This page intentionally left blank WESLEY AND THE WESLEYANS Wesley and the Wesleyans challenges the cherished myth that at the moment when the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution were threatening the soul of eighteenth-century England, an evan- gelical revival – led by the Wesleys – saved it. It will interest anyone concerned with the history of Methodism and the Church of England, the evangelical tradition, and eighteenth-century reli- gious thought and experience. The book starts from the assumption that there was no large- scale religious revival during the eighteenth century. Instead, the role of what is called ‘primary religion’ – the normal human search for ways of drawing supernatural power into the private life of the individual – is analysed in terms of the emergence of the Wesleyan societies from the Church of England. The Wesleys’ achievements are reassessed; there is a fresh, unsentimental description of the role of women in the movement; and an unexpectedly sympathetic picture emerges of Hanoverian Anglicanism. john kent is Emeritus Professor of Theology, University of Bristol. His many publications include Holding the Fort: Studies in Victorian Revivalism (1978), The End of the Line?: The Development of Theology since 1700 (1982), The Unacceptable Face: The Modern Historian and the Church (1987) and William Temple: Church, State and Society in Britain, 1880–1950 (1993). WESLEY AND THE WESLEYANS JOHN KENT           The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom    The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Cambridge University Press 2004 First published in printed format 2002 ISBN 0-511-03766-X eBook (Adobe Reader) ISBN 0-521-45532-4 hardback ISBN 0-521-45555-3 paperback Contents Acknowledgements page vi 1 The Protestant recovery 1 2 Early Wesleyanism: 1740–1770 31 3 Later Wesleyanism: 1770–1800 63 4 Women in Wesleyanism 104 5 Anglican responses 140 6 Conclusions 187 Notes 208 Select bibliography 222 Index 226 v Acknowledgements Over the years I have been greatly stimulated by the writ- ingsoneighteenth-centuryWesleyanismof HenryRack,John Walsh and Reginald Ward. The centre of this study, however, is the nature and value of religion as such, and here I would hope to add something to what they have said. I have also benefited from the published volumes of the modern edi- tion of The Works of John Wesley, of which Frank Baker was for years the editor-in-chief, and from The Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society. I would like to thank for their help the staff at Lambeth Palace Library, where I did research on Archbishop Secker, and the Librarian at Moravian Church House, in Muswell Hill, London, where I worked on John Cennick. I am indebted to staff at the British Library, Bristol UniversityLibrary,BristolCityLibrary, theLibraryatWesley College, Bristol, and the Library of the Wesley Historical Society at theWestminster Institute ofEducation,Oxford.My thanks are alsodue toPeterForsaithofMethodistHeritage,Ms Noorahal-Gailaniof theMuseumof MethodismatCityRoad, London, and MarkTopping of Wesley’s Chapel in Bristol for answering my enquiries. My son, Oliver Kent, has given me excellent advice and found me valuable material. I am espe- ciallygrateful toWilliamDavies,of theCambridgeUniversity Press, for his patience, and to Libby Willis for her meticulous copy-editing. vi 1 The Protestant recovery One of the persistent myths of modern British history is the mythof theso-calledevangelical revival.Fromabout1730(it is said) a dramatic, divinely inspired return to true Christianity balanced the moral budget of the British people. Lives were changed, society was reformed, and in the longer run the nation was saved from the tempting freedoms of the French Revolution. A Protestant nationalism became the hallmark of the British. The instruments of this divine intervention were John Wesley and his followers, the Wesleyans or Methodists. In the full-grown version of the myth, the evangelical re- vival is referredtoregularly,not justasanestablishedhistorical event, but as evidence of the importance of religion in mod- ern history, and even of the importance of a national return to orthodox Christianity in the present day. What then was Wesleyanism, and what actually happened to give it this role at the centre of a myth, accepted by writers in the United States as well as Britain? Why did it take root in eighteenth-century British society? How did it leave the bitter legacy of the ‘Religious Right’ in the United States? The answer seems to be that in the 1730s the primary religious impulses of certain social groups, especially in the Church of England, were unsatisfied. The primary religious impulse is to seek some kind of extra-human power, either for personal protection, including the cure of diseases, or for the sake of 1 2 Wesley and the Wesleyans ecstatic experience, and possibly prophetic guidance. The individual’s test of a religious system is how far it can supply this ‘supernatural’ force. People ’s primary religious impulses tend to accept a religious system, such as Anglicanism or Roman Catholicism, because it is there, because they knew it when they were children and had their minds tinged with its view of the world. Truth and falsity hardly matter: one is to a degree a product of Buddhism,Christianity, Islam and so on. Wesleyanism took root and expanded because, in a slowly modernising society, in which until the late 1780s the dom- inant elites continued to become more tolerant and enlight- ened in outlook, primary religion also inevitably survived, exercising what we should now call fundamentalist pressure on the existing religious institutions. John Wesley thought that Wesleyanism grew because he was preaching the true gospel, but he succeeded because he responded to the actual religious demands and hopes of his hearers, many of whom thought that religion ought to function as a way of influenc- ing and changing the present, quite apart from what might happen at the future moment when the Second Coming re- vealed the wrath of God. They wanted a reduction in their personal anxieties, a resolution of their practical problems, and a greater degree of self-approval. This was not a matter of class, and it was certainly not a product of poverty, though at times those who were drawn into Wesleyanism came from groups which had found themselves excluded from the main- stream of eighteenth-century society. Many of those who re- sponded toWesleyanismwere finding their personal existence unbearable.TheWesleys helped them to create space inwhich they coulddevelop themselves andfindnewrelationshipswith other people. In effect, Wesley was offering a transformation of personal identity as an antidote to despair or as a cure for