You know, brethren, that there is no soul living who holds more firmly to the doctrines of grace than I do and, if any man asks me whether I am ashamed to be called a Calvinist, I answer: I wish to be called nothing but a Christian. But, if you ask me, do I hold the doctrinal views which were held by John Calvin, I reply: I do, in the main, hold them and rejoice to admit it. But, my dear friends, far be it from me even to imagine that Zion contains none within her walls but Calvinistic Christians or that there are none saved who do not hold our views. Most atrocious things have been spoken about the character and spiritual condition of John Wesley, the modern prince of Arminians. I can only say concerning him that, while I detest many of the doctrines which he preached, yet, for the man himself, I have a reverence second to no Wesleyan. And, if there were wanted two apostles to be added to the number of the twelve, I do not believe that there could be found two men more fit to be so added than George Whitfield and John Wesley. The character of John Wesley stands beyond all imputation for self-sacrifice, zeal, holiness, and communion with God. He lived far above the ordinary level of common Christians and was one of whom the world was not worthy. I believe there are multitudes of men who cannot see these truths who, nevertheless, have received Christ into their hearts and are as dear to the heart of the God of grace as the soundest Calvinist out of heaven. I thank God we do not believe in the measuring line of any form of bigotry. – Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892), from “The Man with the Measuring Line,” a sermon on Zechariah 2.1-2, preached on December 11, 1864.
Category Archives: John Wesley
Wesley on Calvin on Servetus
Being in the Bodleian Library, I light on Mr. Calvin’s account of the case of Michael Servetus, several of whose letters he occasionally inserts, wherein Servetus often declares in terms: “I believe the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God.” Mr. Calvin, however, paints him such a monster as never was – an Arian, a blasphemer, and whatnot, besides strewing over him his flowers of “dog,” “devil, “swine,” and so on, which are the usual appellations he gives to his opponents. But, still, he utterly denies being the cause of Servetus’s death. “No,” says he, “I only advised our magistrates as having a right to restrain heretics by the sword, to seize upon and try that arch-heretic. But, after he was condemned, I said not one word about his execution!” – John Wesley (1703-1791), journal entry for Thursday, July 9, 1741
Calvin and Servetus – and John Wesley
Being in the Bodleian Library, I light on Mr. Calvin’s account of the case of Michael Servetus, several of whose letters he occasionally inserts, wherein Servetus often declares in terms, “I believe the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God.” Mr. Calvin, however, paints him such a monster as never was – an Arian, a blasphemer, and whatnot! Besides strewing over him his flowers of Dog, Devil, Swine, and so on, which are the usual appellations he gives to his opponents. But still, he utterly denies his being the cause of Servetus’s death. “No,” says he, “I only advised our Magistrates, as having a right to restrain heretics by the sword, to seize upon and try that arch-heretic; but, after he was condemned, I said not one word about his execution!” – John Wesley (1703-1791), journal entry for Thursday, July 9, 1741
From John Wesley’s Journals
I found more and more undeniable proofs that the Christian state is a continual state of warfare and that we have need, every moment, to “watch and pray, lest we enter into temptation.” Outward trials, indeed, were now removed, and “peace was in all our borders.” But so much the more did inward trials abound, and “if one member suffered, all the members suffered with him.” So strange a sympathy did I never observe before; whatever considerable temptation fell on any one, unaccountably spreading itself to the rest, so that exceeding few were able to escape it. – Journal entry for Saturday, May 17, 1740
A gentleman came to me, full of good will, to exhort me “not to leave the church or” (which was the same thing, in his account) “to use extemporary prayer, which” (said he) “I will prove, to a demonstration, to be no prayer at all, for you cannot do two things at once. But, thinking how to pray, and praying, are two things – ergo, you cannot both think and pray at once.” Now, may it not be proved by the self-same demonstration that praying, by a form, is no prayer at all? E.g. “You cannot do two things at once. But, reading and praying are two things, ergo, you cannot both read and pray at once.” Q. E. D. – Journal entry for Friday, November 28, 1740
In the evening, I read (nearly) through a treatise by Dr. John Edwards* on the “deficiency of human knowledge and learning.” Surely, never man wrote like this man! At least, none of all whom I have seen. I have not seen so haughty, overbearing, pedantic a writer! Stiff and trifling in the same breath; positive and opinionated to the last degree and, of course, treating others with no more good manners than justice. But, above all, sour, ill-natured, morose without a parallel which, indeed, is his distinguishing character. Be his opinion right or wrong, if Dr. Edwards’s temper were the Christian temper, I would abjure Christianity forever. – Journal entry for Friday, December 26, 1740
*This refers to a Dr. John Edwards, of Cambridge, England (and probably of the university), not the famous Jonathan Edwards of New England, with whom he is sometimes confused.
John Wesley (1703-1791) was the British Arminian Methodist founder and leader.
