British Methodist Revivalism and the Eclipse of Ecclesiology (Routledge Methodist Studies Series) [1 ed.] 103211147X, 9781032111476

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British Methodist Revivalism and the Eclipse of Ecclesiology

Revivalism was one of the main causes of division in nineteenth-century British Methodism, but the role of revivalist theology in these splits has received scant scholarly attention. In this book, James E. Pedlar demonstrates how the revivalist variant of Methodist spirituality and theology empowered its adherents and helped foster new movements, even as it undermined the Spirit’s work through the structures of the church. Beginning with an examination of unresolved issues in John Wesley’s ecclesiology, Pedlar identifies a trend of increasing marginalisation of the church among revivalists, via an examination of three key figures: Hugh Bourne (1772–1852), James Caughey (1810–1891), and William Booth (1860–1932). He concludes by examining the more catholic and irenic theology of Samuel Chadwick (1860–1932), the leading Methodist revivalist of the early twentieth century who became a strong advocate of Methodist Union. Pedlar shows that these theological differences must be considered, alongside social and political factors, in any well-rounded assessment of the division and eventual reunification of British Methodism. James E. Pedlar is the Donald N. and Kathleen G. Bastian Chair of Wesley Studies and an Associate Professor of Theology at Tyndale University in Toronto. He is a Fellow of the Manchester Wesley Research Centre and has served as President of the Wesleyan Theological Society.

Routledge Methodist Studies Series Series Editor: William Gibson

Director of the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History Oxford Brookes University, UK

Methodism remains one of the largest denominations in the USA and is growing in South America, Africa, and Asia (especially in Korea and China). This series spans Methodist history and theology, exploring its success as a movement historically and in its global expansion. Books in the series will look particularly at features within Methodism which attract wide interest, including the unique position of the Wesleys; the prominent role of women and minorities in Methodism; the interaction between Methodism and politics; the ‘Methodist conscience’ and its motivation for temperance and pacifist movements; the wide range of Pentecostal, holiness and evangelical movements; and the interaction of Methodism with different cultures. Editorial Board: Ted A. Campbell, Professor of Church History, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, USA David N. Hempton, Dean, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University, USA Priscilla Pope-Levison, Associate Dean, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, USA Martin Wellings, Superintendent Minister of Oxford Methodist Circuit and Past President of the World Methodist Historical Society, UK. Karen B. Westerfield Tucker, Professor of Worship, Boston University, USA John Wesley’s Political World Glen O’Brien Methodism and the Rise of Popular Literary Criticism Reviewing the Revival Brett C. McInelly Sensing Salvation in Early British Methodism Accounts of Spiritual Experience, 1735–1765 Erika K. R. Stalcup British Methodist Revivalism and the Eclipse of Ecclesiology James E. Pedlar For more information and a full list of titles in the series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/religion/series/AMETHOD

British Methodist Revivalism and the Eclipse of Ecclesiology

James E. Pedlar

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 James E. Pedlar The right of James E. Pedlar to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-11147-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-12391-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-22432-7 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003224327 Typeset in Sabon by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

For my parents, in gratitude for the rich spiritual heritage that they passed on to me

Contents

Acknowledgements 1 Introduction

viii 1

2 ‘A Division of Heart’: Separation and the Spirit in the Later Wesley

11

3 ‘We Shall Have No Mastery’: Hugh Bourne and the Emergence of Primitive Methodism

42

4 Revival and the Reformers: James Caughey and the Schism of 1849

74

5 Separate but Non-sectarian: The Salvation Army’s Ecclesiological Ambiguities

104

6 Catholicity of the Heart: Samuel Chadwick and Methodist Union

138

7 Conclusion: Revivalism’s Mixed Legacy

171

Index

177

Acknowledgements

I could not have written this book without the help of numerous organisations, colleagues, and friends over the past several years. Research in the UK was facilitated by visiting fellowships at the Manchester Wesley Research Centre in 2016 and 2022. The community at Nazarene Theological College, Didsbury, were most welcoming and accommodating. While there I was ably assisted in research by archivists at the Methodist Archives and Research Centre, John Rylands Research Institute and Library, the Englesea Brook Chapel and Museum, and the Arthur Skevington Wood Archives at Cliff College. The Cliff College community was beyond generous during my time there, and I enjoyed many informative conversations with Clive Taylor and Russ Houghton. I am thankful, also, for regular research assistance from the staff at the J. William Horsey Library at Tyndale University. Tyndale provided financial support for my research, as well as a sabbatical in 2020, and I am grateful for the support of Seminary Deans Janet Clark and Arnold Neufeldt-Fast. The Bastian Chair of Wesley Studies at Tyndale University is sponsored by four denominations: the Free Methodist Church, the Church of the Nazarene, the Salvation Army, and the Wesleyan Church. Their financial support and encouragement, through their representatives on the Tyndale University Wesley Studies Committee, have been crucial. Lloyd Eyre, the Chair of the WSC, deserves special thanks for his guidance and encouragement. I received important critical feedback on various portions of this book during presentations at Wesleyan Theological Society, the Manchester Wesley Research Centre/Nazarene Theological College, the Oxford Institute for Methodist Theological Studies, the Salvation Army Scholars and Friends meeting at the American Academy of Religion, and the Samuel Chadwick Centre at Cliff College, which invited me to give the 2022 Samuel Chadwick Lecture. My research has been sharpened through conversations with many colleagues, including Geordan Hammond, Priscilla Pope-Levison, David Bundy, Howard Snyder, Donald G. Bastian, Jill Barber, Stephen Hatcher, George Bailey, Patrick Eby, Andy Miller, and Stephen Oliver. I am thankful to Professor William Gibson and the editorial board of Routledge’s Methodist Studies Series for agreeing to publish this book and for the professional and courteous work of Routledge’s editorial

Acknowledgements ix staff. Finally, I must thank my wife Samantha and my daughters, Moira, and Sadie, for their love, support, and patience as I have completed the work. I thank the editors and publishers of Wesley and Methodist Studies and Word & Deed for permission to publish material from the following two articles. Portions of Chapter 3 were previously published as: ‘Schism and the Spirit in Hugh Bourne’s Theology’. Wesley and Methodist Studies 10, no. 2 (2018): 177–96. https://doi.org/10.5325/weslmethstud.10.2.0177. Copyright © 2018 by The Pennsylvania State University. Portions of Chapter 5 were previously published as: Pedlar, James E. ‘Separate but Non-Sectarian: The Salvation Army’s Place in the History of Wesleyan Ecclesial Division.’ Word & Deed: A Journal of Salvationist Theology and Ministry 20, no. 2 (2017): 25–40. Copyright © 2017 by The Salvation Army.

1

Introduction

Schism is not normally a matter of abstract speculation. Christians tend to define schism during conflict—either to charge someone with dividing the church or to defend against such an accusation. No one defines schism in such a way as to implicate themselves, so the literature often has a self-­ serving or self-justifying character. This problem is characteristic of ecclesiology in general. Ecclesiology did not emerge as a major topic of debate until the Reformation, when the identity of the church was suddenly in question. All sides wanted to claim that they were part of the true church, and in doing so they often de-churched their opponents. The standard magisterial Protestant affirmation that the church is found where the Word of God is rightly preached and the sacraments duly administered sounds like a positive affirmation, but it was clearly intended to exclude both Roman Catholics and Anabaptists.1 The more bald-faced aggressions of that era are politely passed over in most contemporary ecumenical discussion, but the exclusionary impulse of ecclesiology has left a lasting legacy. Methodism is no exception to this trend. David Chapman contends that Methodist ecclesiology ‘was shaped by its origins and formative experience as a holiness movement with ambitious missionary horizons’ and in response to ‘a series of ad hoc developments that only retrospectively came to be invested with theological significance’.2 This arguably overstates the priority of practice over theology, though it is true that full-fledged ecclesiological accounts were slow to develop. Methodist ecclesiology was born out of its contested relationship with the Church of England. John Wesley’s resistance to separation meant that he did not develop a definitive Methodist doctrine of the church; to do so would have been a tacit acknowledgement that Methodism was a church of its own. During the nineteenth century, British Methodist ecclesiology developed gradually through a series of conflicts, divisions, and eventual mergers. The first half of the nineteenth century was particularly tumultuous. Wesleyan Methodism began to splinter very soon after John Wesley’s death, beginning with the Methodist New Connexion in 1797, followed by small secessions such as the so-called ‘Kirkgate Screamers’ in Leeds in 1805 and the Band-Room Methodists in Manchester in 1806. These splits were followed by the emergence of the Primitive Methodists in 1811 and the DOI: 10.4324/9781003224327-1

2 Introduction Bible Christians in 1815. The short-lived Tent Methodists formed in 1822, and the carnage continued with the infamous ‘Leeds organ case’, which led to the establishment of the Protestant Methodist Connexion in 1828. In 1835, that body joined with the newly formed Wesleyan Association, which had emerged in opposition to the Wesleyan Methodist Conference’s plan to establish a theological institution with Jabez Bunting as President. The heterodox Arminian Methodist Connexion emerged in Derbyshire in the early 1830s, only to have most of its membership join the Wesleyan Methodist Association in 1837. These secessions were dwarfed numerically by the exodus from the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion in the 1850s after the infamous Fly Sheets controversy. Some of these discontented Methodists eventually found their way into the Wesleyan Reform Union and others joined with the Wesleyan Methodist Association to form the United Methodist Free Churches in 1857. All of these schisms, of course, are limited to the Methodist family of churches in Britain. There were many divisions in North American Methodism over issues of polity, slavery, and holiness revivalism. The splintering of nineteenth-century Methodism was so pervasive that it is difficult to sort out the various bodies and their distinctive emphases. The fact that many of these groups later merged back into united Methodist denominations further muddies the waters. In his 1968 book, Methodism Divided: A Study in the Sociology of Ecumenicalism, Robert Currie attempted to clarify the developments by providing a twofold typology of British Methodist division, categorising denominations as either constitutionalist ‘secessions’ or revivalist ‘offshoots’. He described the New Connexion, Protestant Methodists, Wesleyan Methodist Association, and Methodist Reformers as ‘secessions’, and the Band Room Methodists, the Primitive Methodists, the Bible Christians, Tent Methodists, and Arminian Methodists as ‘offshoots’. The secessions were usually led by ministers, developed over a longer period of time through a period of extended controversy, and were composed mainly of Wesleyan Methodist membership, whereas the offshoots were normally led by Wesleyan Methodist laypersons or lay ministers, developed more quickly, and attracted more non-Methodist membership. Secessions were motivated by a particular point of controversy and were often fanned into flame by propaganda regarding a flashpoint issue, whereas offshoots were more local in origin and reflected concern for revival and evangelism.3 While Currie’s analysis is sociological, it also reflects the way those in the ‘offshoot’ camp drew on some of these distinctions in defending themselves theologically against the charge of schism. When Hugh Bourne, co-founder of the Primitive Methodist Connexion, wrote the first history of that denomination in 1823, one of his chief objectives was to defend the new body against the charge of schism. His main tactic was to stress that he had never intended to separate, nor to take members away from the Wesleyans, but rather to establish ‘a new thing’ in areas where Wesleyans had not been at work.4 Likewise, William O’Bryan, founder of the Bible Christians, stressed that

Introduction 3 before his expulsion he had ‘established preaching in eight different parishes on the north coast of Cornwall, in most of which promising Societies were formed.’5 William Booth, similarly, claimed to have had ‘no regular definite plans’ when he set out to establish his mission agency in East London in 1865 and said he was ‘strongly opposed to forming any separate organisation’.6 There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Bourne, O’Bryan, and Booth regarding the unintended character of the founding of their respective denominations. They each set out to pursue revival, and, in varying degrees, attempted to work within or alongside existing church structures. There are a host of reasons for their failure to integrate their revival efforts within those structures, touching on issues of social class, regional differences, political pressures, and more. Since the mid-twentieth century, scholarship on nineteenth-century Methodism has done much to deepen our awareness of the influence of such issues on the development of the Methodist tradition.7 Significant historical studies focused on the divisions of British Methodism were written during the height of mid-twentieth-century ecumenical fervour, and subsequent scholarship has illuminated the context of various individual divisions.8 But little attention has been paid to the theological differences between revivalist branches of Methodism and the Wesleyan Methodist tradition. Much of the research into the theological aspects of these divisions has focused on the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion and its emerging theology of ministry.9 Decades ago, John Kent and John Wilkinson noted that the primary difficulties in the Methodist Union negotiations of the 1920s were doctrinal differences related to the work of the Holy Spirit in relation to the church and its ministries.10 But not much has been done to trace the roots of these differences among the revivalist Methodist bodies in the nineteenth century. While not discounting the importance of social, political, and cultural factors, theological differences must be considered in any well-rounded assessment of the division and eventual reunification of British Methodism. In this book, I demonstrate that there were significant theological differences between revivalist Methodists and Wesleyan Methodists and that these differences contributed to the division of Methodism. My primary argument is that revivalist theology magnified the personal work of the Spirit and downplayed the corporate work of the Spirit, leading to a highly participatory view of the church that engaged and empowered ordinary people but left little room for denominational structures to be viewed as a Spirit-infused means of grace. Beginning with an examination of unresolved issues in John Wesley’s ecclesiology, I identify a trend of increasing marginalisation of the church via an examination of three key figures in the nineteenth century: Hugh Bourne (1772–1852), James Caughey (1810–1891), and William Booth (1860–1932). These men were not theological innovators, nor did they set out to engage in theological conflict. But their brand of Methodism had distinctive theological emphases, particularly in relation to the work of the Holy Spirit and the means of grace. The revivalist variant of Methodist

4 Introduction spirituality and theology empowered its adherents and helped foster new movements, even as it undermined the Spirit’s work through the institutional structures of the church and weakened the authority of the Conference. I conclude the argument by examining the more catholic and irenic theology of Samuel Chadwick (1860–1932), the leading Methodist revivalist of the early twentieth century and a strong advocate of Methodist Union. Some might wonder if the focus on revivalist theology in particular is warranted, given that (apart from Wesley) none of the figures discussed in this book are generally considered theologians. They are better known as evangelists, and much of their writing came in the form of sermons or other forms of literature aimed at a broader audience. Most of them had little formal theological education. Some of them, such as William Booth, were dismissive of theological discussion and debate. However, the Methodist tradition has never understood theology as narrowly limited to scholarly or dogmatic debates and treatises. Theology, rather, has normally been understood in the tradition of ‘practical divinity’, as modelled by John Wesley. That is not to say that Wesley’s practical divinity was the same as the field known as ‘practical theology’ today—that is, scholarship related to the practice of ministry. Since Albert Outler first recommended consideration of Wesley as a ‘folk theologian’, scholars—including Outler himself—came to appreciate Wesley’s model of theology and the way he integrated theology and practice.11 Moreover, in his context, Wesley was not innovating or offering a unique methodological approach to theology. As Randy Maddox notes, in the eighteenth century, practical divinity was one of the three established areas of theological scholarship, alongside doctrinal or speculative divinity and controversial divinity.12 Practical divinity involved writing what is sometimes called first-order theology—sermons, liturgies, catechisms, biographies, and so on. Inclusion of such literature within the scope of ‘theology’ aligns with the broader historical view of theology that was common prior to the rise of modern European universities. Christian theology, most often practised by pastors, was historically a practical discipline that aimed ‘to nurture and shape the worldview or disposition that orients believers lives in the world.’13 This view of theology also accords with recent attempts of non-Wesleyan scholars to recover the role of a ‘pastor-theologian’.14 If we take theology in this broader, classical sense, it is certain that the revivalists examined in this volume wrote a great deal of theology and had a profound influence on the theological outlook of their readers. Moreover, some revivalists, like Hugh Bourne and Samuel Chadwick, produced writing that had a more explicit theological purpose—a fact that has not received sufficient attention. Engaging with the theology of revivalism therefore means reading a wide variety of sources, including not only sermons and books but also periodicals and letters, while also analysing relevant practices of ministry, in order to discern and articulate both explicit and implicit theological convictions of revivalist thought and practice. This kind of theological scholarship was modelled in Donald Dayton’s important work, Theological

Introduction 5 Roots of Pentecostalism.15 The convictions of leading revivalists were neither profound nor ground-breaking, but they were influential among revivalist Methodist bodies, and fostered schismatic tendencies that contributed to Methodism’s divisions. For these reasons, study of the theology of revivalism is important for gaining an understanding of Methodist history. The argument of the book begins in Chapter 2 with an examination of John Wesley’s ecclesiology during the final decade of his life. The elderly Wesley exhibited what Albert Outler called an ‘unstable blend’ of Anglican and believer’s church ecclesiologies, combining robust sacramentology with a very generous standard of ecclesiality that recognised the legitimacy of a wide variety of church bodies. On the one hand, his ‘low bar’ regarding what qualified as ‘a church’ laid the groundwork for the soon-to-be separated Methodists to view themselves as a church. On the other hand, it removed many potential reasons for separation since it identified relatively few matters as essential for church status. Notably, Wesley rejected separation on the grounds of the supposed corruption of the church and its ministers, arguing (on classical and Anglican grounds) that the church’s character as a mixed body does not negate the efficaciousness of its ministrations in Word and sacrament. Wesley’s seemingly unstable mixture of convictions can be partially resolved through attention to his theology of the means of grace, with its comprehensive conception of the Spirit’s work through practices that are both historic and innovative, personal and corporate. It was precisely this well-rounded perspective on the means of grace that was lost among the later revivalists. And yet Wesley’s vague account of the Church of England, particularly in its visible aspects, did not integrate the structures of the Church within his understanding of the means of grace. This, coupled with his appeal to the Spirit-led conscience as the final arbiter of ecclesial separation, sowed the seeds of division that would bear fruit in the nineteenth century. Chapter 3 considers Primitive Methodism, the first significant revivalist offshoot from Wesleyan Methodism. Co-founder Hugh Bourne was its chief literary and theological figure. Bourne wrote the first history of the movement in 1823, and it reveals the ambiguity of his ecclesiology. While he defended his movement vigorously against the charge of schism, his quasi-independent revivalistic ministry while he was still a Wesleyan Methodist clearly sowed the seeds of division. Several important influences, including John Fletcher, Lorenzo Dow, and the Quaker Methodists, pushed Bourne’s theology in a pneumatocentric direction. His preference for the extraordinary means of grace over the ordinary means weakened the attachment of the movement to the broader Methodist family. Bourne’s Spirit-centred theology led him to an ecclesiology that was more grassroots and participatory than the prevailing Wesleyan Methodist view, but it largely ignored the possibility of the Spirit’s work through the community, leaving him with little reason to resist separation. These tendencies will be illustrated through a comparison of Bourne’s arguments for women preachers with those of Wesleyan Methodist, Zechariah Taft. Taft followed John Wesley and Mary Bosanquet in arguing

6 Introduction that women’s preaching was an ‘extraordinary’ ministry that should be exercised occasionally. Bourne, with his lack of concern for ecclesiastical authorisation, put no such restriction on women’s preaching, making his position closer to that of the sixteenth-century Quaker, Margaret Fell. Irish-American revivalist James Caughey is discussed in Chapter 4. His long evangelistic sojourn in the United Kingdom between 1841 and 1847 contributed significantly to the simmering tensions in Wesleyan Methodism. Caughey’s expulsion by the 1846 Wesleyan Methodist Conference was a flashpoint in the Fly Sheets controversy, leading to a major 1849 schism that claimed 100,000 adherents. Caughey did not overtly press for ecclesiastical reform, but his strong emphasis on the instantaneous gift of entire sanctification, his reliance on divine impressions, and his self-superintendency gave his teaching a very Spirit-centred and individualistic bent. This tendency was further underscored by Caughey’s emphasis on the necessity of revival services as extraordinary means of grace, which implied a deficiency in ordinary forms of ministry. Caughey’s explicit emphasis on extraordinary means was an extension and systematisation of Bourne’s implicit tendency in the same direction. While Caughey did not intend to promote schism, he followed Bourne’s pattern in leaving no significant role for the work of the Spirit through the Conference, thus emboldening and empowering individual Methodists while weakening the spiritual authority of the Conference. Caughey’s theology of revival will be contrasted with the views of James Dixon, an influential moderate Wesleyan Methodist who served as President of Conference in 1841. In his 1842 biography of revivalist William Edward Miller, Dixon offered reflections on ‘revival’ that matched openness to the dramatic work of the Spirit with confidence in the Spirit’s availability through the ordinary means, thereby guarding against revivalism’s schismatic tendencies. Chapter 5 focuses on The Salvation Army and the theology of William Booth. Booth represents the full flowering of the division between the Spirit and the church in Methodist revivalism, manifested in the complete rejection of the sacraments as the chief ‘ordinary’ means of grace. The Salvation Army was founded in 1865, but William and Catherine Booth had been operating as independent evangelists since leaving the Methodist New Connexion 1861. Whereas Caughey and Bourne disregarded Conference authorities, the Booths were not subject to ecclesial authority whatsoever. Thus, the relationship between their movement and Methodism was somewhat tangential, but their thinking was clearly shaped by a Methodist variety of transatlantic revivalism, marked by evangelistic pragmatism, expectant Spirit-centred postmillennial missionary urgency, an ‘unsectarian’ vision for the Church, and an emphasis on spiritual unity over institutional continuity. Early Salvationists continued to maintain that they were not ‘a church’, even after they had clearly established themselves as an autonomous Christian body. Church practices, for Booth, were merely functional in relation to mission and could be replaced with other practices which served the same ends. Thus, the sacraments were irrelevant; indeed, the church per se was irrelevant to

