One of the strangest, and most persistent, inaccuracies in British secular and religious history is that which describes John Wesley as the true author of the Eighteenth Century Evangelical Revival, whereas anything of permanent value in that Evangelical Movement must be attributed, as God’s honoured instrument, to the Rev. George Whitefield, outstandingly. The contrary view could never find favour with any honest, impartial, serious student of history. It is, however, conventional today among English and British Dominion Evangelicals generally to give the whole credit for that revival to Rev. John Wesley, and his brother Charles, while Mr Whitefield is only occasionally — and these occasions very rare — mentioned incidentally. It is a popular error that needs to be corrected that the Evangelicals were more or less indebted to the teaching and influence of the Wesley brothers. They were certainly not the leaders of the Evangelical Revival.
Rev. Dr Ryle, of Liverpool, in his book entitled “Christian Leaders in the Eighteenth Century,” declares regarding George Whitefield: “I place him first in order of merit, without any hesitation, of all the spiritual heroes of that dark period” (page 31), and describes him as “chief and first among the English Reformers of the Eighteenth Century” (page 44). It is a well-known fact that Whitefield was associated with Wesley for a time, but in 1740 the latter published a sermon expressive of Arminian views, with the result that the contention was so sharp between them that they separated, never again to be associated in this world. It is, however, to the credit of George Whitefield’s charity that when asked if he expected to meet Wesley in Heaven, he replied in the negative, explaining that Wesley would be too near his Master for him (Whitefield) to see him. However that may be, Wesley and his brother being saved, nothing is surer than that many of their works shall be burnt up. The present writer is amazed at evangelical Calvinists who say that while John Wesley was undoubtedly Arminian in his views, his brother Charles was Calvinistic. After a careful perusal of the lives and views of both of them, I am thoroughly persuaded that they were both Arminian to the core, Charles’s hymns notwithstanding.
Whatever may be true of the eternal destiny of both of them, they were much more of an obstacle than a blessing to English, and indeed British, evangelical Calvinism and Reformation principles. Their false undermining Arminian teaching and influence weakened Protestant witness against Popery in England, and throughout the British Dominions, while Scotland itself was by no means exempt, and this evil free-willism, as a result, continues rife and rampant in professedly evangelical circles in England and Scotland, and the whole English-speaking world, to this day. While thus, the Eighteenth Century Revival saved England from the withering blight of atheism, masquerading under the euphemistic name of Deism, it is a great mistake to confound Evangelicism with Wesleyanism, or to imagine that Wesley and Whitefield both belonged to one movement and preached the same Gospel. On the contrary, their teaching was diametrically opposed, free grace being Scriptural, while free will is the illegitimate product of the carnal mind. Whitefield was in the Puritan, Calvinistic, Apostolic succession, while Wesley, and his associates, were Arminian, semi-Pelagian, and Sacramentalist.
The other outstanding leaders of the Eighteenth Century Revival were William Grimshaw, William Romaine, Augustus M. Toplady, James Hervey, John Berridge, and Daniel Rowlands, while for part of the time contemporary with them (and who long survived them), were John Newton, Richard Cecil, Thomas Scott, Charles Simeon, and Henry Martyn; all of whom proclaimed the Scriptural, everlasting, immutable, and infallible doctrines of free and sovereign grace.
We must, however, qualify our admiration of Charles Simeon, a fruitful branch in the vine, and the honoured instrument in leading Rev. Alexander Stewart, afterwards Dr Stewart, of Dingwall, into evangelical truth.
Let the reader mark the following entry in Wesley’s “Journal” and note its significance:—”I believe till I was about ten years old I had not sinned away that ‘washing of the Holy Ghost’ which was given me in baptism, having been strictly educated and carefully taught that I could only be saved by universal obedience, by keeping all the commandments of God in the meaning of which I was diligently instructed.” (Works, 1, 98). How diametrically opposed to the teaching of the Shorter Catechism is the foregoing false belief in works of supererogation. “No mere man since the fall is able perfectly to keep the commandments of God, but doth daily break them, in thought, word and deed.” Most erroneous views arise from an insufficient sense of the sinfulness of sin.
Wesley himself assigns the origin of Methodism “to the society which began at Oxford in 1729” and which reached its climax in 1733, when Wesley, “the father of the Holy Club” (Works 1, 12-13), preached his University (Oxford) sermon on “Circumcision of Heart,” which he declared in 1765, “contains all that I now teach on this head,” namely the Pelagian doctrine concerning sanctification, and which, on the very brink of the grave (March 1790) he endorsed in his sermon on “The Wedding Garment.” While John Henry Newman (afterwards Cardinal) dated the Oxford Tractarian Movement from Keble’s Oxford Sermon of 1833, there are those, and the present writer is one of them, who held that a truer date would have been Wesley’s Oxford sermon of 1733, exactly a hundred years before.