On Methodism
Yet, it came to need the force of a new spirit, and it found it (without entirely liking it) in Methodism, the one great movement of Hanoverian religion, originating inside the Church [of England] and only reluctantly parting from it. Influenced by their father’s High Church devotion and by the passion of William Law’s “[A] Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life” (1728; one of the century’s great books), John [1703-1791] and Charles [1706-1788] Wesley instilled into their followers in England and the American colonies an urgent sense of religious experience, a sense which shocked more sedate believers by manifestations of frenzy and physical convulsions. Since the Church had subsided into plain sense and reason, and since Dissent now tempered with sobriety its former righteous and godly zeal, there was, indeed, a psychological need for Methodism and for certain other similar evangelical movements, just as the whole social-reasonable temper of the time was coming to need the deeper emotions of the nineteenth century. Methodism broke, like a sudden storm, across the placid sky of Anglicanism, reminding men of fundamental power and of sin and salvation. One side of it was Calvinistic and worked through dread (this, unfortunately, was the side of evangelicalism which afflicted Cowper), but the Wesleys’ own message was Arminian, the doctrine of salvation for all, bringing a sense of sin but, in the very process, a simultaneous sense of divine mercy…
To call the Methodist, and kindred movements, parallels to Romanticism is to beg some large questions but is not really untrue. Hanoverian religion had many faults – an episcopate wedded to politics, an impoverished lower clergy, dull orthodoxy and Dissent, a skeptical world of fashion, and an hysterical evangelical resurgence. Yet, with all its faults, it contributed much more valuably to the outlook of the time than has been customarily allowed; it inspired much scholarly and pastoral devotion, and much in the way of Christian apologetics. Sermons and theological works abounded, and many of the most popular and impressive hymns date from the period from Bishop Ken to William Cowper.
From: “The Social Setting,” by A. R. Humphreys, in The Pelican Guide to English Literature: Volume 4: From Dryden to Johnson, edited by Boris Ford; 2nd edition (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1963 [1957]), pp. 41, 42.
From the Journal…
I returned to Bristol. I have seen no part of England so pleasant for sixty or seventy miles together as those parts of Wales I have been in. And most of the inhabitants are, indeed, ripe for the gospel. I mean (if the expression appears strange) they are earnestly desirous of being instructed in it, and as utterly ignorant of it they are as any Creek or Cherikee Indians. I do not mean they are ignorant of Christ. Many of them can say both the Lord’s Prayer and the Belief; nay, and some, all the Catechism. But, take them out of the road of what they have learned by rote, and they know no more (nine in ten of those with whom I conversed) either of gospel salvation or of that faith whereby, alone, we can be saved than Chicali or Tomo Chachi. Now, what spirit is he of who had rather these poor creatures should perish for lack of knowledge than that they should be saved, even by the exhortations of Howell Harris or an itinerant preacher? – John Wesley (1703-1791), journal entry for Saturday, October 20, 1739
The True Gospel
Indeed, the report now current in Bristol was that I was a Papist, if not a Jesuit. Some added that I was born and bred at Rome, which many cordially believed. O, you fools, when will you understand that the preaching of justification by faith alone, the allowing of no meritorious cause of justification but the death and righteousness of Christ, and no conditional or instrumental cause but faith, is overturning Popery from the foundation? When will you understand that the most destructive of all those errors, which Rome, the mother of abominations, has brought forth (compared to which transubstantiation, and a hundred more, are “trifles light as air”) is that we are justified by works or (to express the same thing a little more decently) by faith and works? Now, do I preach this? I did for ten years. I was (fundamentally) a Papist, and knew it not. But, I do now testify to all (and it is the very point for asserting which I have, to this day, been called in question) that no good works can be done before justification, none which have not in them the nature of sin. – John Wesley (1703-1791), journal entry for Monday, July 27, 1739
“The World is My Parish”
Suffer me, now, to tell you my principles in this matter. I look upon all the world as my parish; thus far, I mean that, in whatever part of it I am, I judge it meet, right, and my bounden duty, to declare unto all that are willing to hear the glad tidings of salvation. This is the work which I know God has called me to; and sure I am that His blessing attends it. Great encouragement have I, therefore, to be faithful in fulfilling the work He hath given me to do. His servant I am and, as such, am employed according to the plain direction of His Word, “as I have opportunity, doing good to all men.” And His providence clearly concurs with His Word, which has disengaged me from all things else, that I might singly attend on this very thing, “and we go about doing good.” – John Wesley (1703-1791), journal entry for Monday, June 11, 1739 (age 35)
George Whitefield
Brethren, is there not a lesson there for some of us? He also hated press notices, and was always annoyed when he received them. He was, in other words, an extraordinarily humble and saintly man. John Wesley pays him the tribute of saying that there was only one man whom he thought he had ever known who was the equal of Whitefield in saintliness – and, conceivably, he thought this other man was a little higher, he was not sure – and that man was John Fletcher, of Madeley. But, for John Wesley to say that at the end of Whitefield’s life, and in view of all that had happened between them, is a tremendous tribute to Whitefield’s saintliness and godliness.
From: “John Calvin and George Whitefield,” in The Puritans: Their Origins and Successors: Addressed Delivered at the Puritan and Westminster Conferences, 1959-1978 by D. M. Lloyd-Jones (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1987), p. 119. This address was originally delivered on Wednesday, December 16, 1964.
Ministering to the Sick
Mon. 8. We set out early in the morning and, the next evening, came to London. Wednesday, 10th, I visited one that was in violent pain and consumed away with pining sickness, but, in everything, giving thanks and greatly rejoicing in hope of the glory of God. From her, we went to another, dangerously ill of the smallpox, but desiring neither life nor ease, but only the holy will of God. If these are unbelievers (as some of the still brethren have lately told them), I am content to be an unbeliever all my days.
Thur. 11. I visited a poor woman who, lying ill between her two sick children, without either physic or food convenient for her, was mightily praising God, her Savior, and testifying, as often as she could speak, her desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ.
John Wesley (1703-1791), journal entries for September 8, 10, and 11, 1740.
