asks, while preaching Whitefield’s Funeral Sermon, ‘who has been the blessed instrument of bringing so many sinners from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God?’ (Select Sermons of George Whitefield, B.ofT., 1964, p.30). Dallimore concurs on this very point (George Whitefield, vol. 1, p.14). Indeed, no permanent value at all can be attached to the distinguishing doctrines of his Arminian opponent. What fruit can be expected of preaching which declares: ‘the doctrine of predestination is not a doctrine of God, because it makes void the ordinance of God (i.e. preaching) . . . directly tends to destroy that holiness which is the end of all the ordinances of God . . . destroy the comfort of religion, the happiness of Christianity . . . destroy our zeal for good works . . . (and) . . . overthrow the whole Christian revelation’ (Free Grace, Sermons p.359-362)? What increase can the Holy Spirit be expected to give to such teaching on Sanctification as this: ‘When the Lord speaks to our hearts the second time “Be clean”, then only the evil root, the carnal mind, is destroyed, and sin subsists no more’ (Southey: Life of Wesley, 1925, vol. 2, p.63-64)? Little wonder that even a great admirer of Wesley should write of him: ‘Orthodoxy, he thought, constituted but a very small part, if a part at all, of true religion’ (J. H. Overton: The English Church in the Eighteenth Century, 1896, p.330).
Secondly, the Open Letter discredits Rev. MacQueen’s statement that ‘it is a great mistake . . . to imagine that Wesley and Whitefield both belonged to one movement and preached the same Gospel.’ Evidently, Whitefield himself would have agreed with the statement. ‘He told me’ wrote Wesley on March 28, 1741, ‘that he and I preached two different Gospels, and therefore he not only would not join with or give me the right hand of fellowship, but was resolved publicly to preach against me and my brother, wheresoever he preached at all’ (Wesley’s Journals, I, p.77). As late as 1763, adapting Burnet’s advice to ‘out-live, out-labour, out-preach’ his opponent, Whitefield wrote: ‘That the Rev. Mr John Wesley himself, that famed leader of the Methodists, and every Methodist preacher in England, may be thus outed and entirely annihilated, is and shall be, the hearty prayer of George Whitefield’ (Observations on Some Fatal Mistakes, 1763, p.35). Wesley, no less than Whitefield, admitted the great differences that existed between their schemes of salvation, resolving to go his own way after ‘casting a lot for his creed’, which lot came up to the following effect: ‘As thou hast long believed Calvinism to be a delusion, regardless of friends and enemies, preach and print against it’ (T. Olivers: A Rod for a Reviler, 1772, p.10). That they in fact preached two different plans of salvation is clear from the following brief comparison: Whitefield ‘held, taught and defended the Scripture doctrine of God’s eternal unconditional election’ (R. Elliot, in Select Sermons, p.57). Wesley, on the other hand, unashamedly stigmatised it as ‘the horrible decree of predestination’ by which God appears ‘as worse than the devil, more false, more cruel, more unjust’ (Sermons, p.366). Whitefield earnestly contended for a limited atonement, by which Christ died only for the elect (see George Whitefield: Sermons on Important Subjects, 1833, p.784). Wesley, on the other hand, believed that ‘Christ died for all and every man alike, for Judas as well as for Peter’ (W. MacLean: Arminianism, Another Gospel, 1965, p.25). Whitefield taught that ‘man by nature has no power or will at all to come to God . . . it being the entire work of God’s Spirit’ (Elliot, ibid, p.54). Wesley, on the other hand, believed that man, with no more than the aid of grace, has the power of will to exercise faith, and choose what is spiritual, when Christ is preached to him (R. Shaw: Confession of Faith, 1845, p.121). These are but examples of their opposing views. That Wesley’s are subversive of the doctrine according to godliness is evident. In short, ‘by his misrepresentation of the doctrine of Divine sovereignty, the Arminian strikes at the electing love of God the Father: by the universalism of his doctrine of the Atonement, he strikes at the redeeming love of the Son: and by his views on man’s ability to believe in, or to decide for, Christ, he strikes at the love of the Spirit, manifested in the work of regeneration and sanctification’ (D. MacLean, Foreword to ‘Arminianism, Another Gospel’).