Introduction 7 Salvationist theology. This is evident in the development of the Salvation Army’s non-sacramental practice and its aborted merger negotiations with the Church of England. The distinctness of William Booth’s form of Wesleyan revivalism will be illustrated by contrasting the vision for ‘social salvation’ in his Darkest England scheme (1890) with Hugh Price Hughes’s vision of social reform. Hughes had a more integrated theology and practice of mission (bringing together ecclesial, social, cultural, and political reform), supported by a stronger account of how the Spirit’s personal work was related to social transformation through the church as God’s instrument for the establishment of the kingdom. The Salvation Army was the end-point of the Methodist revivalism’s ecclesiological trajectory. By the end of the Victorian era, the revivalist impulse had begun to fade in the Methodist denominations, even as it found an outlet in Salvationism and para-church missionary agencies. The leading Methodist revivalist of the pre-union period was the Wesleyan Methodist, Samuel Chadwick, the focus of Chapter 6. Chadwick is best-known for his long tenure as Principal of Cliff College and his editorship of the Joyful News. While Chadwick displayed many of the same tendencies as Booth, Caughey, and Bourne, his spirituality was marked by a catholic streak that emphasised historic spiritual practices and blunted some of revivalism’s schismatic tendencies. Chadwick was in many ways an heir of Holiness Movement revivalism, and he continued to advocate that a revival of holiness was the one thing needed in the Methodist churches, but his theology of the Spirit gave greater attention to the Spirit’s corporate work, and he had a relatively robust and clear ecclesiology and sacramentology. These theological foundations laid the groundwork for Chadwick’s vocal support for Methodist Union. Chadwick’s blend of revivalism and catholic churchmanship saw him aligning very closely with prominent trends among the non-Wesleyan Methodists. This will be evident by comparing Chadwick’s views on Methodist Union with those of Arthur Samuel Peake, the leading Primitive Methodist scholar. Peake’s respected piety and literary skill helped to mediate the acceptance of critical biblical studies to a broader audience and fostered common theological ground between the Primitive and Wesleyan Methodist connexions. The strong sense of experiential catholicity and robust free church ecclesiology shared by Chadwick and Peake put them on the same side of the key Methodist debates of the 1920s, despite their different approaches to theology and biblical scholarship. The closing chapter discusses the lasting significance of revivalist theology in the story of British Methodism’s division and reunion. Revivalism’s Spirit-centred theology certainly brought spiritual vitality and empowerment to many Methodist people, but the imbalance in revivalist pneumatology highlights the need for a more full-orbed understanding of the Spirit’s work in the church. Integrating the structures of the church into an account of the means of grace is essential for Methodist ecclesiology and can help to overcome some of the weaknesses of revivalist theology. This would not prevent

8 Introduction division from taking place but could help soften the sectarian animosity that often accompanies revivalist movements. On the other hand, a failure to account for the ministry of oversight as a means through which the Spirit can work will undermine the church’s integrity and further the prospect of schism. Notes 1 On this point, see R. R. Reno, ‘The Debilitation of the Churches’, in The Ecumenical Future: Background Papers for ‘In One Body Through the Cross’, ed. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 46–72. 2 David M. Chapman, ‘Holiness and Order: British Methodism’s Search for the Holy Catholic Church’, Ecclesiology 7, no. 1 (2011): 71. 3 Robert Currie, Methodism Divided: A Study in the Sociology of Ecumenicalism (London: Faber, 1968), 54–55. 4 Hugh Bourne, History of the Primitive Methodists Giving an Account of Their Rise and Progress up to the Year 1823 (Bemersley: Printed for the author, at the Office of the Primitive Methodist Connexion, by J. Bourne 1823), 20–26. 5 William O’Bryan, ‘Some Account of the Rise and Progress of the Missions Belonging to the Arminian Bible Christians’, in A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, ed. John A. Vickers et al., vol. 4 (London: Epworth, 1988), 329. 6 William Booth, ‘How We Began’, in Boundless Salvation: The Shorter Writings of William Booth, ed. Andrew M. Eason and Roger J. Green (New York: Peter Lang, 2012 [1886]), 39. 7 Of note is the work on Methodism and class, such as Robert Wearmouth’s Methodism and the Working-Class Movements of England, 1800–1850 (London: Epworth Press, 1937); and the highly critical analysis of The Making of the English Working Class (London: Penguin Books, 1968). Later scholars offered more nuanced discussions of politics and culture, such as W. Reginald Ward, Religion and Society in England, 1790–1850 (New York: Schocken Books, 1973); and David Hempton, Methodism and Politics in British Society, 1750–1850 (London: Routledge, 1984). See the historiographical overview in Kevin M. Watson, ‘The Price of Respectability: Methodism in Britain and the United States, 1791–1865’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to World Methodism, ed. William Gibson, Peter Forsaith, and Martin Wellings (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), 33–50. 8 John Kent, The Age of Disunity (London: Epworth Press, 1966); Currie, Methodism Divided; Ward, Religion and Society in England, 1790–1850, 135–76, 236–78; D. A. Gowland, Methodist Secessions: The Origins of Free Methodism in Three Lancashire Towns, Manchester, Rochdale, Liverpool (Manchester: Published for the Chetham Society by Manchester University Press, 1979); Hempton, Methodism and Politics in British Society, 1750–1850, 92–96, 197–202. 9 See, for example, John Kent, Jabez Bunting, the Last Wesleyan: A Study in the Methodist Ministry After the Death of John Wesley (London: Epworth Press, 1955); Reginald Kissack, Church or No Church? A Study of the Development of the Concept of Church in British Methodism (London: Epworth Press, 1964); Kent, The Age of Disunity; Currie, Methodism Divided; John C Bowmer, Pastor and People: A Study of Church and Ministry in Wesleyan Methodism from the Death of John Wesley (1791) to the Death of Jabez Bunting (1858) (London: Epworth Press, 1975); W. Reginald Ward, ‘The Legacy of John Wesley: The Pastoral Office in Britain and America’, in Evangelicalism, Piety and Politics: The Selected Writings of W. R. Ward, ed. Andrew Chandler (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014), 147–70.

Introduction 9 10 Kent, The Age of Disunity, 43; John T Wilkinson, ‘Methodism in England, 1900–1932’, in A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, ed. Rupert E Davies, A. Raymond George, and E. Gordon Rupp, vol. 3 (London: Epworth, 1983), 335. 11 Albert C. Outler, ‘John Wesley—Folk Theologian’, Theology Today 34 (1977): 150–60; Randy L. Maddox, ‘Reclaiming an Inheritance: Wesley as Theologian in the History of Methodist Theology’, in Rethinking Wesley’s Theology for Contemporary Methodism, ed. Randy L. Maddox and Theodore Runyon (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1998), 225–26. 12 Randy L. Maddox, ‘John Wesley: Practical Theologian?’, Wesleyan Theological Journal 23 (1988): 122–47. See also the summary of scholarship on this subject in David B. McEwan, Wesley as a Pastoral Theologian: Theological Methodology in John Wesley’s Doctrine of Christian Perfection, Studies in Evangelical History and Thought (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2011), 29–32. 13 Randy L. Maddox, ‘Introduction’, in Doctrinal and Controversial Treatises I [vol. 12 of The Works of John Wesley], ed. Randy L. Maddox (Nashville, 2012), 3. 14 See, for example, Gerald Hiestand, The Pastor Theologian: Resurrecting an Ancient Vision (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2015); Kevin J. Vanhoozer and Owen Strachan, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015). 15 Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1987).

Bibliography Booth, William. ‘How We Began’. In Boundless Salvation: The Shorter Writings of William Booth, edited by Andrew M. Eason and Roger J. Green, 28–40. New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2012. Bourne, Hugh. History of the Primitive Methodists Giving an Account of Their Rise and Progress up to the Year 1823. Bemersley: Printed for the author, at the Office of the Primitive Methodist Connexion, by J. Bourne, 1823. Bowmer, John C. Pastor and People: A Study of Church and Ministry in Wesleyan Methodism from the Death of John Wesley (1791) to the Death of Jabez Bunting (1858). London: Epworth Press, 1975. Chapman, David M. ‘Holiness and Order: British Methodism’s Search for the Holy Catholic Church’. Ecclesiology 7, no. 1 (2011): 71–96. Currie, Robert. Methodism Divided: A Study in the Sociology of Ecumenicalism. London: Faber, 1968. Dayton, Donald W. Theological Roots of Pentecostalism. Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1987. Gowland, D. A. Methodist Secessions: The Origins of Free Methodism in Three Lancashire Towns, Manchester, Rochdale, Liverpool. Manchester: Published for the Chetham Society by Manchester University Press, 1979. Hempton, David. Methodism and Politics in British Society, 1750–1850. London: Routledge, 1984. Hiestand, Gerald. The Pastor Theologian: Resurrecting an Ancient Vision. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2015. Kent, John. Jabez Bunting, the Last Wesleyan: A Study in the Methodist Ministry After the Death of John Wesley. London: Epworth Press, 1955. ———. The Age of Disunity. London: Epworth Press, 1966.

10 Introduction Kissack, Reginald. Church or No Church? A Study of the Development of the Concept of Church in British Methodism. London: Epworth Press, 1964. Maddox, Randy L. ‘John Wesley: Practical Theologian?’ Wesleyan Theological Journal 23 (1988): 122–47. Maddox, Randy L. ‘Reclaiming an Inheritance: Wesley as Theologian in the History of Methodist Theology’. In Rethinking Wesley’s Theology for Contemporary Methodism, edited by Randy L. Maddox and Theodore Runyon, 213–26. Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1998. McEwan, David B. Wesley as a Pastoral Theologian: Theological Methodology in John Wesley’s Doctrine of Christian Perfection (Studies in Evangelical History and Thought). Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2011. O’Bryan, William. ‘Some Account of the Rise and Progress of the Missions Belonging to the Arminian Bible Christians’. In A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, edited by John A. Vickers, Rupert E. Davies, A. Raymond George, and Gordon Rupp, 4:329–32. London: Epworth, 1988. Outler, Albert C. ‘John Wesley—Folk Theologian’. Theology Today 34 (1977): 150–60. Reno, R. R. ‘The Debilitation of the Churches’. In The Ecumenical Future: Background Papers for ‘In One Body Through the Cross’, edited by Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, 46–72. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004. Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. London: Penguin Books, 1968. Vanhoozer, Kevin J., and Owen Strachan. The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015. Ward, W. Reginald. Religion and Society in England, 1790–1850. New York, NY: Schocken Books, 1973. ———. ‘The Legacy of John Wesley: The Pastoral Office in Britain and America’. In Evangelicalism, Piety and Politics: The Selected Writings of W. R. Ward, edited by Andrew Chandler, 147–70. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014. Watson, Kevin M. ‘The Price of Respectability: Methodism in Britain and the United States, 1791–1865’. In The Ashgate Research Companion to World Methodism, edited by William Gibson, Peter Forsaith, and Martin Wellings, 33–50. Abingdon: Routledge, 2013. Wearmouth, Robert F. Methodism and the Working-Class Movement of England, 1800–1850. London: Epworth Press, 1937. Wilkinson, John T. ‘Methodism in England, 1900–1932’. In A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, edited by Rupert E Davies, A. Raymond George, and E. Gordon Rupp, 3:309–61. London: Epworth, 1983.

2

‘A Division of Heart’ Separation and the Spirit in the Later Wesley

In 1962, Albert Outler raised the question, ‘Do Methodists Have a Doctrine of the Church?,’ and aptly answered, ‘“yes” says too much; “no” says too little’.1 This ambiguity began with John Wesley himself, whose ecclesiology remains a bit of a puzzle. He wrote only one sermon on the church itself, though ecclesiological material is scattered throughout his works, leaving us the challenge of piecing together the complete picture. Wesley wrote in response to specific issues or controversies, so his writings often have a particular goal or agenda in mind, beyond answering a theological question. Ecclesiology itself is a complex subject because of the way it intersects with many practical issues of church life, such as polity, ministry, ordination, and sacraments—all issues which dogged Wesley in his ministry. And so, though ecclesiology was not the primary focus of his theological writings, many of the defining issues of his long ministry were necessarily ecclesiological. The identity and purpose of Wesley’s Methodist Societies were chief among them: were the Methodists Dissenters? Were they dividing the church and forming a new body of Christians, separate from the Church of England? Wesley’s constant reply was that Methodism existed to reform the Church and would not separate. To answer that question properly, Wesley needed to define the church universal, distinguish it from particular churches, and identify the boundaries of the Church of England. And he had to develop ministry practices that would maintain the connection between Methodism and the Church. Despite all he attempted, there was a missing piece in his ecclesiology: he did not offer a theological account of Anglican structures of ministry as means of grace. This ecclesiological lacuna worked itself out in the life of his Methodist movement. Though it would be simplistic to identify it as the cause of Methodism’s eventual separation from the Church, it certainly contributed. Wesley took three steps in 1784 which cemented Methodism’s trajectory towards separation from the Church of England: the legal establishment of Methodism via the Deed of Declaration, the revision of the Book of Common Prayer and Thirty-Nine Articles for America, and his first ordinations. The historical account of these developments has been well told by Frank Baker.2 In this chapter, I will focus on several of Wesley’s writings from this DOI: 10.4324/9781003224327-2

12  ‘A Division of Heart’ period, which offer his most direct discussion of ecclesiological issues: the sermons ‘Of the Church’ (1785), ‘On Schism’ (1786), and ‘On Attending the Church Service’ (1787), ‘On Obedience to Pastors’ (1785), ‘The Duty of Constant Communion’ (published 1787, though written in the 1730s), and the infamous ‘Korah Sermon’, ‘Prophets and Priests’ (1789). Some short pieces on separation from the Church were also published in the Arminian Magazine after 1784, including ‘Thoughts upon a Late Phenomenon’ (1788) and ‘Farther Thoughts on Separation from the Church’ (1789). It is not surprising that Wesley felt compelled to articulate his key ecclesiological convictions in the wake of his ordinations and the continued pressure towards separation from his own ranks. That is not to say that Wesley’s views changed substantially at this time; every feature of his mature ecclesiology has precedent in his earlier writings. But the directness with which Wesley tackled these issues in these sources gives them significance, as does the frequency of his attention to ecclesiological matters during the final years of his life. There is a growing body of scholarship on Wesley’s ecclesiology, and much of it has focused on its theological lineage, and the degree to which his Anglicanism was tinged with other (possibly contradictory) influences. This is not surprising since Wesley was ‘a mediator between Christian traditions’, as John Walsh described him.3 My goal in this chapter is not to give a comprehensive account of Wesley’s ecclesiology, or to debate his Anglicanism, though I will comment on those issues occasionally. My focus, rather, is to expose a problem in Wesley’s ecclesiology which is carried forward, modified, and magnified in the history of British Methodist revivalism. The promise of John Wesley’s ecclesiology was that he steered clear of the divisiveness that has often characterised post-Reformation definitions of the church. His standard for ecclesiality was generous and comprehensive; it avoided the typical focus on institutional or visible marks of the church in favour of an emphasis on genuine Christianity or the ‘religion of the heart’—a necessarily social and ecclesial phenomenon, to be sure, but not one was tied to particular historical forms. Frank Baker memorably labelled this feature of Wesley’s thinking, ‘extreme catholicity’.4 Wesley wanted to have a robustly ecclesial vision of the Christian life, seen in his insistence that Christianity was essentially a social religion. But while he pressed the Methodists on the need for Christian community, he was unclear about the relationship of such true Christian community to the Church of England. Wesley insisted that the role of Methodism was to renew the Church of England from within, but the kind of vital Christian fellowship he believed would revive the church and the nation need not have anything to do with the Church of England, strictly speaking. And while he tried to avoid direct competition with the sacramental worship of the Church of England, the lack of structural connection between Wesley’s Methodist Societies and the Church of England meant that vital fellowship between Methodists and the local parish was not as common as Wesley desired. Wesley was left to argue for unity with the Established Church as a matter of expediency rather than necessity. The arguments he

‘A Division of Heart’ 13 offered supported his defence against charges of schism and may have been useful to Methodists in thinking through their own ecclesial identity. But they were not enough to stop the inexorable press towards separation and would leave future generations of Methodists with little theological reason to resist separations within their own fold. The Identity and Boundaries of the Church Wesley’s 1785 sermon ‘Of the Church’ offered his clearest attempt to define the church and establish its boundaries—a central question in ecclesiology. Magisterial Protestant ecclesiology has typically identified the church by observable ‘marks’, with the Lutheran tradition emphasising the proclamation of the Word and the right administration of the sacraments, and the Calvinist stream adding an emphasis on discipline.5 The Lutheran tradition is reflected in Article 19 of the Thirty-Nine Articles. The overall thrust of Wesley’s sermon, on the other hand, was to define the church in terms of the character of its members, rather than any external or institutional marks. His definition of the universal church was as follows: The catholic or universal church is all the persons in the universe whom God hath so called out of the world as to entitle them to the preceding character; as to be ‘one body’, united by ‘one spirit’; having ‘one faith, one hope, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in them all’.6 Among the defining marks listed in his brief exposition, some could be taken as objective marks of the church, but Wesley explained them in terms of the believer’s subjective participation in salvation. For example, when he mentioned ‘one faith’ he was not referring to the fides quae or content of doctrine as one might assume, but rather to the living faith that believers share—the fides qua with which Christians believe and which is ‘the free gift of God’. In referencing ‘one Lord’, Wesley did not offer a theocentric grounding for church unity but described the way that believers are under the dominion of Christ who has ‘has set up his kingdom in their hearts’. Likewise the reference to ‘one Father’ was explained in terms of how believers have the Spirit of adoption and cry out to him as ‘Abba Father’.7 The closest Wesley came to providing an objective mark of the church was his comment on baptism, acknowledged as ‘the outward sign our one Lord has been pleased to appoint, of all that inward and spiritual grace which he is continually bestowing upon his Church’.8 We know, however, from Wesley’s comments on baptism elsewhere, that he did not mean that all who had the outward sign had the living faith which was essential for membership in the universal church, according to this sermon.9 Having identified the universal church as made up of all true Christians, Wesley laid out a similar criterion for particular churches: a national church

14  ‘A Division of Heart’ was all believers who shared that character in a given nation, and all the true Christians in a given city were the church in that city. At the smallest level, even two or three could be a local church.10 On this basis, he offered a curious definition of the Church of England as ‘that part, those members, of the universal church, who are inhabitants of England’.11 Wesley specified no requirement for orders of ministry, historical or geographical ties, nor even the dominical sacraments, which he typically noted in other such statements. It was common for Protestant ecclesiology to identify the catholic or universal church as composed of all true believers, but then to provide institutional marks for the identification of the visible church. Indeed, Wesley had done so in a letter to his brother short weeks before he wrote ‘Of the Church’. There he offered a definition of the Church of England as ‘all the believers in England (except the Papists and Dissenters) who have the word of God and the sacraments duly administered’.12 This was clearer than the definition offered in the Minutes of the 1744 Conference, which did not exclude Dissenters: ‘the visible Church of England is the congregation of English believers in which the pure word of God is preached and the sacraments duly administered. But the word “Church” is sometimes taken in a looser sense for “a congregation professing to believe”.’ He referred to the same ‘looser’ definition in responding to the charge that Methodism weakened the Church of England: ‘the Church, in the proper sense, the congregation of English believers, we do not weaken at all’.13 In any case, in his late sermon ‘Of the Church’, Wesley extended potential ecclesial status to bodies of believers without any traditional historical or institutional marks. Indeed, his Methodist followers might have read this sermon and wondered if they were not already particular churches, despite their lack of ordained ministry and sacraments, and despite what Wesley said elsewhere about Methodism’s ecclesial status. In ‘Of the Church’, Wesley continued by quoting part of the Anglican article on the church approvingly: ‘THE visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly administered.’ However, he went on to make two telling comments on the article. First, he explained ‘congregation of faithful men’ as ‘a congregation of believers’ or ‘men endued with “living faith”’.14 Gwang Seok Oh argued that this was a new development for the later Wesley, but in fact Wesley made the very same claim in the early 1740s.15 ‘Living faith’ was one of Wesley’s short-hands for genuine Christianity or the ‘religion of the heart’, and so it provided a way for Wesley to interpret the Anglican article in such a way that only ‘true Christians’, in Wesley’s understanding of the term, were real members of the visible church.16 Second, he made a startling statement concerning the Article’s appeal to the preaching of the ‘pure Word of God’ and the right administration of the sacraments: I will not undertake to defend the accuracy of this definition. I dare not exclude from the Church catholic all those congregations in which any unscriptural doctrines, which cannot be affirmed to be ‘the pure word