Dr J. H. Rigg says concerning John Wesley: “The resemblance of his practices to those of modern High Anglicans is, in most points, exceedingly striking. He had early and also forenoon service every day; he divided the morning service, taking the litany as a separate service; he inculcated fasting and confession and weekly communion; he refused the Lord’s Supper to all who had not been baptised by a minister episcopally ordained; he rebaptised the children of Dissenters; and he refused to bury all who had not received Episcopal baptism.” (Churchmanship of John Wesley, pages 28-29).
John Wesley bitterly hated and rejected Calvinism, while he taught a theory of justification practically identical with sanctification. His apologists have tried hard to persuade their readers that Wesley’s Sacramentalism was “merely an Oxford phase, and that it disappeared when he entered upon active evangelistic effort.” His treatise on Baptism, which he published in 1756, proves the contrary: “By water, then, as a means — the water of baptism — we are regenerated or born again, whence it is also called by the Apostle the washing of regeneration. Herein a principle of grace is infused which will not be wholly taken away unless we quench the Holy Spirit of God by long-continued wickedness.” If the foregoing quotation does not embody the false doctrine of baptismal regeneration, one does not know what does. It is amazing that any true evangelical Calvinist would ever quote Wesley, with approval, either in speech or writing. Wesley commended the same so-called “devotional literature” as the Oxford Tractarians, such as the works of Romanists like Thomas a Kempis, Francois de Sales, and Cardinal Bona. He even published the “Introduction to a Devout Life,” by Francois de Sales, the sworn foe of Calvinism, in 1750. He advocated prayers for the dead, justifying himself thus: “Prayer for the dead, the faithful departed, in the advocacy of which I conceive myself clearly justified” (Works ed. 1872, ix, 55). The blessed departed are beyond the need of the poor sin-stained prayers of the church militant, for they are perfect in holiness.
There are many years since the present writer intended to warn readers of our magazine regarding the strangely persistent false view of the supposed good influence of the Wesleys, especially John Wesley, whereas the present writer regards him as undoubtedly the “devout” grandfather of the notoriously undermining Oxford Tractarian Movement. Much more could be quoted and written in proof of this historical fact, but what is written above is sufficient to establish the falsity of the centuries-old world-wide view that John Wesley was the leader of the Eighteenth Century Evangelical Revival, or Movement. It further shows that Satan and the Jesuits must be credited with such mischief-making ingenuity as thus imposed on honest intelligent multitudes, creating such unprecedented blundering. How valuable, just, and right is impartiality in the recording of historical events, and what need there is for meticulous regard to accuracy of statement relative both to biographical details of historical personages, and to the particular narration of historical epochs in national and international life. The justly renowned, scholarly, and pious Scottish historian, Dr Hay Fleming, set an excellent example to all historians in this connection. It is, for instance, of the very essence of historical falsehood to declare that the Romanist Oxford Tractarian Movement was the heir of the Evangelical Revival, whereas it was the logical development from the false teaching of the Arminian Methodist, John Wesley.
In a similar false historical category is the reputation for evangelical devoutness attaching to the name of Archbishop Leighton who, although he did not follow the wicked persecuting methods of his contemporary Scottish renegades from Presbyterianism, who sold their birthright for a mess of episcopalian pottage, nevertheless imbibed Popery in the monastic cells of France in early boyhood. Rev. Prof. Dickson gave him the proper answer when Archbishop Leighton, as Principal of Edinburgh University, asked him why he had not given the lectures to the students on the “Contemplations” of Thomas a Kempis, as he (Leighton) had suggested. The godly Prof. Dickson replied that he did not because he did not believe in works of supererogation.
As showing still further the far-reaching evil resulting from false admiration of the so-called evangelical devoutness of ecclesiastics with strange mystic leanings towards the carnal, outward, pompous, elaborate ceremonies of Popery, we may mention the case of the late Bishop E. A. Knox of Manchester. Bishop Knox got a reputation as a great evangelical in the Church of England, while he was a great admirer of both John Wesley and Archbishop Leighton. My personal view is that the Most High manifested His displeasure against Bishop Knox for this false admiration, by way of chastisement, in permitting his son, known as “Father” Ronald Knox, to become the most notorious propagandist for satanic Popery in our nation today. What may thus be mere admiring propensities in the wrong direction in a professed evangelical ministerial father, may become in the son a life-ensnaring and life-enslaving curse. What communion has light with darkness?”
We may conclude with Rev. George Whitefield’s reply to the carping critics who asked him why he so often preached from the text, “Ye must be born again.” His answer was, “Because ye must be born again.” Let us make our calling and election sure!
(F.P. Magazine, September 1950).