Thirdly, the author of the Open Letter objects to Rev. MacQueen’s description of Wesley as ‘Arminian, Semi-Pelagian, and Sacramentalist’. That he was the first of these, none can deny. His regular contributions to the Arminian Magazine evince that he ‘held an Arminian position, as contrasted with G. Whitefield’s Calvinistic teaching’ (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 1957, article ‘Arminianism’). That his doctrine of man was Semi-Pelagian also needs little proof. He denied the imputation of Adam’s sin, teaching only man’s inherited corruption of Adam’s nature (Southey: Life, vol. 2, p.61). Even this corruption, he claimed, is not properly sin, but only a natural consequence of the ignorance and mistakes inseparable from mortality (Meth. Doc. Tracts, p.294-312). While, therefore, he cannot fulfil the demands of either Law or Gospel without Divine assistance, he can co-operate with needed grace when offered to him. In other words, sin has made man sick, but not dead (A. A Hodge: Outlines of Theology, 1972, p.108, 334). Equally deserving of Rev. MacQueen’s strictures was Wesley’s Sacramentalism. That he was in fact the ‘devout’ grandfather of the Tractarian Movement, the following facts prove: he scrupulously observed the fasts and feasts of the Church of England — ‘every Friday was to be kept as a day of abstinence’ and ‘All Saints’ Day was his favourite festival’ (Overton: ibid, p.321). He used the ‘mixed chalice’, prayed for the dead, prayed standing on the Lord’s Day in Pentecost, observed the ‘Stations of the Cross’ on Wednesdays and Fridays, kept Lent and especially ‘Holy Week’, and faced the east at the recitation of the Creed (R. Denny Ullin: John Wesley’s Place in Church History, p.70). In short, ‘his ideas of worship are strictly in accordance with what would now be called High Church usages’ (Overton, ibid, p.320).
Fourthly, how the writer of the Open Letter can rest satisfied with his remark that ‘John Wesley preached the Gospel, he never wearied of proclaiming the facts held forth in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4’, we fail to understand. Surely he knows full well that the Gospel, in order to be preached Biblically, consists not merely of facts, but doctrines, explaining how the facts are to be understood; and experience, delineating how these facts and doctrines affect the heart when applied by the Holy Spirit; and practice, characterising the kind of life produced by a saving experience of these facts and doctrines. Whoever fails to preach the facts of the Gospel doctrinally, experimentally and practically, fails to preach the Gospel, whatever he may think he is preaching.
Fifthly, the four quotations from Rev. MacQueen’s article, purporting to be true representations of Wesley’s views, raise some fundamental questions. The first, referring to Wesley’s ‘spiritual pilgrimage’, involves the very nature of conversion. True, Wesley appears to renounce all dependence upon his own righteousness for salvation, but with what does he replace it? Not with the only righteousness which is acceptable to God, namely, the righteousness of Christ; for we read in the Minutes of the Methodist Conference: ‘In what sense is the righteousness of Christ imputed to all men or to believers? Answer — We do not find it expressly affirmed in Scripture that God imputes the righteousness of Christ to any, although we do find that faith is imputed to us for righteousness (Coke and Moore: Life of Wesley, p.272). What this faith is, Southey summarises from Wesley’s writings as ‘a sure and firm confidence in the individual believer, that Christ died for his sins, loved him, and gave His life for him. And at what time soever a sinner thus believes, God justifieth him’ (Life, vol. 2, p.68). ‘Thus’, comment Bogue and Bennett, ‘with an extra-ordinary appearance of zeal for Justification by Faith, and not by works, the whole doctrine is overturned, by making our faith itself, and not Christ, the object of it, the ground of our justification’ (History of Dissenters, 1833, vol. 2, p.27-28). Furthermore, we are quite at a loss to understand how Wesley could preach ‘free salvation by faith in the blood of Christ’ (Journals, May 1st, 1738) before his heart was ‘strangely warmed’, as he describes his conversion (Journals, May 24, 1738), especially when he attributes to this experience both the certain assurance that Christ had taken away his sins, and the power to overcome sin always. ‘The difference between this and my former state’, he wrote the same evening, consisted in this: ‘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 was always conqueror’. Is this the Scriptural doctrine of conversion? We see nothing here at all of a poor, destitute sinner clinging to the righteousness of Christ alone for salvation before God.
