Section 7
A note before we continue. This book is not Wesley’s journal. He kept one, but I have not read it. I had nearly all of this entry written before my research brought me to a journal entry of Wesley’s in conjunction with what I felt compelled to write about Section 7. It is very possible my conjectures about Wesley’s attitude and mind are greater expanded or even contradicted in his own words, in his journals. I am not called to get those documents and read them as we pursue this book. I perhaps will at a later date and maybe revise this work, but for now, you are getting the mental train of thought as I read this book, for the third time, and give you my thoughts. We’ll see where God goes with this. My point is that those who have read and studied Wesley’s life will have a greater insight into him than I will. Feel free to expose my errors where you find them. Now, on with the club.
We open Section 7 with John Wesley and his brother Charles arriving in America and presently at Savanah, Georgia. These two simple passages, clearly written well after given, we have a three-year span between the first hymn and the second hymn, encompassing the timeframe wherein John Wesley visited Aldersgate on May 24, 1738, and “felt my heart strangely warmed.” This event is considered the birth of Methodism as a denomination. Let’s talk about that for a moment.
John Wesley states, much later in life, he had no intention of starting a new denomination. Wesley remains an Anglican priest his entire life and dies as one. I think that fact alone gives credence to Wesley’s claim of intent. However, the fact remains that Wesley did create a denomination that branched off from the Anglican church of England.
As I understand it, America is the bulk of the reason why Methodism exists today. Let me explain. For Wesley’s life after this point, he, his brother Charles, and others travel back and forth between England and the colonies in America. Initially, Wesley is supervising Anglican events in America, but they quickly become distinctly different. Later, he is asked to appoint and select bishops for the colonies, to which he explains that Americans elect their leaders. Thus begins what we would come to know as annual and general conferences.
The point of explaining all this is to set the stage for the timeframe of Wesley’s mind and note how meager the entries are to this point. Those meager entries are about to change. The frequency will change too, but not nearly as quickly as the tone and tenor do.
Now, let’s look at the two hymns. Keep in mind, we have the first hymn entry dated 1735. The passage listed in the book is the fourth hymn from Thou Hidden Love of God, Whose Height. You can find that hymn in its entirety HERE. The four lines listed are not the entire stanza. Let’s look at that.
Is there a thing beneath the sun
That strives with Thee my heart to share?
Ah! tear it thence, and reign alone,
The Lord of every motion there.
Then shall my heart from earth be free,
When it has found repose in Thee.
Wesley leaves out the last two lines. I think that’s exactly what Wesley was looking for, because the four lines read as a question listed alone. I think Wesley is searching for meaning and purpose in the path God has him on, “Is there a thing beneath the sun that strives with Thee my heart to share?” I think Wesley might have been struggling with something competing with and for God’s attentions because the last two lines seem to be a statement of what Wesley, unspoken, wants: “Then shall my heart from earth be free, when it has found repose in Thee.” You can find the entire hymn HERE.
Three years pass.
Wesley enters a second portion of a hymn. This, too, looks like a question, but this time I read it with more of a cry of passion and desire than the first. The above questioning hymn entry was one of searching, of desperately seeking to understand. We have three long years gone by between that entry and this one. Here is the next section of the hymn we have entered, which might have been aboard a ship returning to England. The sentence that precedes this hymn entry does say, “In the beginning of the year 1738” p.11 A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, and Wesley is aboard The Simmonds in 1736 heading to the port of Savanah. His journal entry, the book we are reading is not Wesley’s journal, for January 25, 1736, remarks on how calm the Moravians are during what everyone on board considers a life-threatening storm. Wesley uses the event to calm the other passengers, asking them to consider those who know and fear God versus those who do not. It seems to have had a greater impact on Wesley than anyone else. Here’s the next hymn entry from Jesus, Thy Boundless Love to Me.
O grant that nothing in my soul
may dwell, but Thy pure love alone!
O may Thy love possess my whole,
my Joy, my Treasure, and my Crown.