‘A Division of Heart’ 15 of God,’ are sometimes, yea, frequently preached; neither all those congregations, in which the sacraments are not ‘duly administered.’ Certainly if these things are so, the Church of Rome is not so much as a part of the catholic Church; seeing therein neither is ‘the pure word of God’ preached, nor the sacraments ‘duly administered.’ Whoever they are that have ‘one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one God and Father of all,’ I can easily bear with their holding wrong opinions, yea, and superstitious modes of worship: Nor would I, on these accounts, scruple still to include them within the pale of the catholic Church; neither would I have any objection to receive them, if they desired it, as members of the Church of England.17 It’s notable that Wesley disclaimed Word and sacrament as a standard, distancing himself from the Magisterial Protestant position, not least because Wesley had retained that part of the Article when he revised it for the Methodists in America, one year prior.18 However, this move is consistent with the definition of the church which he laid out earlier in the sermon, which suggests he had not inadvertently left Word and sacrament out of that definition. David Field has tried to resolve this tension by arguing that Wesley, in this passage, was referring to the ‘invisible church’ and not the ‘visible church’.19 However, such a distinction was not made by Wesley in this sermon; nor is it characteristic of Wesley to distinguish between the visible and invisible church.20 Further when Wesley moved on to defining particular churches (clearly not a reference to the invisible church), he offered exactly the same criteria as the universal church and suggested that his definition of the universal church agreed with the Anglican article’s definition of the ‘visible church’. A more plausible solution was offered by Elmer Colyer, who suggested that Wesley’s definition of the church in this sermon referred to the church in its esse, or ‘being’, as opposed to its bene esse—those aspects of church life which are intended for its ‘well being’. Colyer then suggested that Wesley viewed the sacraments as pertaining to the bene esse rather than the esse.21 While Wesley did not explicitly use that distinction in this sermon, he had done so in An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, where he described ‘the due administration of the sacraments’ as ‘requisite, if not to the being, at least to the well-being of a Church’.22 Thus, Wesley questioned whether due administration of the sacraments was necessary for ecclesiality as early as 1743. Colyer also provided a helpful corrective to an overly pietistic or anthropocentric reading of Wesley’s sermon by grounding it in Wesley’s understanding of salvation and as a participation in the life of the Triune God. Although faith is human participation in God’s saving work, Wesley’s focus on ‘living faith’ should not be taken to suggest that the universal church is constituted by the voluntary association of people of faith, as is characteristic of a free church model.23 Rather, for Wesley, the church, in its essence, was constituted by the saving work of the Triune God, in which believers participate, regardless of the variety of ways this Trinitarian communion may be embodied. So Colyer commented with respect to the means

16  ‘A Division of Heart’ of grace: ‘Whatever formative function these creaturely structures or means of grace serve in and of themselves in the lives of those who use them, which Wesley would not deny, the transformative reality and power, for Wesley, finally resides in the Trinitarian persons who freely act on our behalf in and through these means of grace.’24 Colyer’s interpretation certainly helps illuminate Wesley’s definition of the universal Church. It includes all who are participating the in life of the Triune God, through which they possess the character described by Wesley in this sermon, marked by living faith and the adoption of sonship. In other words, Wesley defined the boundary of the church catholic by the boundary of salvation itself, which, strictly speaking, was not dependent on sacramental administration. Wesley used this distinction when explaining why he felt it necessary to allow lay preaching, but not lay administration of the sacraments. ‘…I do tolerate lay-preaching, because I conceive there is an absolute necessity for it; inasmuch as, were it not, thousands of souls would perish everlastingly. Yet I do not tolerate lay-administering, because I do not conceive there is such necessity for it; since it does not appear that, if this is not at all, one soul will perish for want of it.’25 This generous view of ecclesiality also accorded well with Wesley’s willingness to recognise true and saving Christian faith among those with whom he had profound theological and practical disagreements.26 But Colyer does not resolve the question of whether Wesley viewed the sacraments as an essential mark of a particular church. One could argue that in his 1784 revision of the Articles, Wesley was articulating a normative definition of the visible church for the Methodists in America, but that he did not view this definition as constitutive for all particular churches. Wesley continued to hold that the sacraments were indispensable means of grace and continued to believe that all churches ought to preach the ‘pure Word of God’. However, in his sermon ‘Of the Church’, he set out to establish the identity of the universal church, a large part of which did not share his opinions on many matters of doctrine and discipline, including sacramental practice. Wesley’s broad-minded catholic spirit prevented him from de-churching those with whom he disagreed but with whom he recognised a common ‘living faith’ in Christ. In other words, Wesley left the minimum threshold for ecclesiality very low; the pure preaching of the Word and right administration of the sacraments were normative but not constitutive marks of a visible, particular church. He recognised that the Protestant marks were designed to exclude Roman Catholics and other believers, and chose to avoid that divisive tendency.27 With its minimal requirements and scriptural simplicity, Wesley’s sermon provided a theological basis for the kind of mutual recognition that has proven elusive in ecumenical dialogue.28 He insisted on no doctrinal test for ecclesiality (though we must keep in mind that Wesley’s ‘religion of the heart’ presupposed orthodoxy on many basic matters of doctrine), nor did he provide a practical test in terms of polity or modes of worship (though here too Wesley had his own views of course). Rather, the test

‘A Division of Heart’ 17 of ecclesiality was simply the presence of genuine Christianity—which is to say, the saving work of God in the life of his people. Wesley’s definition of the church afforded full ecclesial status to dissenting bodies. Its lack of reference to any essential role for mediating structures or ministries and its focus on the character of true Christians resonated with a believer’s church view in some respects. However, the comprehensiveness and inclusiveness of Wesley’s view went beyond what most in the believer’s church tradition would accept. For example, seventeenth-century Puritan John Owen supported congregationalist polity because he believed it was instituted by Christ himself as the place where the divine ordinances were performed: ‘preaching the word, administering the sacraments, mutual watchfulness over one another, and the exercise of that discipline which he hath appointed unto his disciples’.29 The local congregation was thus the church in the fullest sense (and a national church was not a church) because these ordinances could only be properly exercised within a local community. Wesley similarly affirmed the local assembly as a particular church, but without requiring a particular form of polity or discipline. While Wesley’s basic standard for ecclesiality appears thin, it could at the same time be quite rigorous, if we keep in mind that his vision of ‘living faith’ excluded many of those who called themselves Christians. Later in the sermon ‘Of the Church’, when he came to address the question of the church’s holiness, he rooted it in his vision of scriptural Christianity. The Church is called ‘holy’, because it is holy, because every member thereof is holy, though in different degrees, as He that called them is holy. How clear is this! If the Church, as to the very essence of it, is a body of believers, no man that is not a Christian believer can be a member of it. If this whole body be animated by one spirit, and endued with one faith, and one hope of their calling; then he who has not that spirit, and faith, and hope, is no member of this body. It follows, that not only no common swearer, no Sabbath-breaker, no drunkard, no whoremonger, no thief, no liar, none that lives in any outward sin, but none that is under the power of anger or pride, no lover of the world, in a word, none that is dead to God, can be a member of his Church.30 Again, we see in this passage, broadly speaking, a believer’s church emphasis on the integrity of the church, yet without the typical corresponding call to come apart from the corrupted body and form a pure church. Wesley went on to urge real Christians to remain within the Church along with those who were outwardly but not truly her members, acknowledging that, in time, ‘God might call them too’ into true Christianity and true church membership.31 There was an echo here of Wesley’s earlier argument against separation from the 1750s: it might have been lawful for the Methodists to separate (that is, they could form separate churches), but it was not expedient for the greater mission of reviving the church and bringing nominal members to vital

18  ‘A Division of Heart’ Christianity.32 Wesley enforced Christian discipline within the Methodist Societies, but he did not view such discipline as constituting the boundary of the church per se, which would imply that real Christians ought to separate from the Established Church.33 Wesley’s 1781 sermon, ‘On Zeal’, sheds further light on his thinking about the relationship of the visible church to genuine Christianity. In the sermon, he set out to distinguish true zeal from false zeal by defining zeal as ‘fervent love’.34 He then offered an illustration of the relative value of the various aspects of the Christian religion, describing them in a series of concentric circles. In the innermost circle, ‘love sits upon the throne’, and then ‘holy tempers’ in the circle nearest to the centre. These ‘interior’ aspects of religion are followed by three further ‘exterior’ circles: first works of mercy, then works of piety, and then finally, the church. ‘Lastly, that his followers may the more effectually provoke one another to love, holy tempers, and good works, our blessed Lord has united them together in one—the church, dispersed over all the earth; A little emblem of which, of the church universal, we have in every particular Christian congregation.’35 Wesley then used this scale to develop a hierarchy of zeal, where zeal for each of the aspects noted above was proportioned to its relative value, with zeal for the church lowest on the scale, subordinate to works of piety and works of mercy, which were subordinate to love. 36 Wesley closed the sermon by appealing to his readers, Be zealous for the church; more especially for that particular branch thereof wherein your lot is cast. Study the welfare of this, and carefully observe all the rules of it, for conscience’ sake. But in the meantime take heed that you do not neglect any of the ordinances of God; for the sake of which in a great measure, the church itself was constituted; So that it would be highly absurd to talk of zeal for the church if you were not more zealous for them.37 The church, in this scheme, was clearly viewed as a means ordered to the end of promoting true religion: God established the church to provide the ordinances and for mutual support among believers as they each pursued a life characterised by holy love of God and neighbour. This ordering is mirrored in Wesley’s 1787 sermon, ‘On Attending the Church Service’, where he dealt with objections to attending because of the church’s ‘mixed’ character, specifically the ministry of ‘unholy’ clergy. Wesley emphasised that the primary issue was whether or not to attend in order to partake of the ordinances.38 Despite Colyer’s helpful corrective against reducing Wesley’s ecclesiology to a merely functionalist account, we can see a functionalist streak in this conception, particularly as it relates the life of the visible church.39 The church catholic, in its essence, may have been constituted by participation in the life of God, but participation in a particular (local) church was framed primarily in functional terms. Conceiving of the local Anglican church as

‘A Division of Heart’ 19 ordered towards the provision of ordinances did not provide an ecclesiological basis for forging meaningful fellowship with members of the Established Church. Of course, on a practical level, the integration of Methodism within the Church of England was challenging, and there were many reasons for the uneasy relationships that often developed between Methodists and their local parish. But one of those reasons was Wesley’s lack of clarity regarding the identity of the visible Church of England, which undermined his efforts to promote unity. This is particularly clear when we consider Wesley’s theology of the means of grace. The means of grace were key to Methodist spirituality, and Wesley stressed, from the beginning, ‘attending upon all the ordinances of God’— the Lord’s Supper, public worship, and the ministry of the Word being chief among them.40 This was his main strategy for keeping Methodism connected to the Church of England. And it was also key to the balance in his teaching on the Spirit’s work as well as its practical outworking: providing a varied and diverse set of practices through which Christian believers could, in Henry Knight’s words, ‘experience and respond to the loving presence of God’.41 Wesley’s expositions of the means of grace promoted spiritual practices that were both personal and communal, devotional and service-oriented, reflective and didactic.42 The various corporate practices—such as public prayer and worship, preaching, the Lord’s Supper, Christian conference, class and band meetings—helped to guard against subjectivist claims to spiritual guidance and forge deep ties of fellowship and community life. However, of the fifteen means of grace that Wesley listed at various times in his writings, only the Lord’s Supper was exclusively available at the local parish. And what is more, the structures of Methodism—the Conference, the class meeting, the band meeting—were clearly affirmed by Wesley as means of grace, whereas the structures of the local parish, let alone the diocese, were not. It was through the structures of Methodism that genuine Christianity was being fostered and practised. And as time went on, even the Lord’s Supper was sometimes received in Methodist chapels. Wesley’s weakness on this point is clearest in his 1777 sermon, ‘On Laying the Foundation Stone of the New Chapel’, written for the construction of Wesley’s Chapel, City Road, London. In the sermon, Wesley identified Methodism as the religion of the Bible, the primitive church, and the Church of England, ‘as appears from all her authentic records, from the uniform tenor of her liturgy, and from numberless passages in her Homilies’, with no mention of Anglican polity.43 Wesley again repeated his claims that the Methodists were not to separate—that it was their ‘peculiar glory’ to remain within the Church.44 Yet he did so while laying the foundation stone for a chapel that, as Frank Baker notes, ‘functioned very much like…an active Anglican parish church, though without recognizing any allegiance to diocesan or parochial authorities’.45 Methodists who worshipped at Wesley’s Chapel had no reason to interact with local parishes at all, since they celebrated the Lord’s Supper in their own building. Wesley had come to this practice slowly over

20  ‘A Division of Heart’ time, initially overcoming scruples regarding the requirement for an episcopal consecration of church buildings by leasing the consecrated (but disused) Huguenot premises at West Street in 1743. By 1764, Wesley had declared that the ‘performance of public worship therein’ was ‘the only consecration of any church in Great Britain which is necessary or even lawful’.46 By the 1770s, the Methodists were receiving communion at the Foundery, as well as the New Room in Bristol.47 Leaving aside the question of episcopal consecration, the provision of the sacrament in a Methodist-only setting undermined Wesley’s claims of unity with the Church. In the case of Wesley’s Chapel, an Anglican celebrant and the Anglican liturgy was the only connection with the Church of England. In Wesley’s mind, this made the worshippers at Wesley’s Chapel part of the Church of England, though such a claim was ludicrous to many of his contemporaries. Thus, it is the Church of England that emerges as the most ambiguous element in Wesley’s late ecclesiology. It is telling that in the sermon ‘On Zeal’, Wesley classified the local congregation as the ‘little emblem’ of the universal church, leaving out national or denominational bodies. Perhaps more significantly, in the opening of his 1787 sermon, ‘On God’s Vineyard’, he discussed various meanings for the term ‘vineyard of the Lord’, moving from the general to the particular: the whole world, all people, the universal church, the Protestant church, and lastly—not the local church or the Church of England—the people called Methodists.48 Certainly, based on the definition laid out in his sermon ‘Of the Church’, the Methodist Societies had the one absolute essential qualification of particular churches: they were a body of true Christians, even without ordained ministry and sacraments—though Wesley viewed both as normative and would not have countenanced the formal establishment of a church without them. The type of real Christian life he identified as constitutive of the church was hardly characteristic of the Church of England, in his mind, much as he loved her liturgy. His earlier (unpublished) comments about the Church at the 1755 Conference in Leeds are telling. In that address on the question of separation, he quoted the Nineteenth Article, and offered the rhetorical comment, ‘It has been questioned whether according to this definition the Church of England, so called, may be any Church at all.’ Leaving that tantalising question aside, Wesley offered a definition of the Church of England that followed the ‘usual sense’: ‘that body of people, nominally united, which profess to hold the doctrine contained in the Articles and Homilies, and to use Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and Public Prayer, according to the Common Prayer Book.’ He appended, ‘some would add, “And to submit to the governors of the Church, and obey the laws of it”’.49 This statement followed intense pressure from Charles Wesley to resist the forces pressing for separation at the time.50 In 1755, Wesley drew on this set of criteria in offering his apology for the Methodists against the charge of schism, as we will see below. But none of these matters touched on his definition of the church in its essence offered in the 1780s, nor did he articulate them as essentials when discussing the theological identity of the local, visible

‘A Division of Heart’ 21 church. The fact that he declined to pronounce on the lawfulness of separation in 1755, preferring to focus on the question of expediency, suggests that he believed such matters were of secondary importance. Schism, Separation, the Spirit, and the Conscience In the 1755 paper just noted, Wesley identified four aspects of separation from the Church of England: separation from the people, separation from the doctrine of the Articles and Homilies, separation from public worship, and separation by refusing to submit to authorities. He introduced these criteria in a somewhat detached way, not owning them fully as his own, but introducing them as aspects of the Church of England understood in the ‘usual sense’. His qualification that ‘some would add’ submission to authorities indicates his ambivalence about that criterion. And he evaded the issue of separation from the people, stating that they were ‘as united with them as we ever were, and as the rest of them are with one another’. In that Conference and in correspondence afterwards, Wesley defended Methodism against any charge of separation in doctrine or in public worship and professed that Methodists obeyed the authorities ‘in all things not contrary to Scripture’ and would only disobey if they were required to stop preaching outdoors, praying extemporaneously, meeting in societies, and using non-ordained preachers. Wesley declared these practices non-negotiable, as he had done before, and stated they might be cause for separation.51 Regarding separation in doctrine, he stated the Methodists could not; the Anglican formularies should be regarded as highly as any such standards, ‘though we take knowledge that the writers of them were fallible men’, and though ‘we will not undertake to defend every particular expression in them’. But when it came to his comments on separating from the public service of the church, including public prayer, preaching, and the Lord’s Supper, he was clear: ‘This would amount to a formal separation from the Church. This properly constitutes a Dissenter.’52 He repeated the point later in the published ‘Reasons against a Separation from the Church of England,’ stating that attending a Dissenting Meeting during church hours was ‘actually separating from the Church’.53 The differing emphasis that Wesley laid on the various aspects of separation led Frank Baker to summarise, ‘Attendance at Anglican worship, even though only occasional, remained Wesley’s test of whether or not Methodism had separated from the Church of England.’54 This, of course, was always a highly debatable position, involving thorny legal and political as well as theological questions.55 Certainly, Wesley would not have needed to defend his movement if other clergy had agreed with him on the meaning of separation. He had been answering suspicions of schism since the very beginnings of the revival. Many of Wesley’s ‘irregularities’ were regarded as schismatic by some within the church, including those nonnegotiables that Wesley cited, such as field preaching. Indeed, in his book on Joseph Butler, Bob Tennant suggested that there was ‘ample ground for

22  ‘A Division of Heart’ suspension and possibly for excommunication’ of Wesley when he met with Butler in August 1739, noting nearly a dozen possible violations of the Canons of 1603 and 1640.56 Wesley, elsewhere, questioned the authority of the Canons, preferring to restrict the ‘laws’ of the church to the Rubrics in the Book of Common Prayer.57 Ryan Danker has highlighted the telling tensions between Wesley and the Evangelical Anglicans, who viewed any unauthorised ministry as Dissent and therefore saw Wesley’s use of lay preachers as a form of separation.58 Samuel Walker’s 1755 correspondence with Wesley makes this clear: ‘I take this matter of the lay preachers to be the leading inquiry. Their permission or appointment is in fact a partial separation from the Church of England, the essence of which, considered as such, consists in her orders and laws rather than in her doctrines and worship, which constitute her a Church of Christ.’59 Wesley’s reply recounted strong objections to the Canons raised at Conference (‘the very dregs of popery’; ‘grossly wicked and absurd’) which he did not own, but admitted he could not refute. He again affirmed the overall soundness of the doctrines and liturgy but added that Dissenters had ‘a far stronger plea than I was ever sensible of’ if the laws and orders of the Church constituted its essence.60 Walker’s point, charitably construed, was that obedience to the laws was essential to unity with the visible Church of England, though the Church’s status as a particular church was constituted by sound doctrine and worship. Wesley did not return to the fourfold description of separation from 1755 when he wrote his sermon ‘On Schism’, three decades later. Rather, he began by arguing that, scripturally, schism referred to divisions within a particular church, rather than separation from a church. Focusing on three uses of schismata in 1 Corinthians, Wesley again echoed arguments made by John Owen in the seventeenth century, noting how each Pauline use of the term referred to a division within the Corinthian community.61 Wesley then defined the biblical meaning of schism as ‘an alienation of affection in any of them toward their brethren, a division of heart, and parties springing therefrom, though they were still outwardly united together…’62 There was earlier precedent for this focus on ‘alienation of affection’, going back to the Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1754).63 His conclusion to the first part of the sermon was that separation from the Church of England would not be schism. …it is apparent to every impartial reader that it does not in any of these [scriptural references] mean a separation from any church or body of Christians, whether with or without cause. So that the immense pains which have been taken both by Papists and Protestants in writing whole volumes against schism as a separation, whether from the Church of Rome or from the Church of England, exerting all their strength, and bringing all their learning, have been employed to mighty little purpose. They are combating a sin which had no existence but in their own imagination, which is not once forbidden, no, nor once mentioned either in the Old or New Testament.64

‘A Division of Heart’ 23 One could easily read the first half of the sermon as an argument that the Methodists would not be guilty of schism—in the scriptural sense—if they separated from the Church of England. The second half of the sermon, on the other hand, was aimed at discouraging the Methodists from separating via a discussion of schism in a more ‘remote’ sense as ‘a causeless separation from a body of living Christians’.65 This definition echoed earlier treatments going back to the 1740s, where schism was defined as a ‘causeless separation from the church of Christ’.66 Note that Wesley specified that, even in its ‘remote’ sense, schism was separation from body of living Christians, and he had frequently cast doubt on the presence and prevalence of such true Christians in the Church of England. He then went on to describe such separation as both evil in itself (because it was a breach of the law of love) and leading to evil consequences (because it would produce inward and outward sin, thus becoming an evangelistic stumbling block).67 Just as with Wesley’s sermon on the church, his view of genuine Christianity was definitive for his understanding of schism. Schism was not defined in terms of church polity but in terms of affection. Indeed, oddly enough, schism in its strict biblical sense implied ongoing compliance with church polity.68 Schism was sinful because of the evil fruit it produced, which Wesley expounded in terms of the corruption of the hearts of those involved, leading to evil actions. Again, Colyer helpfully emphasises how Wesley’s focus on love and the affections in this context is not naïve or simplistic but has deep theological roots in his view of salvation as transformative participatory communion with the Triune God and one another.69 Wesley went on to lay out those situations in which separation would be justified. He justified separation on matters of conscience, but he restricted such conscience objection to situations where one was constrained to commit an act forbidden by Scripture or forbidden from carrying out an act commanded by Scripture. In either case, the sin would be on the heads of those who forced the believer to separate. Wesley wrote personally here, declaring his loyalty to the Church, but also noting the grounds on which he would feel obligated to separate: I am now, and have been from my youth, a member and a Minister of the Church of England: And I have no desire no design to separate from it, till my soul separates from my body. Yet if I was not permitted to remain therein without omitting what God requires me to do, it would then become meet and right, and my bounden duty, to separate form it without delay. To be more particular: I know God has committed to me a dispensation of the gospel; yea, and my own salvation depends upon preaching it: ‘Woe is me if I preach not the gospel.’ If then I could not remain in the Church without omitting this, without desisting from preaching the gospel, I should be under a necessity of separating from it, or losing my own soul.70