The second quotation speaks of Wesley endorsing ‘the Pelagian doctrine of Sanctification’. Dr Shedd accurately summarises Pelagius’ teaching when he writes: ‘It is possible for any man to be entirely sinless, and there have been some such, even among the heathen. The grace of the Holy Spirit is not absolutely, but only relatively necessary, in order to holiness; it renders its attainment easier to man. Regeneration does not consist in the renewal of the will by an internal operation of Divine efficiency, but in the illumination of the intellect by the truth, the stimulation of the will by the threatenings of the Law and the promise of future rewards, and by the remission of sin through the Divine indulgence.’ (History of Christian Doctrine, 1877, vol. 2, p.95-96). That Wesley and his Arminian colleagues held the same view is asserted with great candour by Bogue and Bennet (ibid, p.26-27), who show how well the two systems tally in several essential points. It is not generally known that Wesley styled Pelagius ‘a wise and a holy man’ (Journals, July 7th, 1761), Thomas Firmin the Socinian ‘a pious man, although his notions of the Trinity were quite erroneous’ (Preface to Life of Firmin), the demon of Socrates a ‘ministering angel’ (Southey, ibid, p.79), and the heathen Marcus Antoninus ‘one of those many who shall come from the east and the west and sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, while the children of the kingdom, nominal Christians, are shut out’ (Journals, Oct. 11th, 1745). Neither is Whitefield’s Letter of September 25th, 1740, in which he pleads with Wesley to renounce his evil doctrines, especially his Perfectionism, sufficiently pondered. The sad truth is, that while Wesley’s language is Evangelical, his real sentiments were far nearer strict Pelagianism than most will admit. Only one who held a Pelagian view of sanctification could have written, as Wesley did to Fletcher of Madeley in 1768, ‘I seldom find it profitable for me to converse with any who are not athirst for perfection, and big with the earnest expectation of receiving it every moment’ (Tyerman: Life of Wesley, vol. 3, p.4). Rev. MacQueen’s remarks, therefore, are perfectly justified.
Of Wesley’s teaching on Baptism and Prayer for the ‘Faithful Departed’, little need be said. His sermon on the New Birth, besides the extract quoted by Rev. MacQueen, also teaches the heresy of Baptismal Regeneration, while to excuse his prayers for the dead on the ground that they are embraced by the petition ‘Thy kingdom come’ is puerile. Thomas Watson, Thomas Boston, and even the Episcopalian Leighton never justified prayers for the dead on this ground.
The Open Letter next reproveth Rev. MacQueen for making assertions contrary to fact. His first assertion, that they were never again associated in this world after their first sharp contention in 1740, is, of course, easily disproved. They were not, however, often associated, as the writer of the Open Letter claims. The Editor of the Banner of Truth himself admitted as much when he wrote of Whitefield: ‘Wesley . . . rarely worked with him after 1741 on account of his hostility to Calvinism’ (The Puritan Hope, p.125). In fact, they infrequently interchanged letters and preached occasionally in each other’s pulpits, but they never cordially co-operated. To understand their relationship after their separation, we need to remind ourselves that they both remained within the Church of England.
The Open Letter next questions the statement that Leighton ‘imbibed Popery in the monastic cells of France in early boyhood’. Rev. MacQueen should perhaps have written ‘manhood’. Is the writer of the Open Letter unaware that during his residence abroad (1631-41) Leighton entered into close correspondence with his Popish relatives who were priests studying at Douay, that he affirmed there were more holy men in the cloisters of Italy and France praying against the Covenant than in Britain praying for it, that he often re-visited Douay during his Principalship at Edinburgh, that he advocated the setting up of Protestant monasteries, and that his library contains several Romish and Anglican ‘devotional’ works but hardly any of his contemporary Scottish or Puritan divines? The link with Wesley is clear, for the latter also was very sympathetic to certain Romanists, whose lives he published and whom he regarded as pious men. And while Leighton, as well as Wesley, denounced the worst features of Popery, they were by no means averse to certain aspects of it.
Rev. MacQueen’s conclusions regarding Wesley were not, therefore, built upon a ‘combination of inaccuracies’, as the writer of the Open Letter states. They sprang from a true grasp of the poisonous nature of the Arminian heresy, and a forthright endeavour to expose Wesley’s pernicious teaching for its real nature. If every minister of the Gospel who has taken ordination vows to oppose Arminianism and to defend the faith once committed to the saints followed Rev. MacQueen’s example, the Church would be much healthier than it is. May the warning of Rev. D. Beaton, another champion of Calvinism, be seriously laid to heart: ‘Arminianism is very much alive in the pulpit, in the theological and religious press, and in the modern evangelistic meeting . . . When we bear in mind the horror with which our forefathers regarded Arminianism, the modern attitude to it indicates how far the professing Church has drifted from the position of the theologians of those days’ (The Reformed Faith, p.18). The Arminianism of John Wesley is a false gospel — delusive, dangerous, and soul-destroying. The Banner of Truth, therefore, should make a firm, unequivocal and open stand against it, rather than indulge in some paltry and carping criticism of one of its most fervent and faithful opponents.
John M. Brentnall.