History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

His private Journal, which came into the hands of Whitehead, his literary executor, and whose life
of Charles is the most authentic, if not comprehensive one, extant, furnishes details of his
acquaintance with Count Zinzendorf, head of the Moravian Church, and Peter Bohler, prominent in
its ministry, and his experience of the "New birth," by spiritual regeneration with his brother John
who had also returned to England, through their instrumentality. This experience led to the use of
extempore prayer under special demand of public worship. A born poet, from his youth he was a
singer in verse, and now his muse, under the inspiration of his new and rich communion with God,
through a reconciled Saviour, as the fact was answered in his personal consciousness, incorporated
his devotions in hymns spiritual fervor and musical rhythm have fired the hearts of evangelical
Christians in every clime and for every age. Watts alone shares with him in this lyrical triumph,
though John gave out fitful evidences of the same gift when he fully yielded to the afflatus. His
public ministry was fruitful. A priest of the National Church without a settled parish, he preached
wherever invited in the Church, having added extempore sermons to extempore prayers, to the
prisoners in Newgate and other places, but always clad in his canonicals. He was arraigned before
the Bishop of London, with his brother John, for preaching an absolute assurance of salvation. He
was intimate with Whitefield, corrected his Journal for the press, and was urged by him to accept a
college living at Oxford, the plan of an itinerant ministry not yet having developed. Following the
example of Whitefield, he took to field preaching, and was rebuked by the archbishop for his
irregularity. He preached to near ten thousand hearers by computation in Moorsfields and at
Kensington common. He soon became thoroughly incorporated with his brother in itinerant
preaching, meeting with like persecutions from the populace as, in public halls and open fields, he
zealously proclaimed a full salvation for all men. Maxwell, the first of the lay-preachers, was also
in the field, and he did not hesitate to yoke with him as such. The union with the Moravians in
London had not yet been broken, and the Wesley brothers came under the regulations of the
Methodo-Moravian societies. Dissensions came into the society of London by reason of the mystical
tendencies of some of the Moravians, which John Wesley earnestly combated, and led to a final
withdrawal from them. Another reason may have secretly operated to bring about this schism.
Whitehead says: "Hitherto the government of the society has been vested wholly in the people. At
their different meetings, they made such rules and orders as they thought necessary and proper,
without paying any particular deference to the ministers. In one or two instances, mentioned in these
journals (Charles Wesley's), they threatened to expel Mr. Wesley himself when he did not conform
to the rules they made. But on the 20th of April, this year (1740), it was agreed: "(1) That no order
should be valid unless the minister be present at the making of it. (2) That whosoever denies the
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ordinances to be commands shall be expelled the society." It was perhaps an instance of
unbalanced government to the other extreme of the paternal system of John Wesley, when he was
free to act out himself. In the meantime he labored in the societies, paralleling the zeal and fidelity
of his brother, with much persecution and suffering. In the year 1744 there was much talk of the
Pretender and a French invasion. Many thought it proper that John Wesley should draw up an
Address of loyalty to the king in the name of the Methodist societies; and with that too ready
acquiescence he exhibited in the matter of the American colonies, he drew it up, but it was not
delivered, dissuaded probably by his ever cautious brother on the point of even seeming separation
from the National Church. Charles wrote to his brother: "My objection to your Address in the name
of the Methodists is, that it would constitute us a sect: at least it would seem to allow that we are a
body distinct from the National Church, whereas we are only a sound part of the Church." [6]