24  ‘A Division of Heart’ This, again, was consistent with Wesley’s statement that he only engaged in ‘irregularities’ from church order when necessary for the spread of the gospel. Any prohibition that interfered with Wesley’s own extraordinary calling as an evangelist, and by extension the extraordinary calling of Methodism, would be grounds for separation. So he wrote to ‘John Smith’, responding to concerns about his transgressing parish boundaries, that if failed to preach the gospel to any person on their way to hell, ‘I am not satisfied God would accept my plea, “Lord, he was not of my parish.”’71 As Adrian Burdon comments, ‘The calling of God was, for John Wesley, the ultimate authority by which he tested both his own actions and those of his preachers. If the call he heard put him in conflict with the practices of the Church of his birth and ordination, then that Church must yield.’72 David Field summarises Wesley’s point by arguing for a great deal of latitude for conscientious objection within Christian denominations. So, he writes, ‘A church that is genuinely characterized by love will seek to structure itself so that its members are not forced to go against their consciences,’ and provide space for ‘theological and practical diversity’.73 While that sounds similar to Wesley’s argument, Wesley was careful to restrict this ‘conscience clause’ to scriptural commands and prohibitions, and warned his readers that they would be guilty of schism without such cause. He wrote, …suppose the church or society to which I am now united does not require me to do anything which the Scripture forbids, or to omit anything which the Scripture enjoins, it is then my indispensable duty to continue therein. And if I separate from with without any such necessity I am justly chargeable (whether I foresaw them or no) with all the evils consequent upon that separation.74 In a similar vein, he had written to Samuel Walker in 1756, ‘It cannot be lawful to separate from it, unless it be unlawful to continue in it.’75 Field’s more expansive interpretation leads him to contend that churches should make room for disobedience to church discipline by members who feel that such acts are an act of obedience to God. This suggestion, while paralleling Wesley’s own actions towards his episcopal superiors, is difficult to reconcile with Wesley’s understanding of pastoral authority. For example, in another late sermon, ‘On Obedience to Pastors’, he urged the Methodists to obey their pastors in all things indifferent, that is, all things not specifically commanded or prohibited by scripture.76 Wesley presumed, however, against the Anglican parish structure, that one’s ‘pastor’ was voluntarily chosen. Where is it written that we are bound to obey any minister because we live in what is called his parish? ‘Yes’, you say, ‘we are bound to “obey every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake”.’ True, in all things indifferent; but this is not so; it is exceeding far from it. It is far from being a thing indifferent to me who is the guide of my soul. I dare not receive

‘A Division of Heart’ 25 one as my guide to heaven that is in the high road to hell. I dare not take a wolf for my shepherd, that has not so much as sheep’s clothing; that is a common swearer, an open drunkard, a notorious sabbath-breaker. And such (the more is the shame, the more the pity!) are many parochial ministers at this day. Wesley brought the sermon to its application by taking the Methodists to task for not obeying him in his directions, specifically noting his instruction regarding dress.77 So, Wesley’s restrictive criteria for separation aligned with his criteria for obedience to pastors: continue to obey in all things indifferent. However, his view of pastoral authority by voluntary association challenged the structures of the Church of England. The brief exposition of church polity in the 1745 Minutes took a similar form and leads to the conclusion that ‘mutual consent’ was ‘absolutely necessary between a pastor and his flock’.78 This also accorded with the way Wesley described the inevitability of ecclesial diversity arising from the frailty of human knowledge in the 1750 sermon, ‘Catholic Spirit’. While we believe all our opinions are true, we know that they cannot all be true, since we are fallible; conversely, we know, in general, that we are mistaken, though we do not know the particular areas in which we are mistaken.79 Wesley linked this predicament to the variety of modes of worship in the church, ‘seeing’, as he says, ‘a variety of opinion necessarily implies a variety of practice’. How, then, should Christians navigate the conflicts between different church bodies over worship? ‘No man can choose for, or prescribe to, another. But everyone must follow the dictates of his own conscience, in simplicity and godly sincerity. He must be fully persuaded in his own mind and then act according to the best light he has.’ In other words, he should find a particular congregation where he can worship God without violating his conscience.80 As Robert Monk has noted, this principle of freedom of conscience in choosing one’s church affiliation was central to congregationalist stream of Puritan thinking.81 Again, John Owen made a similar argument, albeit while insisting on the necessity of a strong Protestant doctrinal core, preserved by the power of the state.82 Owen’s Anglican opponent in a protracted debate about schism, Edward Stillingfleet—the same Stillingfleet whose Irenicum influenced Wesley’s views of episcopacy—argued against allowing for conscience objections as grounds for schism, since it would produce endless division: ‘If the bare dissatisfaction of men’s Consciences do justifie the lawfulness of Separation, and breaking an established Rule, it were to little purpose to make any rule at all.’83 Of course, Wesley, in ‘Catholic Spirit’, was discussing debatable matters— which he often (though not always) termed ‘opinions’—and not the heart of the Christian faith.84 Wesley’s non-negotiable core was ‘living faith’ or the ‘religion of the heart’, but these were not content-less concepts; they implied several fundamental doctrines as well as a description of the inward and outward experience of the believer.85 Wesley’s point, then, was that even among

26  ‘A Division of Heart’ those who shared the religion of the heart, differences of opinion and practice were inevitable, and believers should follow the dictates of conscience in joining a body where they could worship in the way they believed was scriptural. This is not the same as making space for theological and practical diversity within a particular church; indeed, Wesley’s account in ‘Catholic Spirit’ legitimises separation—since association with a particular church implies separation from other churches—based on disputable matters, when those matters (such as modes of worship, infant baptism, polity) are issues of conscience for the individual in question. The task of a particular church, then, would be to establish standards of doctrine and discipline that were scriptural, as best as could be discerned, and leave to individual believers the question as to whether those positions are scriptural or not (and hence, whether they should join that particular church). On the one hand, ‘Catholic Spirit’ seems more generous in supporting congregational association on matters of ‘opinion’, whereas ‘On Schism’ justifies separation only on the basis of Scriptural commands and prohibitions. But Wesley always presupposed that our opinions should be derived from Scripture as best we understand it. His framing of the issue in ‘On Schism’ was helpful in avoiding a trifling use of conscience as an excuse for leaving a congregation. ‘Catholic Spirit’ was written to build bridges while Wesley still held out hope for a pan-evangelical coalition;86 ‘On Schism’ was written after Wesley had begun to ordain preachers and was being charged with schism by Anglicans on one side and urged to further separate by many Methodists on the other. ‘On Schism’ therefore provided some defence against the charge of schism should the Methodists separate while at the same time warning the Methodists strongly against separation. Once again, this account of freedom of conscience and freedom of association is, generally, characteristic of a believer’s church ecclesiology, and it coheres with Wesley’s generous account of the ecclesiality of particular churches. That is, any gathering of true Christians can be a church, and such gatherings are legitimately formed by voluntary association. This undercut one of the grounds for laying a charge of schism and was a theological strategy used by Owen.87 It made the dictates of conscience the arbiter of the necessary grounds for separation, which opened the door to many conflicts between Conference and a string of nineteenth-century evangelists who were just as sure as Wesley of their extraordinary calling. And it is connected to Wesley’s failure to properly account for Anglican ministry structures, because the question of conscience is necessarily related to the question of the work of the Spirit in the life of the church. Those claiming to be consciencebound by an extraordinary divine calling would no doubt believe they had discerned this calling through the Holy Spirit. Indeed, Wesley explained the conscience in precisely that way—as an operation of the Spirit, a ‘supernatural gift’ rather than an inherent human faculty. Though proper exercise of the conscience required the use of natural faculties, ultimately it was the ‘Spirit who giveth thee an inward check, who causeth thee to feel uneasy,

‘A Division of Heart’ 27 when thou walkest in any instance contrary to the light which he hath given thee’.88 It is true that Wesley expected believers to cultivate and respond to this Spirit-given conscience via the means of grace, which included various forms of communal spiritual practice. But still, the means of grace were ordered towards the cultivation of personal spirituality, and the visible church was ordered to the provision of those means. More broadly, it is fair to say that Wesley’s pneumatology was primarily focused on the Spirit’s work in individuals. This is seen, for example, in his appeal to the analogy of ‘spiritual sensation’ as a way to discuss the immediate, individually and intuitively discerned work of the Spirit—an analogy he used to explain key aspects of the way of salvation, including faith, new birth, and assurance.89 It is difficult to integrate this pneumatological framework within the communal spirituality of the means of grace, so it is not surprising that some of Wesley’s spiritual descendants would make less-nuanced appeals to the Spirit’s guidance when justifying the formation of separate church bodies. When the personal conscience is the final arbiter of justified separation, the work of the Spirit through the community is undercut. And when Wesley and other Methodists did try to discern the Spirit’s work through communal means of grace, it was primarily through local involvement in Methodist forms of community, not through the parish as the local Anglican community. So, again, the Church of England in its concrete forms of life is the weak link in Wesley’s ecclesiology. What was missing from this treatment of schism was any discussion of particular forms of church order or polity or authority. By omitting those concrete institutional matters, Wesley left the impression that they were not relevant to the question of schism, much to the chagrin of his Evangelical Anglican contemporaries. Sacraments, Ministry, and Division This brings us to the related matters of sacraments and ministry, issues which highlight Wesley’s most and least Anglican tendencies, respectively. Wesley’s Anglican ecclesiological convictions come through clearly in his rejection of separation on the grounds of the supposed corruption of the church and its ministers. In ‘On Attending the Church Service’, Wesley argued that the church’s character as a mixed body did not negate the efficaciousness of its ministrations in Word and sacrament and was therefore no grounds for separation.90 Wesley thus upheld the classic view of sacramental validity that traced its origin to Augustine’s conflict with the Donatists, and was affirmed by the Magisterial Reformers against the Anabaptists: ‘the efficacy is derived, not from him that administers, but from Him that ordains it’; thus ‘the word of the Lord is not bound, though uttered by an unholy minister; and the sacraments are not dry breasts, whether he that administers be holy or unholy’.91 This emphasis was necessary because, as Munsey-Turner notes, an ‘element of Donatism was always present, which led to a denigration of the parish church among some Methodists’.92 Wesley’s argument in this

28  ‘A Division of Heart’ sermon affirmed Article 26 of the Thirty-Nine Articles, which drew on the eighth Article in the Augsburg Confession.93 He made the same point in a 1750 sermon, and in arguing against separation at the 1755 Conference, and again in a 1778 letter to Mary Bishop.94 It is strange, then, that Wesley deleted Article 26 when he revised the Prayer Book for America—a move that Paul Blankenship classified as ‘difficult to understand’ in his exploration of Wesley’s revision of the Articles.95 Though we have no explanation of this deletion from Wesley’s own hand, he later claimed he ‘took particular care throughout to alter nothing merely for altering’s sake’, so it is certain that the deletions were carefully considered.96 He had been hypothetically itemising changes to the Prayer Book since 1755, but he did not at that time consider revising the Articles.97 It is possible he viewed this as a non-essential matter and therefore refrained from imposing it on others, despite the fact that he upheld it personally. Or perhaps he believed there would be no ‘unworthy ministers’ among the ranks of American Methodists! It seems most likely, however, that the Article’s main importance for Wesley was its function as a guard for sacramental unity with the Church of England—an irrelevant function for the newly separated American Methodists. In England, Wesley continued to urge the Methodists to receive the sacrament from the Church. Notably, just prior to ‘On Attending the Church Service’, Wesley had published the sermon, ‘The Duty of Constant Communion’, an altered abridgement of a piece by prominent Nonjuror, Robert Nelson (1656–1715) that Wesley had first produced at Oxford in 1732.98 As Albert Outler commented, the 1787 sermon had ‘too much of Nelson’ to be viewed as an original sermon, but ‘too much of Wesley for it to be labelled as wholly “borrowed”’. Nevertheless, it remains ‘Wesley’s fullest and most explicit statement of his eucharistic doctrine and praxis’.99 He emphasised that Christians should partake of the Lord’s Supper at every opportunity, since it was both a divine command and a divine means of both ‘procuring pardon’ and receiving grace on the journey towards perfection.100 Wesley then responded to common objections to constant communion, focusing not on the minister’s character but on the spiritual state of the communicant. The sermon was notable for supporting Wesley’s continued claims to be ‘an High Churchman, the son of an High Churchman’ into his later years, particularly emphasised by a prefatory comment.101 Wesley’s continued emphasis on constant communion and his endorsement of Article 26 were central to his strategy for maintaining Methodism’s place within the Church of England. By denying the Methodists the sacrament from their own preachers while urging them to communicate frequently, Wesley hoped to maintain a sacramental unity between Methodism and Anglicanism. However, the individualistic way he framed the benefits of the sacrament did not encourage Methodists to see the Lord’s Supper as a means of furthering vital fellowship with other Anglicans, many of whom they viewed as nominal Christians. Wesley consistently attempted to instil confidence in the Lord’s Supper and other means of grace as vehicles of the

‘A Division of Heart’ 29 Spirit’s work, when used with a right intention. He supported the Church of England as an institution in as much as it was the place where the sacraments should be received from the ordained ministry (irrespective of their character) thus ascribing a degree of ‘objective holiness’ to the Church.102 But again, as the sermon ‘On Zeal’ showed, Wesley viewed the church as ordered to the provision of such ordinances, and such ordinances as ordered to the sanctification of individual Christian persons. Though his view of sanctification was irreducibly social, participation in vital, social Christianity need have nothing to do with the local parish, save the reception of the sacraments. Wesley’s actions regarding the sacrament in the 1780s were more problematic than these theological weaknesses. I have already noted how the practice of receiving the sacrament in places such as Wesley’s Chapel undermined Wesley’s claim that the Methodists did not separate. The presence of an Anglican priest and the use of the Prayer Book may have been sufficient in Wesley’s mind to demonstrate continued communion with the Church, but it was an oddly juridical standard of unity for an advocate of the ‘religion of the heart’. He muddied the waters further by increasing compromises with Methodists who objected to attending the local parish. In 1781 and 1782, some were complaining about listening to the preaching of strong Calvinists and those who opposed Christian perfection. While he initially advised that they follow their conscience and not hear such preaching if they found it harmful,103 he later advised, ‘if the minister began either to preach the absolute decrees, or to rail against Christian perfection, they should quietly and silently go out of the church, yet attend it again the next opportunity.’104 Here the question was not the character of the minister but the content of the message, which Wesley and his followers believed to be manifestly unscriptural and false. However, the criteria for such justifiable avoidance of Anglican worship were gradually expanded, until the 1786 Minutes made note of four possible situations where Methodists would allow services during church hours: 1 When the Minister is a notoriously wicked man. 2 When he preaches Arian or any equally pernicious doctrine. 3 When there are not Churches in the town sufficient to contain half the people. 4 When there is no church at all within two or three miles.105 In December 1789, he went further still and absolved Methodists who did not attend the parish on the grounds that their minister did not live or teach the gospel and led people astray: ‘Where this is really the case, I cannot blame them if they do. Although therefore I earnestly oppose the general separation of the Methodists from the Church, yet I cannot condemn such a partial separation in this particular case.’ He continued, stating that this partial separation ‘from these miserable wretches who are the scandal of our Church and nation would be for the honour of our Church, as well as to the glory of God.’106 It was a fascinating statement (to claim that one could separate from the Church of England in particular cases for the good of the

30  ‘A Division of Heart’ Church of England!) highlighting inconsistency between what Wesley said in ‘On Attending the Church Service’ and these justified special cases of separation. Wesley attempted to contain such exceptions, even as they gradually increased and became the cause of frequent controversy in his final years.107 This brings us, finally, to Wesley’s theology of ministry and its relationship to schism. Wesley’s 1789 sermon, ‘Prophets and Priests’, maintained his long-standing characterisation of the Methodist preachers as extraordinary prophets, raised up by God to provoke the Established Church and its clergy to renewal.108 The climactic—and poorly received—climax of the sermon used the example of Korah’s rebellion (Numbers 16) to urge the Methodist preachers, ‘Be content with preaching the gospel’. He continued I earnestly advise you, abide in your place; keep your own station. Ye were fifty years ago, those of you that were then Methodist preachers, ‘extraordinary messengers’ of God, not going in your own will, but thrust out, not to supersede, but to ‘provoke to jealousy’ the ‘ordinary messengers’. In God’s name, stop there! Both by your preaching and example provoke them to love and to good works. Ye are a new phenomenon in the earth; a body of people who, being of no sect or party, are friends to all parties, and endeavour to forward all in heart religion, in the knowledge and love of God and man. Ye yourselves were at first called in the Church of England; and though you have and will have a thousand temptations to leave it and set up for yourselves, regard them not. Be Church of England men still. Do not cast away that peculiar glory which God hath put upon you, and frustrate the design of Providence, the very end for which God hath raised you up.109 Wesley thus framed his argument about Methodist ministry specifically in relation to the question of separation, using it once again to defend himself against the charge that he had separated from the Church or had led the Methodists to separate—even at this late stage, after ordaining numerous preachers. Most Anglicans, and many Methodists for that matter, would have agreed with Charles Wesley that ordination was separation and that John Wesley had now moved to ‘found a new Dissenting Sect, His Mother-Church to rend’.110 Indeed John Wesley had come close to admitting as much in his remarks to Conference in 1755, calling ordination ‘little less than a formal separation from the Church’.111 The reasons for his ordinations are beyond the scope of this chapter, as is a more detailed discussion of his theology of ordination. But these actions highlight once again the way Wesley sidestepped the concrete details of Anglican polity, making them irrelevant to his doctrine of the visible church, and indeed to the identity of the Church of England. He was steadfast in maintaining that ordination was necessary for administering the sacraments, as Baker said, ‘for the sake of decency and order, if not for validity and effectiveness’.112 Yet he had resisted calls from some of the Methodist

‘A Division of Heart’ 31 preachers for ordination at his own hands, so that Anglican ordination was their only option (leaving aside the question of the bizarre Erasmus affair).113 He continued to believe in a kind of succession—‘a succession of pastors and teachers’ who had faithfully proclaimed the gospel down through the ages— though not necessarily secured via the episcopacy.114 One could even say, with John Bowmer, that his view of succession was ‘still, in effect, episcopal’, if ‘episcopal’ is taken in a functional sense to refer to the activity of pastoral oversight—which might be exercised through a variety of polities.115 So, in the end, he was willing to secure ‘decency and order’ for the provision of the sacraments by irregular means. Church order, he had long claimed, was only valuable if it achieved the purposes of evangelism and the edification of Christian believers.116 When church order stood in the way of his pursuit of these ends, he judged it right to set it aside for missional purposes. Wesley’s equivocation on Anglican polity was most clear in his attitude towards the bishops. In the wake of his ordinations, John Wesley insisted to his brother, ‘I submit still (though sometimes with a doubting conscience) to “mitred infidels.”’117 But such a profession had little practical impact on John Wesley’s ministry, given that he preached and oversaw his Methodist Societies without reference to any diocesan authorities. His famous claim to look upon the world as his parish, long-revered as a missiological principle of Methodism, was also a rejection of the parish system, and indicated his ‘somewhat cavalier attitude to the governing authority of the bishops’.118 The Wesleys had sought approval from the bishop of London and the archbishop of Canterbury at the beginning of the revival. But they defied episcopal authority when opinion turned against Methodism in 1739 and several bishops moved to suppress their activities, consistently appealing to a divine calling that could not be superseded by any ecclesiastical law.119 The same principle was set down at the first Conference: the bishops would be obeyed ‘in all things indifferent’.120 By the mid-1740s, John Wesley was publicly challenging the views of three bishops in his Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion. He declined to name Thomas Herring (York) and Edmund Gibson (London) when responding to their criticisms, but he did name Richard Smalbroke of Lichfield and Coventry, forcefully responding to the concerns he had raised about Methodism in his 1741 charge to his diocese.121 Regarding the claim that he disobeyed the bishops, he stressed, ‘I both do and will obey them, in whatsoever I can with a clear conscience’, that is, ‘where I do not apprehend there is some particular law of God to the contrary’.122 He continued to maintain this line, perhaps best summarised in his letter to the Earl of Dartmouth: ‘episcopal authority cannot reverse what is fixed by divine authority’, by which he meant preaching the gospel at every opportunity, regardless of authorisation by a local bishop.123 This attitude is not surprising given that he grounded pastoral authority in voluntary association and viewed episcopal authority as an extension of pastoral authority. Theologically, by the 1740s, he had already come to believe that the office of presbyter and Bishop were scripturally indistinguishable,