All coldness from my heart remove;
my every act, word, thought, be love.
We find rest in God. We find safety in God. We find answers in God. If we don’t find those things, perhaps it is because we aren’t attending to the things God indicates in our lives that will lead to what we seek. Wesley is already an Anglican priest and has been since 1728. For seven years, Wesley has dutifully been going about the daily life of a man of the church, called to his office. For purposes of this book, that begins somewhere between Section 4 and Section 5. To this point, Wesley’s entries in this tome have been short and of little consequence to the topic of salvation, perfection, or God’s influence in Wesley’s life. That is about to change dramatically. I think Wesley sensed it because he closes Section 7 with the statement about that hymn above, “Is not this the language, not only of every believer, but of everyone that is truly awakened?” p.12.
I think Wesley is awake now, searching. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but he’s been looking for it for three years. God presented it to him at Aldersgate in May of 1738. From this point forward, we see a change in this book.
Section 8
Section 8 opens, “In August following” p. 13. Note that in the previous sections, whole years pass before another entry. Now, we have mere months. By March of 1738, Wesley was back in Oxford, England. He meets with a friend, Peter Boehler, because Wesley is having a crisis of faith. He is considering, after a decade of just going through the motions, stopping preaching. This idea is in his head because he has witnessed the Moravians hold what he considers to be true faith in the midst of what everyone was certain was the end of their lives, and he didn’t have it. His friend Peter gives one of the best and most assuring quotes I may have ever heard about Christian faith when Wesley asks him if he should quit preaching because of his lack of faith. Peter says, “By no means. Preach faith till you have it: and then, because you have it, you will preach faith.” That is from Wesley’s journal entry from Saturday, March 4, 1738.
Section 8 finds Wesley in Germany talking to another friend, Arvid Gardin. This visit is after Wesley’s transformative Aldersgate experience. He is now walking in his own faith, visiting a Moravian brother in Germany. Wesley is exploring his newfound fullness of faith with one who he believes has a far more seasoned walk with God. This is John Wesley, founder of Methodism, seeking out someone he considers to be a more mature Christian for guidance.
Preach faith until you have it; and when you have it, preach faith. Wesley’s preaching has the full-on fire of his Aldersgate conviction now. But that fire is burning wildly out of control. Wesley seeks not to restrain that fire, but guide it, so he is consulting someone else who has dealt with it longer. Wesley’s purpose in visiting Gardin is to ask a question: “I desired him to give me, in writing, a definition of ‘the full assurance of faith,’ which he did in the following words:” p.13. We then have what Gardin gave Wesley in both Latin and English translation. Gardin’s understanding is a high, high bar. It is a standard I’m not sure I will ever meet. The last bit I assuredly do not have yet, “…with a deliverance from every fleshly desire, and a cessation of all, even inward sins.” p.13.
This single paragraph from Arvid Gardin is the answer Wesley was seeking in Section 7, and he knows it. “This was the first account I ever heard from any living man of what I had before learned myself from the oracles of God, and had been praying for (with the little company of my friends [The Holy Club, I think]), and expecting for several years.
We have Wesley in August of 1738, a decade almost from his ordination as a man of the cloth, who finally has a firm and clear understanding of faith in God. Things for Wesley are about to change dramatically, but note we are nearly 300 years removed from these events, two hundred eighty-eight to be exact. For Wesley, his quill just stopped moving in 1738 with the words we just read in Section 8, but for us, we know the movement of that quill just set into motion a change that will affect the entire world in the coming of Methodism. What we are reading from this point forward is a specific document that shaped the founder of that denomination’s life and approach to living, what he preached, and what he told others was a good way to live. To Wesley, it was a “Plain Account”, and perhaps at the time it was. However, we have nearly 300 years of mist and misunderstanding to muddy that plain account. Let’s see if we can reconnect Wesley’s words with that plain understanding and move it forward into modern action akin to what God intended nearly three centuries ago. God bless and Godspeed.