History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

career. At twenty-one years of age he had a classical education of the highest grade, while the
constant correspondence of his devout and intelligent mother kept him in all the forms of outward
religion as a reflex of an inward life as near to God as one intended for the Church, but a stranger
to spiritual regeneration, could be. He made a study of Kempis' "Imitation" and Taylor's "Rules of
Holy Living and Dying," and was not slow to see and feel that true religion is seated in the heart. He
was ordained deacon September 19, 1725. Soon after he was elected a Fellow of Lincoln College.
He obtained his degree of A.M. on the 14th of February, 1727, his religious convictions deepening
as his acquirements multiplied. On the 27th of September, 1728, he was ordained priest by the
Bishop of Oxford.
A new epoch in his life approaches. After a journey to Lincolnshire he returned to Oxford in June,
1729, and entered upon his duties as tutor. A few years before, his brother Charles, through his
advice, had become deeply serious, and soon gathered about him several other collegians of like
spirit for study, meditation, and prayer. The little group were so methodical in the disposal of their
time as to be stigmatized by their fellows as Methodists, and as such they were widely known all
over the university. When John Wesley joined them, "They gladly committed the direction of the
[3]
whole to him; and from this time the society began to assume a more regular form." This simple
fact is another pointer to his born leadership of men. They entered upon charitable visitations to the
prisoners and the sick, and won for themselves the enviable title of the Holy Club. The two brothers
began the practice of conversing with each other solely in Latin, which they continued as a habit for
more than fifty years. In 1731 combined opposition to the Club was inaugurated at the university,
but it was borne with meekness and made no change in their ascetic habits. Much space is given by
Whitehead to their severe spiritual exercises as they struggled together toward the light.
It may be useful in the matter of health and longevity to note that, about the year 1733, when
Wesley was thirty years of age, his excessive labors and rigid abstemiousness greatly reduced him
and he had frequent returns of blood spitting, and on the night of the 16th of July he had a
hemorrhage that waked him from his sleep. But more prudent management under the advice of
physicians overcame his tendency to pulmonary disease, and his almost constant outdoor life saved
him to a rare old age, though twenty years afterward he had a severe return of consumptive
tendencies. He paid little heed, however, to the first warning. Whitehead says of his life in Georgia,
only five years later, but not in commendation, "He exposed himself with the utmost indifference
to every change of climate, and to all kinds of weather. Snow and hail, storm and tempest, had no
effect on his iron body. He frequently slept on the ground in summer, under the heavy dews of the
night; and in winter with his hair and clothes frozen to the earth in the morning. He would wade
through swamps, and swim over rivers in his clothes, and then travel on until they were dry, without
any apparent injury to his health. On one of these occasions he concludes, that any person might
undergo the same hardship without injury, if his constitution was not impaired by the softness of a
genteel education. In all Mr. Wesley's writings I do not know such a flagrant instance of false
reasoning as this: contrary to all the rules of logic, he draws a general conclusion from particular
[4]
premises; but who is at all times in the full possession of all the powers of his mind?" This
impunity was apparent only, and it stands as an admonition to all concerned, an exception to general
laws.