32  ‘A Division of Heart’ and so he viewed the threefold orders of ministry in the Church of England as ‘scriptural and apostolical’ but not prescribed by Scripture.124 He was not alone among Anglicans in viewing the historic episcopate as having a functional, rather than ontological, legitimacy.125 But a functional view of episcopal authority was not grounds for ignoring episcopal authority, as Wesley largely did. Likewise, he had long seen himself as a spiritual father to his Methodist Societies and claimed that their voluntary association with him granted him the authority of oversight. In other words, he was already functioning as a kind of bishop to the Methodists, and that function, in his mind, conferred the requisite authority.126 Thus when constrained by ‘the uncommon train of providences’ in America, he felt he had warrant to step more fully into the office of ‘overseer’ and exercise the power of ordination.127 He boldly wrote to his brother in 1785 that he had given ‘some obedience’ to the bishops, but continued, ‘I firmly believe I am a scriptural episkopos as much as any man in England or Europe.’128 This goes to the heart of Wesley’s theology of ministry more broadly, which favoured the grass-roots testing of gifts, graces, and fruit as the criteria for public ministry, and viewed the ‘outward call’ of the church as an important but secondary matter.129 Nevertheless, the fact that he performed the first ordinations privately in the early morning hours, seemingly without the approval of Conference,130 and without the knowledge of his brother who was ‘at his elbow’ in Bristol at the time, demonstrates his awareness of the controversial nature of his actions.131 Perhaps the most pertinent question is, how did John Wesley convince himself that ordination was not schismatic? Though his arguments were unconvincing, he was mostly consistent: the Church of England was those of living faith who subscribed to her doctrine and received the sacraments according to her liturgy. But of course, defining the Church of England in this way without attention to polity was problematic from the start. The Church of England as a body of believers must also be held together by some form of common life and accountability, or discipline, to use a term Wesley would have favoured. Even if such structures were not ontologically essential to Anglican identity, they were functionally essential. He was aware of this and criticised the Church for failing to enact the kind of discipline necessary to foster real Christian community, which he sought to rectify this within the Methodist Societies.132 Wesley’s dismissive attitude to episcopal authority undermined both his claims to be a loyal son of the Church of England and his efforts to keep Methodism within the Church. His voluntarist account of pastoral and episcopal authority offered no path to unity in disputes over matters of conscience and made it all too easy to simply ignore the actual organisational life of the Established Church. This was true of Wesley’s own ministry, but also of the Methodists and their local parish. I raise these issues not to argue that Wesley’s functional view of ministry was wrong per se, but to highlight now his theological account of the Church of England left no functional role for the Anglican ministry to exercise meaningful oversight, save the voluntary submission of members. The bishops and the parish priests were conspicuously absent from his account of the means of grace,

‘A Division of Heart’ 33 except for their role in administering the sacraments. Otherwise, the Church of England, as visible institution, was more or less irrelevant to Wesley’s theology of the church. He continued to protest vigorously against Methodist separation but was left to appeal primarily to missional expediency. Even his robust sacramentology and affirmation of the efficaciousness of the ministrations of unholy ministers was undermined by his voluntarist and functionalist account of the office of oversight. Thus, apart from Wesley’s own belief that Methodism was especially raised up by God to renew the Established Church, there was little theological reason to resist separation. Later revivalists Methodists may not have had the theological sophistication of John Wesley and may have distorted some of his emphases, but they could certainly claim precedent for their own separations in Wesley’s theology and practice. Notes 1 Albert C. Outler, ‘Do Methodists Have a Doctrine of the Church?’, in The Doctrine of the Church, ed. Dow Kirkpatrick (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1964), 11. 2 See especially Frank Baker, John Wesley and the Church of England (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1970), 218–82; see also Henry D. Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism, 3rd ed. (London: Epworth Press, 2002), 489–526; John Munsey Turner, Conflict and Reconciliation: Studies in Methodism and Ecumenism in England, 1740–1982 (London: Epworth, 1985), 9–29; Adrian Burdon, Authority and Order: John Wesley and His Preachers (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2016), chapters 4 and 5. 3 John Walsh, John Wesley 1703–1791: A Bicentennial Tribute (London: Dr.  Williams’s Trust, 1993), 12. The most comprehensive assessment of Wesley’s ecclesiology is Gwang Seok Oh, John Wesley’s Ecclesiology: A Study in Its Sources and Development (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008). Howard Snyder’s work has related Methodism to Montanism, Pietism, and Moravianism, and identified radical reformation parallels in Wesley. See Howard A. Snyder, Signs of the Spirit: How God Reshapes the Church (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1997); The Radical Wesley: Patterns and Practices of a Movement-Maker, 2nd  ed. (Franklin, TN: Seedbed, 2014). Albert Outler suggested Wesley’s sermon ‘Of the Church’ presented an ‘unstable blend of Anglican and Anabaptist ecclesiologies’ and yet was ‘one of Wesley’s more daring syntheses.’ Sermons III [vol. III in The Works of John Wesley], ed. Albert C. Outler (Nashville: Abingdon, 1986), 46. More recently, David Rainey argued in a 2010 article that the sermon showed ‘no sign of Anabaptist influence.’ David Rainey, ‘The Established Church and Evangelical Theology: John Wesley’s Ecclesiology’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 12, no. 4 (October 2010): 428. Joseph Wood likewise stressed the Anglican character of Wesley’s ecclesiology in his doctoral dissertation, while noting how his Evangelical commitments stood in tension with his Anglicanism. Joseph Wood, ‘Tensions Between Evangelical Theology and the Established Church: John Wesley’s Ecclesiology’ (Ph.D., Manchester, UK, University of Manchester, 2012). It is regrettable that Outler chose the term ‘Anabaptist’ in describing Wesley’s ecclesiology, and Rainey was right to reject any direct Anabaptist influence, but there are certainly traces of a broader ‘believers church’ perspective in Wesley’s ecclesiology, as I will show below. Perhaps, as Ryan Danker has stated, Wesley’s attempted creation of an evangelical order within the church amounted to ‘a dissenting system formed by an Anglican’. Ryan Nicholas Danker, Wesley and the Anglicans: Political Division in Early Evangelicalism (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016), 101.

34  ‘A Division of Heart’ 4 Baker, John Wesley and the Church of England, 141. 5 Paul M. Bassett, ‘A Survey of Western Ecclesiology to about 1700, Part II: Ecclesiology in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries,’ in The Church: An Inquiry into Ecclesiology from a Biblical Theological Perspective, ed. Melvin E. Dieter and Daniel N. Berg (Anderson, IN: Warner Press, 1984), 205–14. 6 Wesley, ‘Of the Church,’ §15, Works, III: 50. 7 Wesley, ‘Of the Church,’ §§10–11, 13, Works, III: 49–50. 8 Wesley, ‘Of the Church,’ §12, Works, III: 49–50. 9 See Sermon 45, ‘The Means of Grace,’ §§IV.1–2, Sermons II [vol. II in The Works of John Wesley], ed. Albert C. Outler (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1985), 196–198. 10 Wesley, ‘Of the Church,’ §15, Works, III: 51. 11 Wesley, ‘Of the Church,’ §17, Works, III: 52. 12 John Wesley to Charles Wesley, 19 August 1785, in The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., 8 vols., ed. John Telford (London: Epworth, 1931), VII: 285. The rhetorical context of the letter makes it difficult to discern if Wesley is truly endorsing the definition in question. He offers it as one in a series of potential definitions of the Church of England, suggesting it would not be sufficient in Charles’s judgment. 13 The Minutes of Conference, 1744, §§45, 55, in The Methodist Societies: The Minutes of Conference [vol. X of The Works of John Wesley], ed. Henry D. Rack (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2011), 133, 135. 14 Sermon 74, ‘Of the Church,’ §15–16, Works III: 51. 15 See, for example, Wesley’s Journal, 6 February 1740, in Journals and Diaries II [vol. XIX of The Works of John Wesley], ed. W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), 138; An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, §§76–79, in The Appeals to Men of Reason and Religion, and Certain Related Open Letters [vol. XI in The Works of John Wesley], ed. Gerald R. Cragg (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 77–79; The Minutes of Conference, 1744, §§45–46, in Works, X: 133–34. Cp. Oh, John Wesley’s Ecclesiology, 203–5. 16 As Outler notes, Works III: 51 n. 31, the BCP Catechism does refer to “lively faith” as a criterion for self-examination prior to communicating. ‘A Catechism,’ in The Book of Common Prayer (Cambridge: John Baskerville, 1762), n.p., Further, Wesley’s appeal to the Latin text coetus credentium seems to be a conflation with the text of Article VIII of the Augsburg Confession. 17 Wesley, ‘Of the Church,’ §19, Works, III: 52. 18 Originally Article Nineteen in the Book of Common Prayer, it becomes Article Thirteen in Wesley’s twenty-four Articles. The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America, with Other Occasional Services (London: [William Strahan], 1784), 310. Wesley’s comments here also stand in tension with Joseph Wood’s conclusion that Wesley held ‘there is no Church without the Word or sacraments.’ Wood, ‘Tensions Between Evangelical Theology and the Established Church’, 244. 19 David N. Field, Bid Our Jarring Conflicts Cease: A Wesleyan Theology and Praxis of Church Unity (Nashville: Foundery Books, 2017), 118. 20 He did occasionally make the distinction, for example when discussing God’s providential care in Sermon 77, ‘Spiritual Worship,’ §I.9, Works III: 94; and in his An Earnest Appeal, §76–78, in Works XI: 77–78. 21 Elmer M. Colyer, The Trinitarian Dimension of John Wesley’s Theology (Nashville: New Room Books, 2019), 207–18. 22 An Earnest Appeal, §78, in Works, XI: 78. See Colyer, 217 n. 71. 23 Snyder, The Radical Wesley, 126, 128–29. 24 Colyer, The Trinitarian Dimension, 252.

‘A Division of Heart’ 35 25 John Wesley to Nicholas Norton, 3 September 1756, in Letters III [vol. 27 of The Works of John Wesley], ed. Ted A. Campbell (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2014), 45. 26 John Wesley, Sermon 39, ‘Catholic Spirit,’ §§I.3–11, Works, II: 83–87. 27 On this point, see Robert K. Martin, ‘Towards a Wesleyan Sacramental Ecclesiology’, Ecclesiology 9 (2013): 24. 28 See the discussion in Minna Hietamäki, ‘Recognition and Ecumenical Recognition: Distinguishing the Idea of Recognition in Modern Ecumenism’, Neue Zeitschrift Für Systematische Theologie Und Religionsphilosophie 56, no. 4 (2014): 454–72. 29 John Owen, ‘An Inquiry into the Original, Nature, Institution, Power, Order, and Communion of Evangelical Churches’, in The Works of John Owen, vol. XX, ed. Thomas Russell (London: Richard Baynes, 1826 [1681]), 605. 30 Wesley, ‘Of the Church,’ §28, Works, III: 56. 31 Wesley, ‘Of the Church,’ §29, Works, III: 56. 32 Reasons Against a Separation from the Church of England (1758), in The Methodist Societies: History, Nature, and Design [vol. IX of The Works of John Wesley], ed. Rupert E. Davies (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1989), 334–49. 33 Snyder, The Radical Wesley, 128–31. 34 Wesley, Sermon 92, ‘On Zeal’, §I.3, in Works, III: 312. 35 Wesley, ‘On Zeal’, §I.5, in Works, III: 312–13. 36 Wesley, ‘On Zeal’, §§II.6–11, III.8, in Works, III: 314–15, 318–19. 37 Wesley, ‘On Zeal’, §III.9, in Works, III: 319. 38 Wesley, Sermon 104, ‘On Attending the Church Service’, §19–31, in Works, III: 472–77. 39 See Colyer, The Trinitarian Dimension, 196–203. Colyer identifies this functionalist interpretation of Wesley’s ecclesiology in such sources as Albert Outler (‘Do Methodists Have a Doctrine of the Church?’), Randy Maddox (Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology (Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1994), 241–42, and Clarence Bence (‘Salvation and the Church: The Ecclesiology of John Wesley’, in The Church: An Inquiry into Ecclesiology from a Biblical Theological Perspective, ed. Melvin E. Dieter and Daniel N. Berg (Anderson, IN: Warner Press, 1984), 311. 40 ‘The Nature, Design, and General Rules of the United Societies,’ §6, Works, IX: 72. 41 Henry H. Knight, The Presence of God in the Christian Life: John Wesley and the Means of Grace, Pietist and Wesleyan Studies 3 (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1992), 2. 42 See Knight’s typology of general, instituted, and particular means, as well as the alternate categorisation, ‘means which focus on the presence of God’ versus ‘means which focus on the identity of God.’ Knight, 5, 13–14. 43 Sermon 112, ‘On Laying the Foundation Stone of the New Chapel’, §II.4, in Works, III: 586. See also ‘Thoughts upon a Late Phenomenon’ (1788), §7, Works, IX: 536. 44 Wesley, ‘On Laying the Foundation Stone’, §II.14, in Works, III: 590. 45 Baker, John Wesley and the Church of England, 213–14. 46 Wesley, Journal, 20 August 1764, in Works, XXI: 486. See also ‘Thoughts on the Consecration of Churches and Burial-Grounds’, Works, IX: 531–33. 47 Baker, John Wesley and the Church of England, 85, 213, 382 n. 51. See also Wesley’s comments about officiating in such places as West Street Chapel in his letter to ‘S. L.’, 14 December 1771, Letters, ed. Telford, V: 293. The Wesley Works Project transcription of the corresponding in-letter to Wesley from 14 October 1771 identifies the likely author as the Revd Herbert Lewis. See https:// wesley-works.org/john-wesleys-in-correspondence/, accessed 29 December 2022.

36  ‘A Division of Heart’ 48 Wesley, Sermon 107, ‘On God’s Vineyard’, in Works, III: 503. 49 ‘Ought we to Separate from the Church of England?’, in Works, XI:568. See also The Methodist Societies: The Minutes of Conference [vol. X in The Works of John Wesley], ed. Henry D. Rack (Nashville: Abingdon, 2011), 270–72. 50 Gareth Lloyd, Charles Wesley and the Struggle for Methodist Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 120–31. 51 ‘Ought we to Separate?’, in Works, IX: 568–69; Wesley to Samuel Walker, 24 September 1755, and Thomas Adam, 31 October 1755, in Letters II [vol. XXVI of The Works of John Wesley], ed. Frank Baker (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 592–96, 609–11; Wesley to Mr ‘T. H.’, alias ‘Philodemus’, alias ‘Somebody’, alias ‘Stephen Church, alias ‘R.W.’, 12 December 1760, in Works, XXVII: 226. 52 Wesley, ‘Ought we to Separate?’, Works, IX: 569. 53 ‘Reasons against a Separation from the Church of England’ §III.2, and ‘Ought we to Separate?’, in Works, IX: 339, 578. 54 Baker, John Wesley and the Church of England, 289. 55 On the legal and political issues related to whether Methodists were Dissenters, see Danker, Wesley and the Anglicans, 97–127. 56 Bob Tennant, Conscience, Consciousness and Ethics in Joseph Butler’s Philosophy and Ministry, Studies in Modern British Religious History (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2011), 132–33. See Gerald L Bray, ed., The Anglican Canons, 1529–1947, Church of England Record Society 6 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998), 339, 363–65. 553–578. 57 See An Earnest Appeal, §82, in Works, XI: 80–81; Minutes of Conference, 1745, §53, in Works, X: 155; ‘Ought We to Separate?’, in Works, IX: 568. 58 Danker, Wesley and the Anglicans, 116, 144–45. 59 Samuel Walker to John Wesley, 4 September 1755, in Works, XXVI: 584. 60 John Wesley to Samuel Walker, 24 September 1755, in Works, XXVI: 593–95. 61 See, for example, ‘Of Schism; the True Nature of It Discovered and Considered, with Reference to the Present Differences in Religion’, in The Works of John Owen, vol. XIX, ed. Thomas Russell (London: Richard Baynes, 1826 [1657]), 125–26. 62 Wesley, ‘On Schism’, §I.7, Works, III: 63. 63 See Wesley’s comment on 1 Corinthians 1:10, in Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (London: Epworth Press, 1950), 586. 64 Wesley, ‘On Schism,’ §I.9, Works, III: 63–4. 65 Wesley, ‘On Schism,’ §II.10, Works, III: 64. 66 A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, III.30, in Works, XI: 312. See also Wesley to John Lewis, 2 July 1747, in Randy L Maddox, ‘A Zealous (but Respected) Adversary: John Lewis’s Correspondence with John Wesley’, Wesley and Methodist Studies 7, no. 1 (2015): 131. 67 Wesley, ‘On Schism’, §II.11–16, Works, III: 64–6. 68 See the definition quoted above, emphasis mine: ‘a division of heart, and parties springing therefrom, though they were still outwardly united together…’ Wesley, ‘On Schism’, §I.7, Works, III: 63. 69 Colyer, The Trinitarian Dimension, 237–51. 70 Wesley, ‘On Schism’, §II.17, Works, III: 67. 71 Wesley to ‘John Smith’, 22 March 1748, in Works, XXVI:291. 72 Burdon, Authority and Order, 76. 73 Field, Bid Our Jarring Conflicts Cease, 135. 74 Wesley, ‘On Schism’, §II.17, Works, III: 67. ‘Lawful’ in this context seems to refer to the ‘law of conscience.’ See Danker, Wesley and the Anglicans, 162–63. 75 Wesley to Samuel Walker, 3 September 1756, in Works, XXVII:52. 76 Sermon 97, ‘On Obedience to Pastors,’ §III.6–12, Works, III: 380–3. Field writes with a view to contemporary debates about sexuality and wants to propose a comprehensive sense of Methodist unity that allows for differing viewpoints on

‘A Division of Heart’ 37 that question. Field, Bid Our Jarring Conflicts Cease, 171–79. Regardless of the merits of such a proposal, there is little basis for it in Wesley’s sermon on schism. As a practical matter, it would be impossible for any Christian body to allow for freedom of conscience on all matters, since the variety of potential conscience objections is endless. 77 Wesley, ‘On Obedience to Pastors,’ §§II.2, III.9–12, in Works, III: 377, 381–83. See also Sermon 88, ‘On Dress,’ Works, III: 247–61. 78 Minutes of Conference, 1745, §§56–60, in Works X: 156–57. 79 Sermon 39, ‘Catholic Spirit’, §I.4, Works, II: 83–4. 80 Wesley, ‘Catholic Spirit’, §I.8–10, Works, II:85–6. 81 Robert C Monk, John Wesley, His Puritan Heritage: A Study of the Christian Life (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1966), 176. 82 John Owen, ‘Some Considerations About Union Among Protestants’, in The Works of John Owen, vol. XVII, ed. Thomas Russell (London: Richard Baynes, 1826 [1680]), 604. 83 Edward Stillingfleet, The Mischief of Separation (London: H. Hills., 1709 [1687]), 26. For Stillingfleet’s influence on Wesley, see Baker, John Wesley and the Church of England, 141–49. 84 On Wesley’s terminology concerning ‘opinions’ see Randy L. Maddox, ‘Opinion, Religion and “Catholic Spirit”: John Wesley on Theological Integrity’, The Asbury Theological Journal 47, no. 1 (1992): 63–87. 85 Wesley, ‘Catholic Spirit’ §§I.12–15, Works, II:87–88. See also ‘A Letter to a Roman Catholic’, §§6–11, in Albert C. Outler, ed., John Wesley (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1980), 494–96. 86 Wesley had lost hope by 1769: ‘I give this up. I can do no more.’ Minutes of Conference, 1769, in Works X:377. See Danker’s discussion of the letter Wesley circulated to evangelical leaders in 1766 (originally written in 1764), and the tepid response he received, in Wesley and the Anglicans, 241–49. For the text of the letter, see Wesley’s Journal, 19 April 1764, in Journals and Diaries IV (1755–1765) [vol. XXI of The Works of John Wesley], ed. W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1992), 454–58. 87 Owen, ‘Some Considerations About Union Among Protestants’, 583. 88 Wesley, Sermon 105, ‘On Conscience’, §I.5, in Works, III:482. See the discussion in Joseph W. Cunningham, John Wesley’s Pneumatology: Perceptible Inspiration (New York, NY: Routledge, 2014), 61–63. 89 See my discussion of this teaching and its potential weaknesses in James E. Pedlar, ‘Sensing the Spirit: Wesley’s Empiricism and His Use of the Language of Spiritual Sensation’, Asbury Journal 67, no. 2 (2012): 85–104. 90 Wesley, ‘On Attending the Church Service’, §25–26, Works, III:475. 91 Wesley, ‘On Attending the Church Service’, §30–31, Works, III:477. 92 Munsey Turner, Conflict and Reconciliation, 27. 93 Gerald Bray, Documents of the English Reformation, 3rd ed., Library of Ecclesiastical History (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2019), 162–67, 267–68, 550. 94 See Sermon 32, ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, Discourse XII’, §III.8, Works, I: 682–83; ‘Ought We to Separate?’, in Works, IX: 569; Wesley to Mary Bishop, 18 October 1778, Letters, ed. Telford, VI: 327. 95 Paul F Blankenship, ‘The Significance of John Wesley’s Abridgement of the Thirty-Nine Articles as Seen from His Deletions’, Methodist History 2, no. 3 (1964): 44. 96 Wesley to Walter Churchey, 20 June 1789, in Letters, ed. Telford, VIII: 145. 97 See ‘Ought we to Separate?’, Works, XI: 569–72. Fletcher had suggested that Wesley should revise the Thirty-Nine Articles in 1775 but offered no specifics; Wesley did not comment on the suggestion in his reply. See John Fletcher to John Wesley, 1 August 1775, in ‘Unexampled Labours’: Letters of the Revd John

38  ‘A Division of Heart’ Fletcher to Leaders in the Evangelical Revival, ed. Peter S Forsaith (Peterborough: Epworth, 2008), 234–30. Earlier, at the first Conference in 1744, several Articles were listed as requiring further discussion regarding their scriptural basis, but Article 26 was not one of them. Works, X: 134. 98 Geordan Hammond, John Wesley in America: Restoring Primitive Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 63. 99 Outler’s ‘Introductory Comment’ on Sermon 101, ‘The Duty of Constant Communion’, in Works, III: 427–28. 100 Wesley, ‘The Duty of Constant Communion’, §I.2–3, Works, III: 429. 101 Wesley to Frederick North, 15 June 1775, Letters, ed. Telford, VI: 161; Wesley, ‘The Duty of Constant Communion’, Works, III: 428. 102 Colin W. Williams, John Wesley’s Theology Today (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1960), 145. 103 ‘I cannot lay down any general rule. All I can say at present is, ‘If it does not hurt you, hear them; if it does, refrain.’ But be determined by your own conscience.’ ‘Thoughts Upon An Important Question,’ (1781), Works IX: 518–19. 104 ‘On Hearing Ministers who Oppose the Truth,’ (1782), Works IX: 520. 105 Annual Minutes and Conference Journal, 1786, in Works, X: 617–18. 106 ‘Farther Thoughts on Separation from the Church,’ §6, Works, IX: 539. 107 See the discussion of these developments in Baker, John Wesley and the Church of England, 289–303. 108 See, for example, ‘Ought we to Separate?’, in Works, IX: 573. 109 Wesley, Sermon 121, ‘Prophets and Priests’, §II.18, in Sermons IV [vol. IV of The Works of John Wesley], ed. Albert C. Outler (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1987), 82–83. 110 Charles Wesley, ‘To Dr Coke, Mr Asbury, and our Brethren in North America’, in The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, Volume III, ed. S T Kimbrough and Oliver A. Beckerlegge (Nashville, TN: Kingswood, 1992), 84. Though Charles Wesley backed off a direct charge of separation in his correspondence with John (‘If I could prove your actual separation, I would not’, he wrote on 8 September 1785), he continued to describe John’s actions as such to others. For example, see his letter to Henry Durbin, 10 November 1785: ‘And he believes himself and (what is most astonishing) does not yet see that ordaining is separating.’ The Letters of Charles Wesley: A Critical Edition, with Introduction and Notes, Volume II, 1757–1788, ed. Kenneth C. G. Newport and Gareth Lloyd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 427, 433. 111 Wesley, ‘Ought we to Separate?’, in Works, IX: 574. 112 Baker, John Wesley and the Church of England, 158. 113 See the summary in A. B. Lawson, John Wesley and the Christian Ministry: The Sources and Development of His Opinions and Practice. (London: SPCK, 1963), 119–24. 114 ‘Wesley’s Reply to Richard Challoner’s A Caveat Against the Methodists’, in Doctrinal and Controversial Treatises III [vol. XIV of The Works of John Wesley], ed. Sarah Lancaster, Randy Maddox, and Kelly Diehl Yates (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2022), 200. 115 John C. Bowmer, The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper in Early Methodism (London: Dacre Press, 1951), 159. 116 John Wesley to ‘John Smith’, 25 June 1746, in Works, XXVI: 206. See also A Farther Appeal, Part III, §III.16, in Works, XI: 301–2. 117 John Wesley to Charles Wesley, 19 August 1785, in Letters, ed. Telford, VII: 285. 118 Baker, John Wesley and the Church of England, 63. 119 Baker, 59–73. 120 The Minutes of Conference, 1744, in Works, X: 135. 121 Wesley, A Farther Appeal, Part I, §I.V.4–23, in Works, XI: 141–66. 122 A Farther Appeal, Part I, §VI.12, in Works, XI: 186.

‘A Division of Heart’ 39 23 John Wesley to William Legge, 10 April 1761, Works XXVII: 254. 1 124 John Wesley to James Clarke, 3 July 1756, in Works, XXVII: 38. On these developments see Baker, John Wesley and the Church of England, 145–59; Gerald F. Moede, The Office of Bishop in Methodism (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1964), 15–26. 125 Stillingfleet, himself a bishop, had argued for the episcopacy on rational grounds, since it was, in his view the best instrument for maintaining the peace of the church. See Edward Stillingfleet, Irenicum: A Weapon-Salve for the Churches Wounds, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, PA: M. Sorin, 1842 [1662]), 34–35.See also Joseph Wood’s discussion of Richard Hooker’s view of the orders of ministry, in Wood, ‘Tensions Between Evangelical Theology and the Established Church’, 40–42. 126 See again Wesley’s sketch of the development of church polity in the primitive church, from the 1745 Minutes, which ends describing the pastor at head of a group of local congregations that had sprung up through his ministry as ‘their father in the Lord’ who ‘may be called the Bishop or Overseer of them all’. Works, X: 156–57 and n. 295. 127 Wesley’s prefatory letter to Thomas Coke, in The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America, i. 128 John Wesley to Charles Wesley, 19 August 1785, Letters, ed. Telford, VII: 284. 129 See his letter to Samuel Walker, 2 September 1756, Works, XVII: 54. Danker overstates the case when he claims Wesley’s view negates the need for the episcopacy. One could argue for the necessity of episcopacy on a functional basis to administer the ‘outward call’. However, he is certainly correct to note that Wesley’s position ‘disregards the catholic understanding of ordination as a sacramental action restricted to an episcopate in succession with the apostles.’ Danker, Wesley and the Anglicans, 171. 130 No mention of the ordinations is made in the 1784 Conference Minutes or Conference Journal. John Pawson recalled that Wesley himself had raised the issue to an astonished ‘select committee’, who expressed their disapproval of the plan. Henry Rack, introduction to the Annual Minutes of 1784, in Works, X: 549–50. 131 Charles Wesley to Thomas [Bradbury] Chandler, 28 April 1785, in The Letters of Charles Wesley, II: 413. It is not surprising that Charles described these events as ‘clandestine’. See ‘To the Revd—[John Wesley]’, in The Unpublished Poetry, III:98. 132 See, for example, A Farther Appeal, Part III, §II.16, Works, XI: 300–1.

Bibliography Baker, Frank. John Wesley and the Church of England. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1970. Bassett, Paul M. ‘A Survey of Western Ecclesiology to About 1700, Part II: Ecclesiology in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries’. In The Church: An Inquiry into Ecclesiology from a Biblical Theological Perspective, edited by Melvin E. Dieter and Daniel N. Berg, 205–61. Anderson, IN: Warner Press, 1984. Bence, Clarence. ‘Salvation and the Church: The Ecclesiology of John Wesley’. In The Church: An Inquiry into Ecclesiology from a Biblical Theological Perspective, edited by Melvin E. Dieter and Daniel N. Berg, 297–317. Anderson, IN: Warner Press, 1984. Blankenship, Paul F. ‘The Significance of John Wesley’s Abridgement of the ThirtyNine Articles as Seen from His Deletions’. Methodist History 2, no. 3 (1964): 35–47. Bowmer, John C. The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper in Early Methodism. London: Dacre Press, 1951.

40  ‘A Division of Heart’ Bray, Gerald. Documents of the English Reformation. 3rd ed. Library of Ecclesiastical History. Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 2019. Bray, Gerald L., ed. The Anglican Canons, 1529–1947. Church of England Record Society 6. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998. Burdon, Adrian. Authority and Order: John Wesley and His Preachers. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016. Colyer, Elmer M. The Trinitarian Dimension of John Wesley’s Theology. Nashville, TN: New Room Books, 2019. Cunningham, Joseph W. John Wesley’s Pneumatology: Perceptible Inspiration. New York, NY: Routledge, 2014. Danker, Ryan Nicholas. Wesley and the Anglicans: Political Division in Early Evangelicalism. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016. Field, David N. Bid Our Jarring Conflicts Cease: A Wesleyan Theology and Praxis of Church Unity. Nashville, TN: Foundery Books, 2017. Fletcher, John. ‘‘Unexampled Labours’: Letters of the Revd John Fletcher to Leaders in the Evangelical Revival.’ Edited by Peter S. Forsaith. Peterborough: Epworth, 2008. Hammond, Geordan. John Wesley in America: Restoring Primitive Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Hietamäki, Minna. ‘Recognition and Ecumenical Recognition: Distinguishing the Idea of Recognition in Modern Ecumenism’. Neue Zeitschrift Für Systematische Theologie Und Religionsphilosophie 56, no. 4 (2014): 454–72. Knight, Henry H. The Presence of God in the Christian Life: John Wesley and the Means of Grace. Pietist and Wesleyan Studies 3. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1992. Lawson, A. B. John Wesley and the Christian Ministry: The Sources and Development of His Opinions and Practice. London: SPCK, 1963. Lloyd, Gareth. Charles Wesley and the Struggle for Methodist Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Maddox, Randy L. ‘A Zealous (but Respected) Adversary: John Lewis’s Correspondence with John Wesley’. Wesley and Methodist Studies 7, no. 1 (2015): 121–47. Maddox, Randy L. ‘Opinion, Religion and “Catholic Spirit”: John Wesley on Theological Integrity’. The Asbury Theological Journal 47, no. 1 (1992): 63–87. ———. Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology. Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1994. Martin, Robert K. ‘Towards a Wesleyan Sacramental Ecclesiology’. Ecclesiology 9 (2013): 19–38. Moede, Gerald F. The Office of Bishop in Methodism. Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1964. Monk, Robert C. John Wesley, His Puritan Heritage: A Study of the Christian Life. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1966. Munsey Turner, John. Conflict and Reconciliation: Studies in Methodism and Ecumenism in England, 1740–1982. London: Epworth, 1985. Oh, Gwang Seok. John Wesley’s Ecclesiology: A Study in Its Sources and Development. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008. Outler, Albert C. ‘Do Methodists Have a Doctrine of the Church?’ In The Doctrine of the Church, edited by Dow Kirkpatrick, 11–28. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1964. ———, ed. John Wesley. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1980.

‘A Division of Heart’ 41 Owen, John. ‘An Inquiry into the Original, Nature, Institution, Power, Order, and Communion of Evangelical Churches’. In The Works of John Owen, Vol. XX, edited by Thomas Russell, iii–249. London: Richard Baynes, 1826 [1681]. ———. ‘Of Schism; the True Nature of It Discovered and Considered, With Reference to the Present Differences in Religion’. In The Works of John Owen, Vol. XIX, edited by Thomas Russell, 111–254. London: Richard Baynes, 1826 [1657]. ———. ‘Some Considerations About Union Among Protestants’. In The Works of John Owen, Vol. XVII, edited by Thomas Russell, 596–604. London: Richard Baynes, 1826 [1680]. Pedlar, James E. ‘Sensing the Spirit: Wesley’s Empiricism and His Use of the Language of Spiritual Sensation’. Asbury Journal 67, no. 2 (2012): 85–104. Rack, Henry D. Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism. 3rd ed. London: Epworth Press, 2002. Rainey, David. ‘The Established Church and Evangelical Theology: John Wesley’s Ecclesiology’. International Journal of Systematic Theology 12, no. 4 (October 2010): 420–34. Snyder, Howard A. Signs of the Spirit: How God Reshapes the Church. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1997. ———. The Radical Wesley: Patterns and Practices of a Movement-Maker. 2nd ed. Franklin, TN: Seedbed, 2014. Stillingfleet, Edward. Irenicum: A Weapon-Salve for the Churches Wounds. 2nd ed. Philadelphia, PA: M. Sorin, 1842. ———. The Mischief of Separation. London: H. Hills, 1709. Tennant, Bob. Conscience, Consciousness and Ethics in Joseph Butler’s Philosophy and Ministry. Studies in Modern British Religious History. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2011. Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America, with Other Occasional Services. London: William Strahan, 1784. Walsh, John. John Wesley 1703–1791: A Bicentennial Tribute. London: Dr. Williams’s Trust, 1993. Wesley, Charles. The Letters of Charles Wesley: A Critical Edition, with Introduction and Notes, Volume II, 1757–1788. Edited by Kenneth C. G. Newport and Gareth Lloyd. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. ———. The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, Volume III. Edited by, S. T. Kimbrough and Oliver A. Beckerlegge. Nashville, TN: Kingswood, 1992. Wesley, John. Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament. London: Epworth Press, 1950. ———. The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M. 8 vols. Edited by John Telford. London: Epworth Press, 1931. ———. The Works of John Wesley, Bicentennial Edition. 22 vols. Edited by Frank L. Baker, Richard P. Heitzenrater, and Randy L. Maddox. Oxford: Clarendon, 1975–1983. Nashville: Abingdon, 1984-present. Williams, Colin W. John Wesley’s Theology Today. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1960. Wood, Joseph. ‘Tensions Between Evangelical Theology and the Established Church: John Wesley’s Ecclesiology’. Ph.D., University of Manchester, 2012.

3

‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ Hugh Bourne and the Emergence of Primitive Methodism

On 21 June 1808, Hugh Bourne was in Warrington at the home of Peter and Hannah Phillips, leading Quaker Methodists and key founders of what would become Independent Methodism. Bourne was busy writing a tract on the ministry of women. It was only the second publication written specifically in defence of women’s preaching by a Methodist.1 Bourne was asked to write the tract earlier that month when he attended the annual meeting of the Independent Methodists at Macclesfield on 12 June. Bourne noted in his journal, ‘the controversy about women ministering was brought forward and I agreed to write an answer to the propositions.’ Not only did Bourne write his tract in the home of leading Quaker Methodists, he claimed he did so in Quaker-like style, ‘almost by impression’, before he shared it with them and asked for feedback. On that same day, he wrote that, during a time of prayer, ‘the Spirit gave me a touch that H. Philips [sic] was called to the Ministry.’2 These impressions of the Spirit and the insights of his Quaker Methodist friends influenced the final draft of Bourne’s tract, which was published with the strong encouragement of Peter Phillips. Bourne had previous associations with the nascent Independent Methodists from Macclesfield and had been a frequent visitor at the Phillips home since the summer of 1807. He had also attended the 1807 Annual Meeting of the Independent Methodists and had even been invited to preach. As he wrote his tract on women in ministry the following June, Hugh Bourne was still a Wesleyan Methodist, though he would be expelled by the Burslem Quarterly Meeting within a week, on 27 June 1808. Bourne would later reflect that this left him, ‘with no other head upon earth but Christ, and I felt like a solitary being.’3 Nevertheless, on 9 July he set off for Kingsley, and ministered there, followed by Tean, Wooton-under-Weaver, Rasmor, and Lexhead, before helping lead a camp meeting at Mow Cop on 17 July.4 Despite his exclusion from Wesleyan Methodism, he was part of a network of revivalists that existed alongside, and sometimes outside, Wesleyan Methodism, and his participation in these networks enabled him to continue preaching, organising, and leading prayer meetings with little interruption following his expulsion. Hugh Bourne was born in 1772 at Ford Hays farm in Stoke-on-Trent.5 His father was a turbulent soul who struggled with alcoholism, but he was DOI: 10.4324/9781003224327-3

‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ 43 almost bigoted in his adherence to the Church of England and opposition to all forms of Dissent. Bourne received religious instruction in the home at the behest of his father, and through his mother, with whom Bourne had a more positive relationship. She would later follow her sons and become a Methodist. Bourne’s family was relatively prosperous within their class, and he received several years of formal schooling before he was withdrawn at age twelve to work with his father on the farm and in his side-business as a wheelwright and timber dealer. In 1788, the family moved to Bemersley, and Bourne was sent to apprentice with an uncle who was a millwright. His uncle’s extensive business provided opportunities for Bourne to travel throughout the area. This coincided with a season of spiritual searching during which Bourne picked up ideas and literature from a number of people, notably Quakers and Methodists, though his impression of Methodists was not uniformly positive.6 All of this led to his conversion in 1799, which occurred while sitting alone and reading John Fletcher’s Six Letters on the Spiritual Manifestation of the Son of God.7 Soon after, Bourne joined the Methodist society, attended a June love-feast at Burslem, and became a class-leader and local preacher. The next significant event in Bourne’s life, as he related it, was his part in the conversion of his second cousin, Daniel Shubotham, on Christmas Day, 1800. Later in his life, Bourne sometimes recounted this as his first triumphant proclamation of the gospel, though at other times he described the encounter as a timid and tentative conversation.8 The following year there was a cottage meeting revival around Harriseahead in which Bourne played a key role. He described this revival as being fuelled not by preaching but by ‘pious conversation and prayer’ by ordinary laypeople amongst their neighbours and co-workers, especially the colliers nearby.9 Also that year, Bourne preached his first sermon in a traditional sense, notably on Mow Cop, which would later be the site of the first camp meeting organised by Bourne and his friends. In 1802, Bourne built a chapel in Harriseahead, at his own expense—another event that he interpreted as a decisive moment in his life. In 1804 and 1805, another revival came to Bourne’s community, sparked by revivalists from Stockport ministering in the area, most likely another tributary of Independent Methodism that had broken away from the New Connexion.10 During this revival, Bourne and others claimed entire sanctification. Bourne identified 1806 as a ‘pause’ in the revival, due to opposition growing amongst the Wesleyan Methodist leadership to revivalism, and a hesitation to engage in camp meetings, which he and his compatriots had already begun to contemplate.11 In April 1807, near the end of a two-year British campaign, Lorenzo Dow came to the area, preaching at Harriseahead, Burslem, Tunstall, and Congleton. Dow was a very irregular Methodist, sometimes branded a ‘Quaker evangelist’, who worked freelance and saw no need for ecclesiastical oversight of his ministry.12 Hugh Bourne, his brother James, and Primitive Methodist co-founder William Clowes all heard Dow speak at these services, where he dwelt particularly on the American camp meeting revivals. They also bought some tracts on camp meetings from

44  ‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ Dow. This encouraged the Harriseahead class to hold their own camp meeting on Mow Cop on 31 May 1807. Three other camp meetings followed between June and August, despite the Wesleyan Conference declaring such services ‘highly improper in England and likely to be productive of considerable mischief’ in July.13 This interdiction was reinforced locally by the travelling preachers in the Burslem circuit upon their return from Conference, who forbid local preachers and leaders from attending camp meetings. Nevertheless, Bourne continued with his final camp meeting at Norton on 23 August. That fall, Mary Dunnell, who had been preaching in the revivals, was excluded from the Wesleyan Methodist pulpit at Tunstall. In response, local layperson James Steele set up his kitchen as a preaching place to provide her and others with opportunities to preach. Bourne claimed that he convinced them to limit the activities in Steele’s kitchen to preaching only, to avoid any hint of schism.14 Bourne continued his preaching activities through the winter and spring of 1808, and also became heavily involved in a society focused on tract distribution, and another campaigning against Sabbath-breaking. These ties further demonstrate the way Bourne’s ministry networks extended beyond Wesleyan Methodism. There were three camp meetings in May 1808, followed by an excursion to Delamere Forest and Warrington, where he stayed with the Phillips, as noted above, and wrote his tract on women in ministry. While Bourne was deeply offended by his exclusion from Wesleyan Methodism, he always had a rather loose relationship with the Wesleyan Connexion and had conducted his revival without the help of the itinerants. Whenever he and his compatriots established a group of converts, they always joined them to local Wesleyan Methodist circuits, but by the time Bourne wrote his 1808 tract, he was much more deeply enmeshed in a local informal revival network than he was in the formal network of the Wesleyan connection. What is more, his revivalist friends were the leaders of the emerging Independent Methodist churches, who had already broken away from Wesleyan Methodism. These associations went back to 1804 when Bourne had his powerful sanctification experience under the ministry of the Stockport revivalists. Then, after the first Mow Cop camp meeting, Bourne visited the so-called ‘Magic Methodist’ leader James Crawfoot, who was then a local Wesleyan Methodist preacher, but whose radical mystical spirituality and preaching in Quaker Methodist pulpits would lead to his expulsion in 1810.15 It was Crawfoot who introduced Bourne to Peter and Hannah Phillips at Warrington. Bourne would spend a great deal of time with Crawfoot and the Phillips in the coming years.16 He also had a close relationship with John Beresford, a central figure among the Macclesfield Independent Methodists—many of whom supported Bourne’s camp meetings.17 Bourne’s tract on women in ministry, occasioned by the 12 June 1808 meeting of the Independent Methodists at Macclesfield, was addressed to Beresford.18 Linking all of these influences together was the eccentric American revivalist Lorenzo Dow, who had stayed with the Phillips while he campaigned in north-west England and Ireland between 1805 and 1807.

‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ 45 In the three years following his expulsion, Bourne would continue to preach and organise prayer meetings, with the group surrounding him being known for a short while as the Camp Meeting Methodists. By 1811, Bourne’s group had united with another network led by his co-revivalist William Clowes, the two holding their first general meeting at Tunstall, and adopting the ‘Primitive Methodist’ moniker at their 1812 meeting. Not long after, Bourne seems to have had a breakdown, coinciding with the expulsion of both James Crawfoot and Mary Dunnell from the Primitive Methodist travelling ministry.19 The nascent movement grew by fits and starts through the decade, but the first formal Primitive Methodist Conference was not held until 1820 in Hull, the same year in which the first issue of the Primitive Methodist Magazine was published.20 Bourne would edit the magazine until 1842, contributing much of the content himself. By that time Bourne had become increasingly difficult to work with and consumed with jealousy towards William Clowes. He was superannuated by the Conference, though he would live another ten years, working on his unpublished autobiography and making a notable tour to Canada and New England (1844–1846). He died at Bemersley on 11 October 1852. As the co-founder (along with William Clowes) of Primitive Methodism, Bourne holds a significant place in the history of British Methodist revivalism. Although they were not the first Methodist schism, the Primitive Methodists were the first revival-based separation to produce a significant rival Methodist body—one that would grow to become the second-largest Methodist connexion in Britain. As such, the Primitive Methodists are an important case for understanding the emerging tensions in early nineteenth-century Methodism. Methodological differences were the most obvious issues at stake in the separation of Primitive Methodism from Wesleyan Methodism. The standard account focuses on the flashpoint issue of American-style camp meetings. Theological issues do not feature prominently in the discussion of Primitive Methodist origins, and Bourne did not engage in overt clashes with his Wesleyan counterparts over theology. Thus, it has been suggested that there were no significant theological differences between the Wesleyan Methodists and Primitive Methodists.21 While no doctrinal controversy occasioned the establishment of Primitive Methodism, differing understandings of the Spirit and the church can be discerned beneath the surface of the differences over camp meetings and lay participation in church polity. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, Wesleyan Methodism was strengthening its theology of pastoral authority in the wake of clashes with several revivalist and reforming groups.22 The separation of the ‘Band Room Methodists’ in Manchester resulted in the publication of an 1806 Wesleyan Methodist pamphlet which John Bowmer has called ‘the earliest exposition of the Wesleyan doctrine of the pastoral office’.23 The Band Room was the centre of a network of revivalist meeting places established by layman John Broadhurst, where services were conducted without ministerial oversight.24 Tensions simmered between the Wesleyan preachers under superintendent

46  ‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ William Jenkins and the Band Room leaders between 1803 and 1806, when the Band Room Methodists defied a leaders’ meeting decision that the only Covenant service for the New Year should be held at the Oldham Street Chapel. As a result, the Band Room Methodists separated in February 1806 and became one of the earliest examples of Independent Methodism.25 In their response to the incident, Wesleyan Methodists stressed the importance of maintaining discipline, against the Band Room practice of admitting persons who were not members of the Society.26 We object to the plan of indiscriminate admission because it impedes the due administration of ECCLESIASTICAL DISCIPLINE. This is an express ordinance of God – as much His ordinance as the preaching of the Gospel or celebration of the Lord’s Supper; and whatever materially interferes with its regular exercise is, for that reason, unscriptural, and highly injurious to the souls of men and to the interests of religion. One grand object of this discipline is to effect and maintain an open and visible separation between the Church and the World; between those who do, and those who do not make a credible, consistent, and public profession of serious religion.27 Many have detected the influence of Jabez Bunting (at that time a local itinerant) in this situation. He had also engaged in similar wrangling with the breakaway ‘Christian Revivalists’ in Macclesfield in 1803. His antipathy towards such revivalists is expressed in a letter to George Marsden, from 13 December 1803: ‘All persons enthusiastically or schismatically disposed are dangerous in our connection to its peace and permanency; and the more pious in their general character, the more dangerous.’28 This emphasis on discipline exercised by the Methodist itinerants and Connectional leaders as bearers of pastoral authority would continue to develop along a clerical trajectory until the middle of the century.29 As noted in the introduction, the Wesleyan Methodist side of these theological developments has been well-treated by several scholars, but the theological perspectives at play on the revivalist side have not received much attention, and this is certainly true of Primitive Methodist scholarship.30 While William Clowes was the better preacher and more charismatic leader, Hugh Bourne was the chief thinker and writer of early Primitive Methodism. He wrote the first history of the movement in 1823, and from 1818 to 1842 he was editor of the connexional magazine, contributing much of the material himself. For these reasons, Bourne is the most important source for understanding the theological perspective that prevailed in early Primitive Methodism. Bourne was not a ‘systematic theologian’ by modern standards, but he did furnish the new movement with much of its first-order theological resources. If, as advocated in the introduction to this volume, we take theology in its broad sense, it is certain that Bourne wrote a great deal of theology and had a profound influence on the theological outlook of early Primitive Methodism.

‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ 47 Bourne would always maintain that his intentions were to build up the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion, but the freedom with which he engaged in extra-denominational revival services conflicted with the increasing emphasis on discipline that had been gathering steam within Wesleyan Methodism. The camp meetings which had begun through the efforts of Bourne and his revivalist colleagues in 1807 had attracted a mixture of attendees and participating preachers, including many non-Wesleyans. These associations and influences had shaped his theological outlook in a way that conflicted with the dominant Wesleyan Methodist theological outlook on some key questions. Bourne’s Spirit-centred and individualistic spirituality supported a very empowering view of the Spirit’s work amongst the people of God. However, he portrayed the Spirit’s empowerment and illumination in individualistic terms, which obscured the Spirit’s working through the church as a body, and thereby undermined the authority of the circuit and the Conference. In the remainder of this chapter, I explore Bourne’s theology of the Spirit and the church, beginning with an underling ambiguity in his understanding of Christian division. While he defended his movement vigorously against the charge of schism, his quasi-independent revivalist ministry while a Wesleyan Methodist clearly sowed the seeds of division. I will then show how several important influences pushed Bourne’s theology in a pneumatocentric direction and explain how these influences led to the ambiguities in his understanding of ecclesial division. Bourne’s pneumatocentric theology led him to an ecclesiology that was more grassroots and participatory than the prevailing Wesleyan Methodist view, but it left him with little reason to resist separation. Finally, I will return to Bourne’s defence of women’s preaching, demonstrating how it sets his theology apart, not only from establishment Wesleyan Methodists like Jabez Bunting but even from Wesleyan moderates such as Zachariah Taft. ‘A Wheel Within a Wheel’: Bourne’s Defence against the Charge of Schism At times, Hugh Bourne downplayed the significance of divisions in the church. He had embraced a generous version of Wesley’s ‘catholic spirit’ around the time of his conversion. He was inspired by a passage from Wesley’s sermon ‘On the Trinity,’ which he repeatedly identified as one of three key sources that influenced his early Christian convictions.31 Bourne emphasised the opening lines of the sermon, where Wesley contrasted ‘right opinion’ with true religion: Whatsoever the generality of people may think, it is certain that opinion is not religion: No, not right opinion; assent to one, or to ten thousand truths. There is a wide difference between them: Even right opinion is as distant from religion as the east is from the west. Persons may be quite right in their opinions, and yet have no religion at all; and, on the other hand, persons may be truly religious, who hold many wrong opinions.32

48  ‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ Bourne encountered this sermon while he struggled to decide which Christian community he should join. His main associations to that point had been Quaker and Methodist, along with his childhood background in the Church of England. It was his reading of Wesley’s sermon and the stories of the early Quakers that led him to believe that ‘the religion of the heart was alike in all’.33 Thus he concluded, ‘I might join any really religious society without under-valuing others; and might profit by all.’34 Wesley’s theological openmindedness, of course, was balanced by firm boundaries on central issues of classical orthodoxy and vital piety. His distinctions between ‘opinion’ and ‘doctrine’ must also be read with careful attention to context.35 Bourne’s conclusion that he might join any religious society suggests that he took a less nuanced view and tended towards doctrinal latitudinarianism, which Wesley cautioned against.36 It is also noteworthy that, although he clearly revered Wesley, this was the only specific idea Bourne claimed to have taken from Wesley at this formative time in his life. In spite of this generous spirit, which relativised divisions among Christians, portraying them as benign and insignificant, Bourne was very keen to clear the Primitive Methodist Connexion from the charge that they had divided the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion. In fact, the entire first section of his History of the Primitive Methodists, written in 1823, could be read as a defence against the charge of schism. His primary argument was that the emergence of the Primitive Methodists should be considered providential because the formation of a separate connexion was not planned but emerged inexorably through the unfolding of events. He claimed, ‘the connexion was begun in the order of Divine Providence, and not in the wisdom of man, nor by the desire of man.’37 He emphasised repeatedly that there was no ‘sheepstealing’ involved. They won new converts in areas that were not well-served by the existing Wesleyan structures, and they made every effort to join these converts to the Wesleyan Connexion. Bourne declared that he didn’t even want to start a class meeting on his own, let alone a separate society, and did so only after the Wesleyan travelling preachers urged him to do so.38 ‘So’, he wrote, ‘the Primitive Methodist course was in the Burslem Wesleyan circuit, as it were, a wheel within a wheel.’39 Even after Bourne was expelled from Wesleyan membership in 1808, he did not form separate societies but aimed to funnel converts to existing bodies. The first separate society, formed at Stanley in 1810, had been started by Bourne and his colleagues months earlier in hopes that it would unite with the Wesleyans. It was only after this proved impossible that Bourne felt compelled to take it on, despite great trepidation. This gave extreme trial of mind to J. Bourne, and when H. Bourne came home, he was struck with astonishment on being informed that they should be obliged to take wholly upon themselves the care of Standley [sic] society. There was, however, no remedy. Necessity was laid upon them, and they could not draw back without sacrificing conscience;

‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ 49 and therefore, with fear and trembling, they entered upon their more extensive charge.40 He also argued that all the main leaders of the early Primitive Methodist Connexion were expelled from the Wesleyan Connexion on shaky grounds and did not leave of their own accord.41 At the time of his expulsion, Bourne claimed that all he and his revivalist colleagues wanted to do was to use camp meetings to strengthen the converting ministry of the Wesleyan Connexion. Camp meetings, he stressed, were a new means raised up by God for evangelisation, proven by the fruit which they produced. Pious people of almost all denominations look for a general spread of the Gospel, and many powerful institutions have arisen for increasing the work; and among these are the camp meetings, which are likely to go through the world, and become a general blessing.42 The Wesleyan Conference was wrong to reject camp meetings, which were the continuation of the Wesleyan heritage of preaching in the open air. In fact, Bourne and the others considered it ‘their peculiar duty as members of the Old Methodist connexion’ to promote camp meetings, which they believed upheld the ‘primitive’ ideals of Methodism.43 Thus, he concluded, the Primitive Methodist leaders had ‘clean hands’ when they started their new connexion, having been placed in that position by the unfolding hand of providence. The new body was pure of the stain of schism. Again, reflecting on the formation of a separate society at Stanley, Bourne writes: It was formed pure. No split out of any religious society, and no man who was a member of the Wesleyan society, or any other religious society, had a finger in it. We knew that the Lord was employing us to fully form a Methodist connection. Had I been aware of that, I am of opinion that the terror of the Lord only could have caused me to go on with it, as was the case with the camp meeting cause. I dreaded the idea of being concerned in forming a connexion.44 In spite of his protestations, Bourne had engaged in mission in a way that made the Wesleyan Connexion and its structures more or less irrelevant. He became a key figure in a local revival around Harriseahead not long after his conversion, and this continued for several years before the broader movement that would become the Primitive Methodist Connexion took shape. He may indeed have intended his revival to build up the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion, and there is no doubt some truth to his claims that he had increased the vitality of the local circuits.45 And yet the relationship between his ministry and the Wesleyan Connexion had always been tenuous. While

50  ‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ he was a Wesleyan trustee and class leader, he led cottage prayer meetings and even built a chapel at Harriseahead without license or direction from the circuit or connexional leaders. He seemed to revel in the freedom from oversight that he and his compatriots enjoyed at this stage of his life. Referring to his cousin, Daniel Shubotham, and Mathias Bayly, two early collaborators, he claimed, ‘…when he [Shubotham], and I, and Matthias agreed on anything, we were, under the Lord, completely masters. There was none to control us.’46 The initiative to host camp meetings was also undertaken without involvement of the Wesleyan leadership. It is no wonder that this became the flashpoint issue, but it was simply the continuation of the way Bourne and his colleagues had operated for several years. To be fair, the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion allowed this pattern of behaviour to continue. As Tim Woolley has noted, the Wesleyans had been weakened in the area by the establishment of the Methodist New Connexion presence in beginning in 1798.47 Furthermore, before he was expelled, Bourne had carried out his own revival prayer meetings and preaching services in a variety of contexts inside and outside the Wesleyan Connexion, including the Independent Methodists at Macclesfield, the Quaker Methodists at Warrington, and the ‘Magic Methodists’ of Delamere Forest.48 He operated with little regard for Wesleyan structures and authority. The fact that his ministry as a revivalist was not well integrated with Wesleyan Methodist structures is seen in the fact that he continued this ministry uninterrupted following his expulsion from the Wesleyan Methodists, concluding three months later in his Journal, ‘Since I was put out of the Society I have grown more in grace and have been more useful. O Lord let me never live to be useless.’49 While Bourne’s inconsistency on this point seems rather obvious, he saw no contradiction between working independently of Wesleyan authorities and building up the Wesleyan Connexion. His attitudes were not unique. He had the example of Lorenzo Dow to draw upon, and many would follow this path of independent or semi-independent revival ministry in the decades to follow. This seeming ecclesiological inconsistency, however, was rooted in a set of theological convictions that prioritised the direct work of the Spirit in the individual over the work of the Spirit through the community. Bourne’s pneumatocentrism can be illustrated by examining the impact of four seminal influences during his early career: John Fletcher, the Quaker Methodists, Lorenzo Dow, and James Crawfoot. Bourne’s Pneumatocentric Influences As noted above, Bourne consistently identified three sources that shaped his thinking at the time of his conversion, the first being Wesley’s sermon ‘On the Trinity.’ The two other sources were John Fletcher’s Letters on the Spiritual Manifestation of the Son and some unspecified early Quaker writings. These second and third influences, in fact, come through more clearly in Bourne’s writings than Wesley does. It is noteworthy that Bourne was

‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ 51 converted while he was alone, reading Fletcher on a Sunday morning in 1799. His conversion contrasts with John Wesley’s heart-warming experience in a religious society meeting and the typical conversion of many early Methodists in a class meeting. Although Bourne attended various religious services, he was not yet a member of any church body. He also continually stressed that while he learned some things from the Wesleyan Methodists, he did not hear them preaching about the present experience of salvation. ‘The doctrine of full, present, and full salvation, I had never heard set forth in the circuit; and I am now of opinion that it was now known in the circuit.’50 In narrating his conversion, he emphasised that he consulted no one, but communicated directly with the Spirit, waiting for the manifestation of the Son. Though the Six Letters on the Spiritual Manifestation of the Son are not among Fletcher’s most well-known writings, their enduring impact upon Bourne is seen in the fact that Bourne published them as a series in the 1822 Primitive Methodist Magazine. In fact, Bourne published excerpts from ten of Fletcher’s writings during his tenure as editor of the Magazine, including serial publications of longer treatises on Christian perfection.51 Fletcher’s writings were excerpted in the Magazine much more frequently than Wesley’s.52 The Six Letters were not actual letters, but rather a treatise written in the form of six letters in 1767, before Fletcher had fully developed his dispensational theology.53 They were not published until Melville Horne included them in the Posthumous Pieces of the Late John William de la Flechere in 1791.54 Patrick Streiff has shown that the Six Letters were written as a response to the views of Robert Sandeman, who defined justifying faith in terms of a bare intellectual assent, without any personal, subjective element.55 Fletcher set out, therefore, to show ‘that the Son of God, for purposes worthy of his wisdom, manifests himself, sooner or later, to all his sincere followers, in a spiritual manner’, and he described such manifestations as ‘revelations of Christ to your own soul, productive of the experimental knowledge of him, and the present enjoyment of his salvation.’56 Like Wesley, Fletcher drew on the idea of the ‘spiritual senses’ as faculties which ‘are to the spiritual world, what our bodily, external senses are with regard to the material world’, and which are only available to the regenerate.57 Though he struggled to define the manifestation of Christ which comes by means of these senses,58 Fletcher described it as follows: The revelation of Christ, by which a carnal professor becomes a holy and happy possessor of the faith, is a supernatural, spiritual, experimental manifestation of the Spirit, power, and love, and sometimes of the person of God manifest in the flesh, whereby he is known and enjoyed in a manner altogether new: as new as a man, who never tasted any thing but bread and water, would have of honey and wine, suppose, being dissatisfied with the best descriptions of those rich productions of nature, he actually tasted them for himself.59

52  ‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ Fletcher went on to carefully consider several questions connected to his teaching on spiritual manifestation, such as the relation between ordinary revelations that are necessary for salvation and extraordinary examples given in special cases, and the differing degrees and intensities of such manifestation. The final two letters are devoted to an examination of the Old Testament and New Testament evidence for spiritual manifestation. There is a decades-long history of debate regarding the differences between Wesley and Fletcher, with a primary focus on the function of Pentecost and the ‘baptism in the Spirit’.60 While Laurence Wood has done much to bolster the case for Wesley’s endorsement of Fletcher’s views, I would still argue that Fletcher’s dispensational framework and more characteristic use of Spirit-baptism language give his theology a more Spirit-centred flavour than Wesley’s.61 That is certainly the case with the Six Letters on the Spiritual Manifestation of the Son. As I have already noted, the notion of spiritual sensation is found in Wesley himself, as are claims to the direct witness of the Spirit. However, Fletcher seems to treat the spiritual senses as a real set of faculties, sometimes providing descriptions of how the manifestation might come to the spiritual eye or the spiritual ear or the spiritual feeling.62 Wesley, on the other hand, was more circumspect and used the language of spiritual sensation as an analogy to speak of something which he could not explain. He noted that these are ‘figurative expressions’ meant to describe the realities of new birth, the gift of faith, and the witness of the Spirit—a circumscribed focus for the content of the Spirit’s communication.63 Furthermore, the term ‘manifestation’, while not foreign to Wesley, is not typical of his description of the Spirit’s work and leaves the door open to a wider variety of pneumatic phenomena. Thus, the Six Letters, which had seminal influence on Bourne, encouraged believers to wait for the Spirit to reveal the Son through various modes of spiritual sensation. Along with other nineteenth-century Methodists, Bourne did not seem to recognise any tension in the thought of Fletcher and Wesley, and his thought bears the marks of an exaggerated Fletcherian strain of Methodist theology. Fletcher’s influence can be seen in a number of emphases in Bourne’s thought. First, he took up the language of the ‘manifestation’ of the Son from Fletcher as his particular way of describing assurance of salvation. This is seen most clearly in the way he recounted his first evangelistic appeal to his cousin Daniel Shubotham on Christmas Day, 1800, an event that Bourne saw as the beginning of his revival ministry: ‘I pressed the manifestation on him, and it spread to others and the new course of converting became great.’64 Secondly, Bourne often referred to the baptism of the Spirit, or the ‘unction of the Holy One’, two key emphases from Fletcher. So Bourne writes of the first camp meeting on Mow Cop, ‘A flaming zeal was displayed, and a powerful Unction rested during the day.’65 Likewise, he described the revival led by his colleague James Steele in Tunstall around 1804 as follows: ‘…and Tunstall, which had been one of the deadest places in the circuit, felt the quickness influence; the baptism of the Holy Ghost.’66 Third, Bourne tended to emphasise

‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ 53 the instantaneous work of the Spirit in the experience of ‘present salvation’, calling it ‘the soul of Methodism’.67 Fourth, in his later years, Bourne recorded that he frequently preached on the topic of Pentecost.68 Overall, while Bourne only occasionally took up Fletcher’s dispensational language, his theology certainly reflected Fletcher’s more pneumatocentric spiritual theology. Fletcher’s significant influence is not surprising, given his stature in early nineteenth-century Methodism. The Quaker influence on Bourne’s thought is more distinctive and surprising. Bourne did not specifically enumerate which Quaker writings he read, though he mentioned accounts of early Quaker open-air preaching, and he noted that when he made his first evangelistic visit, he brought some Robert Barclay to read to his prospective convert. John Wilkinson suggests this was likely Barclay’s most famous work, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, generally regarded as the standard articulation of early Quaker theology.69 While there is no way to be sure that this is the case, it is noteworthy that Barclay begins his work with a discussion of the immediate revelation of the Spirit as a ‘manifestation’. …the testimony of the Spirit is that alone, by which the true knowledge of God hath been, is, and can be only revealed…by the revelation of the same Spirit, he hath manifested himself all along unto the sons of men, both Patriarchs, Prophets and Apostles, which revelations of God by the Spirit, whether by outward voices and appearances, dreams or inward objective manifestations in the heart, were of old the formal object of their faith, and remaineth yet to be, though set forth under divers administrations…70 Thus, during his first evangelistic visit to his cousin Daniel Shubotham, Bourne spoke of conversion using Fletcher’s concept of the spiritual manifestation of the Son, and read Barclay, who wrote about the Spirit’s objective manifestations in the heart. It is possible that Bourne saw Fletcher’s ‘manifestation’ through Quaker-coloured glasses. Not only did he read Quaker sources, but as noted above, he spent a great deal of time in the company of the Quaker Methodists at Warrington. That body formed around 1796 when some disaffected Quakers joined a newly independent group of Methodists, resulting in a blend of Quaker and Methodist spirituality and practice. As John Dolan explains it, the Quaker Methodists ‘retained Methodist doctrine, class meetings, love feasts, preaching and hymnsinging, but adopted Quaker speech and dress, times of silent waiting upon God and eschewed sacraments.’71 Bourne frequently spent time in worship, ministry, and fellowship with the Quaker Methodists in the crucial period between 1807 and 1811, and the two groups might have merged if not for the Quaker Methodist refusal to accept a paid ministry.72 One indication of the Quaker flavour of Bourne’s spirituality was the great stock he puts in direct, divine impressions. It is true that attention to dreams, visions, and other extraordinary moves of the Spirit was characteristic of

54  ‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ Wesley and early Methodism, but as Henry Rack has observed, such experiences were seen ‘more frequently and over a wider range of the membership than contemporary Wesleyanism’.73 In Bourne himself, these tendencies were magnified and individualised in a way that reflects the radical Quaker emphasis on being led by the Spirit. For example, Bourne noted in his journal for 29 May 1808 that he ‘spoke by impression’ on 2 Kings 2. He also made decisions about evangelistic engagements in that manner, noting on 11 August 1808, ‘I went to Buglawton by impression.’74 He also wrote approvingly of the Quaker-style of meeting at Risley: ‘Here each one does what is right in his own eyes. They stand, sit, kneel, pray, exhort, etc., as they are moved. I was very fond of their way.’75 One also finds some intriguing references to divine silence in Bourne. For example, in his Journal for 15 March 1809, he writes, ‘I was brought into a solemn silence, and continued a long time. The visionary power was present.’76 It is also interesting to note that for some years the Primitive Methodist Conference was also known as the Annual Meeting, a Quaker term. Bourne may have picked this up from the Quaker Methodists, who were influential in so naming the annual gatherings of the Independent Methodists.77 First and foremost, however, Bourne absorbed the Quaker idea that the Spirit speaks directly to each one, irrespective of means or offices. So, in discussing his pre-conversion conviction of sin, Bourne wrote: ‘My being convinced of sin had nothing to do with Methodism, as I did then know what Methodism was. That conviction was a matter between God and myself.’78 Two further influences on Bourne’s thinking are important for understanding his pneumatocentrism. One is Lorenzo Dow, whose shadow looms large in Bourne’s Journal during the formative years of Primitive Methodism. Bourne’s consequential encounters with Dow in April 1807 came near the end of Dow’s second visit to the UK. He had arrived in Liverpool in 1805 and was quickly invited to stay with Peter Phillips, the Quaker Methodist leader from Warrington.79 This was just prior to Bourne’s period of close association with the Phillips, and much of Dow’s influence on Bourne was mediated through the stories and reminiscences that the Phillips family had gathered during Dow’s two-year stay at their home. Of course, Dow is well-known for his reliance on the direct leading of the Spirit through impressions of various kinds. Dow was Methodist but operated under a kind of freelance self-superintendency, which emboldened Bourne and other revivalists while raising concerns about independent evangelists among the Wesleyans.80 Dow’s individualistic understanding of the Spirit’s work supported his lack of regard for connexional authority. Tim Woolley has drawn attention to this telling quote from Dow’s Journal, where he recorded his response to a question about what he would do if he was forbidden to preach by his presiding elder, Jesse Lee: I told him it did not belong to J. L. or any other man to say whether I should preach or not, for that was to be determined between God and my own soul; only it belonged to the Methodists to say whether I

‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ 55 should preach in their connexion; but as long as I feel so impressed, I shall travel and preach, God being my helper; and as soon as I feel my mind released, I intend to stop, let people say what they will.81 The parallels with Bourne’s frequent claims that he was led by the Spirit and consulted no man are clear. Dow felt he was being directly led by the Spirit but had no sense that the Spirit might be working through the decisions of the church. As Woolley summarises with respect to his discernment of a call to preach, ‘events which happened to him, such as his illnesses and dreams, were interpreted as direct indications in that process of determination, but decisions of the wider church were not.’82 George Herod also recounts a fascinating story of Dow singling out a recent convert in the congregation at East Bridgford Chapel in 1818 and performing an impromptu ‘ordination’.83 Such claims to a self-authenticating calling from the Spirit would become a common pattern among Wesleyan revivalists throughout the nineteenth century. The final notable influence on Bourne’s theology is that of the ‘Magic Methodist’ leader, James Crawfoot. The ‘Magic’ moniker was due to meetings held monthly in Crawfoot’s home where anyone was free to share as led by the Spirit, and trances and visions were common.84 Bourne remained close with Crawfoot for several years beginning in 1807, and the two shared in ministry together, with Crawfoot even becoming the first paid Primitive Methodist preacher (a sore point which Bourne later dismissed as an act of pity).85 During this time Bourne’s Journal was filled with accounts of unusual spiritual occurrences. The most striking example was a recurring vision of a hierarchy of evangelists given to several of the young women in the movement in 1810 and 1811. In his journal, Bourne noted repeatedly the order of the evangelists, depicted as trumpeters (he was among them, along with Crawfoot, Dow, and William Clowes), and kept track of who was moving up or down the order with each occurrence of the vision. In other dreams, he met both Lorenzo Dow and John Fletcher.86 Bourne’s attention to pneumatic phenomena such as dreams, visions, and other impressions dropped off but did not disappear after 1811, when Bourne broke with Crawfoot and charismatic female evangelist Mary Dunnell. As John W. B. Tomlinson comments, ‘Supernatural phenomena did remain a feature of the connexion, but in a more controlled way.’87 A Church Without ‘Mastery’ A chastened pneumatocentrism endured and pushed Bourne and the other Primitive Methodists in grassroots, participatory, and egalitarian directions, even as the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion was becoming more centralised and hierarchical. Bourne wrote in his journal on 11 October 1811, ‘I also see great cause of thankfulness to Almighty God that he has raised us up as a separate society. And while the preachers live who are at the head of our society,

56  ‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ I fully believe we shall have no mastery.’88 This was most clearly seen in the way the Primitive Methodist Connexion eventually organised its conference, with a two-to-one ratio of lay and ministerial representatives—a stark contrast with the exclusively clerical Wesleyan Methodist Conference. But Primitive Methodism’s participatory character also comes through in other ways, which on the surface may have seemed more pragmatic or methodological. For example, Bourne was wary of long sermons, and highly valued prayer meetings and the ministry of what he called ‘praying labourers’, even while preaching was taking place. This was evident in his comments about a set of guidelines for camp meetings the Primitive Methodists issued in 1819. These guidelines were drawn up in response to practices that had developed at the Ramsor camp meeting—practices that Bourne described as ‘evils’: Long preaching was one of the evils. The course of the camp meetings was preach, preach, throughout the day; in consequence of which, the preachers got a habit of drawing out their sermons to such a length as to weary out all patience. Idleness was another evil. All the pious praying labourers with the classleaders and exhorters, were held in idleness nearly the whole time of the camp meeting. Their labours were cut off; and their talents constantly buried. This was a sore evil.89 For Bourne, these weren’t simply pragmatic issues; the long sermons meant that the Spirit-led participation of the whole people of God was hindered. His grassroots vision of the church is also evident in his preference for a variety of ‘extraordinary’ means of grace, each of which was initiated and practised by local lay people without reliance on the Wesleyan travelling preachers. Bourne claimed to have pioneered several of these extraordinary means in his ministry. The first was a conversational style of evangelism, which he practised on his cousin Daniel Shubotham, and then among the colliers at Kidsgrove with a small band of local revivalists. Second was the use of extended cottage prayer meetings, which formed the heart of his early revival ministry. Bourne admitted that the Wesleyans had been holding prayer meetings, but he characterised these as ‘talking meetings’. He wrote, ‘Our people aimed at what they called “feeling the power.” If they obtained that they were satisfied.’90 Third was his most well-known innovation: the English camp meeting, which was planned and carried out without the travelling preachers and engaged many people as ‘praying labourers’. Fourth, he claimed he had pioneered the practice of following preaching with an extended prayer service. In all these ways, we see in Bourne’s formative years a preference for these extraordinary means of grace, rather than ‘instituted means’ of regular public worship, the ministry of the word, the Lord’s Supper, and so on, which would have come through the official ministry of the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion or the Church of England. Even as time went on after the

‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ 57 formation of the Primitive Methodist Connexion, one finds a much greater emphasis on the Love Feast than on the Lord’s Supper, which seems to have played a marginal part in Bourne’s spiritual life. Indeed, John Munsey Turner notes that there were some Primitive Methodist congregations that followed the Quakers in refraining altogether from observance of the Lord’s Supper.91 Stephen Hatcher claims this was primarily due to a desire to avoid conflict over sacramental observance.92 This may be true, but it signals that the Lord’s Supper was deemed less important than revival services, which persisted despite conflict and opposition. No Extraordinary Ministry: The Case of Women Preachers Bourne’s defence of women preachers is worthy of close attention because it differentiates him not only from the obvious Wesleyan Methodist examples such as Jabez Bunting but also from moderate Wesleyans such as Zechariah Taft.93 Women preachers had become increasingly common in late eighteenth-century Methodism, but after Wesley’s death, opposing voices gathered strength and succeeded in passing a restriction on women’s preaching at the 1803 Conference.94 The Conference decision (though it was not universally observed, as John Lenton has shown) was indicative of the trajectory of Wesleyan Methodism towards a high doctrine of the ‘pastoral office’.95 The revivalist branches of Methodism, along with a minority voice within Wesleyan Methodism, continued to support the preaching of women.96 Hugh Bourne’s 1808 tract, Remarks on the Ministry of Women, was not theologically ground-breaking, but it stands out from earlier Methodist discussions on women in ministry because Bourne does not describe female preaching as an ‘extraordinary’ ministry. Bourne began his tract by claiming that he and those in his circle had not studied the issue in detail, because they wanted to avoid ‘useless controversy’ and they believed they should support anyone of good character whose ministry was ‘owned by the Lord’. In a familiar revivalist vein, he wrote, ‘Instead of stopping to reason about various things, we find it best to be pressing on.’97 The argument of the tract began with Joel 2:28, which promised that the prophetic Spirit will be poured out on both sons and daughters. Bourne then appealed to John Parkhurst’s lexicons and a sermon by Adam Clarke in support of his claim that ‘a prophet was simply one who was employed in the service of God, and that whether as one that sung the praises of God, or one that preached, exhorted, or instructed the people, and these last were said to preach the gospel.’98 Following a familiar pattern, Bourne then proceeded to answer a series of eight objections, the first five of which seem to have been provided by his Independent Methodist colleague, John Beresford. Most of the objections were answered with biblical examples of women who were ‘commissioned by the Holy Ghost’ and prophesied in the sense Bourne had identified: Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Mary, Elizabeth, the woman of Samaria, not

58  ‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ to mention Mary Magdalene, whose commission to proclaim the resurrection meant that Christ himself had ‘ordained her an apostle to the apostles, a preacher to the preachers, an evangelist to the evangelists.’99 Like others before him, Bourne emphasised that Paul’s instructions regarding women’s head coverings in 1 Corinthians 11 were a ‘rather decisive’ proof that female prophecy was practised and authorised in the primitive church. In response to the two problematic texts of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 and 1 Timothy 2:11, Bourne suggested it did not make sense to suppose that Paul would prohibit that which he had just sanctioned and regulated, but then shied away from attempting to provide a definitive interpretation of the texts, only noting that some friends had informed him that they applied to church discipline. He speculated that this might mean women should not ordain men, as this would be an example of ‘usurping authority’.100 The final three objections dealt again with the meaning of the word ‘prophecy’ and 2 Timothy 2:2’s instruction to ‘commit thou the same to faithful men’ (KJV), which Bourne noted (drawing on Parkhurst) could be translated ‘faithful persons’. Towards the end of the tract, he emphasised the fruits of ministry as a decisive test. He wrote, ‘you have seen many instances wherein the Lord has set his seal to a woman’s ministry, by converting sinners to himself. Now, would it not have been hard to have hindered these persons’ salvation?’101 He cited Mary Bosanquet as an example, approved by Wesley himself. Though we know that Bourne had not read Bosanquet’s now-famous letter defending her preaching, since it was not published until 1820, Bourne did travel to Madeley to hear Bosanquet in person on 3 April 1808—just over two months before he wrote his tract. He attended her class meeting and spoke positively of her as a ‘woman of faith’, though he was disappointed with the state of the class. ‘We have classes whose religion is deeper, whose faith is stronger, and who are much more given up to God,’ he wrote in his journal.102 In his published tract, of course, he made no such comment. He ended by suggesting that all the objections were summed up in the claim that women were the ‘weaker vessel’. This, he says, spoke in favour of women’s preaching, since God ‘chooses the weak things of the world to shame the strong’ (1 Cor. 1:27). He concluded, ‘as God chose the ministry of women under darker dispensations, it would be strange if they are incapable of ministering, on account of being weaker vessels, now the gospel shines with a brighter light.’103 The only sources Bourne explicitly acknowledged in his tract were Adam Clarke’s sermon and Parkhurst’s lexicons, along with conversations with his friends. But Bourne’s arguments are close, in many ways, to those of his contemporary, Zechariah Taft, raising the question as to whether he had read Taft’s Thoughts on Female Preaching, published in 1803.104 In addition to drawing on many of the same biblical examples of women preachers, both focused on the meaning of prophecy, and both relied on Adam Clarke’s biblical interpretation to bolster their accounts. Taft’s account was less centred on Joel 2:28, though he did discuss it, unlike Mary Bosanquet who did not bring Joel 2:28 into her letter to Wesley.105 Taft also emphasised the importance

‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ 59 of the fruit of women’s ministry as a proof of its validity, though he was more cautious than Bourne, and referred to this as ‘presumptive’, and not necessarily ‘positive’ proof.106 Taft’s biblical arguments were broader than Bourne’s, and he discussed more post-biblical sources, including a section on John Wesley’s position. Bourne’s only mention of Wesley is his passing reference to Wesley’s letter to Mary Bosanquet. The most significant difference between Bourne and Taft is that Bourne made no reference to women’s preaching as an extraordinary ministry. Taft’s argument was careful and moderate, as articulated in his thesis: ‘The argument is, that God did in the primitive church, and does to this day, occasionally call, qualify, and commission his handmaids, or daughters, to prophecy (that is to preach) in his name.’107 The qualifier ‘occasionally’ signified Taft’s acceptance of the extraordinary nature of female preaching, as did his publication of Bosanquet’s letter and John Wesley’s response in the 1820 version of his tract.108 Taft also cautioned women preachers who met opposition, ‘above all, do not attempt to speak at those seasons, or in those places, where the regular preachers preach, but rather speak in some private house, to those who are willing to hear you, and at a time when there is no meeting held in the neighbourhood.’109 The 1820 tract concluded, ‘female preaching, in some extraordinary cases, (and this is all I contend for) is both reasonable and lawful, consonant to Scripture, and the practice of primitive times.’110 Taft also emphasised this point in the preface to his Biographical Sketches of the Lives of Various Holy Women: I believe the ordinary call of God to the ministry is to men, and the extraordinary call to females. But in this extraordinary call I do not consider any female strictly and fully called to the pastoral office; or to be the regular pastor of the Church of Christ, but I do believe that the Lord calls some females to be fellow-labourers with the pastors, or helpers, or as we should call them, Local Preachers, and I think one should help, or encourage those women, who thus help us in the Gospel.111 The various lives he sketched also frequently emphasised the extraordinary nature of the women in question and their deferential attitude towards the male itinerant preachers. This is particularly clear in his account of Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, which emphasised her avoidance of the term ‘preaching’ and her deferential demeanour. He closed his account by quoting favourably from Henry Moore’s assessment, that ‘her preaching was but an enlargement of her daily and hourly conversation,’ and that she never ‘meddled with the government of the church—usurped authority over the man, or made any display of a regular authoritative commission…’112 Bourne, on the other hand, had a very ‘low’ view of the ministerial office, and so he was more radically open to female preaching than Taft. Where Bourne differed from Taft’s argument, he was closer to the Quaker Margaret

60  ‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ Fell’s Women’s Speaking Justified, published in 1666.113 Had Bourne read Fell’s tract? There is no direct evidence, though it could be that he picked up some of the arguments used by Fell in his conversations with his Quaker Methodist associates, particularly since he was staying with them and conversing on the subject as he wrote the tract. Both Fell and Bourne began their tracts with a quotation of Joel 2:28, although Fell began her actual argument with the creation of humanity in the image of God—a basis for the fundamental equality of men and women.114 Fell emphasised that those who spoke in the power of the Spirit spoke with the power of Christ, and therefore should not be resisted.115 Bourne’s tract did not reference the Spirit often, though his account of prophecy presupposed the Spirit’s commissioning and seal upon the prophet.116 However, Bourne’s manuscript journal from this period was filled with discussion of the Spirit and various manifestations of the Spirit, including his claim that he wrote this tract ‘almost by impression’, meaning according to the special and direct leading of the Holy Spirit.117 On the question of ministry, both Bourne and Fell thought along charismatic lines, and like Lorenzo Dow, they had no regard for the place of ecclesial authorisation. Bourne claimed he was ‘raised into a preacher’ the moment he spoke in accordance with the Spirit’s leading and saw fruit from his ministry; why should it be different for women? 118 Bourne and Fell made no reference to women’s preaching as an ‘extraordinary’ ministry because neither had much respect for the ‘ordinary’ ministry. For Fell, ministers in established churches were ‘blind Priests’ who made their living by preaching upon the prophetic utterances of biblical women while refusing to let women speak in church.119 Bourne was not quite so harsh in his judgments, but he nevertheless often criticised the ‘traveling preachers’ of Wesleyan Methodism—who were beginning to cast themselves as bearers of the ‘pastoral office’—for their failures in preaching and example. As far back as 1803, he wrote in his Journal, ‘For the future I propose as much as I conveniently can to avoid the company of the greater part of the preachers.’120 This was a common bond between him and those in his revivalist network. All of the nascent Independent Methodist groups Bourne was connected with were led by local preachers and class leaders, who had revolted against the authority of the itinerants, and established themselves as lay-led bodies with no paid ministry.121 It was not until around 1811 that Bourne decided in favour of accepting some paid preachers, and hence parted ways with the Independent Methodists. For Bourne, the decision was primarily pragmatic, rather than theological. The growth of the movement had reached a point that common funds were needed for further expansion, and it made sense to use some of these funds to pay travelling preachers, though initially only two preachers were paid, while others such as Bourne continued to rely on their own means.122 Even still, in early Primitive Methodist polity, the difference between a travelling preacher and a local preacher was merely a description of their movements and implied no difference in status. It was common for

‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ 61 preachers to move between the two roles, and in fact there were some paid local preachers, even as there were some unpaid travelling preachers. Both local and travelling preachers were considered laypersons by Bourne. Local preachers could perform all the duties of a travelling preacher, including presiding at the sacrament, subject to the discretion of the Quarterly meeting.123 This would be a stumbling block to Methodist Union discussions more than a century later, as we will see in Chapter 6. The Primitive Methodist Ministry, as Kent summarised, ‘existed simply as the agency of a special mission, and required no complicated background of “ordination” and “succession.”’124 Bourne also had a relatively low view of preaching, in general. As noted above, his early revival proceeded mostly through what he called ‘conversation-preaching’, that is, personal evangelism, which was the expected duty of all members. A century later, denominational historian H. B. Kendall claimed, ‘Never, perhaps, was a revival carried on with less preaching of a formal pulpit kind, and preaching was everywhere going on. The preacher was always ready, and his congregation never far to seek.’125 So, for Bourne, everyone was a preacher in some sense. Even when it came to preaching in a more formal way, Bourne wanted short sermons to be followed by extended prayer meetings. In 1802, the chapel he built in Harriseahead to support his new community was added to the circuit plan. Later, in his History of the Primitive Methodists, Bourne made the following comment: …preaching was appointed in it for ten and two, every Sunday. This was over-doing it. The work had been raised up chiefly by means of pious conversation and prayer meetings; and so very much preaching at such a place, and under such circumstances, seemed not to have a good effect; it seemed to hinder the exertions of the people…And the revival soon made a pause.126 The prayer meetings of Bourne’s early ministry were loud and boisterous, marked by the participation of all present and prayers offered in loud shouts of ecstasy and praise. These took place in the home, where women would have felt more freedom to speak than they might in a chapel. Moreover, Bourne had been impressed by some of the female visionaries he had encountered among the Magic Methodists at Delamere Forest, and he had seen Crawfoot turn leadership of his services over to some of these women.127 In a variety of ways, the dividing line between personal evangelism, public prayer, prophecy, exhortation, and preaching was more fluid for Bourne than it was for other Methodists, and the question of licensing preaching wasn’t really raised. The lack of distinction between ordinary and extraordinary ministry meant there was one less barrier to women’s preaching in Bourne’s circles. Finally, Bourne and Fell also brought eschatological expectancy to their accounts of women’s preaching, though Fell’s tract was decidedly more apocalyptic. She believed the church had been living under the ‘Reign of the Beast’ for centuries and saw the rise of true spirituality among the Friends

62  ‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ as a sign that a new age was dawning.128 Bourne’s tract was more tame, but his unpublished journal from the time features wild apocalyptic imagery, often mediated through the influence of James Crawfoot.129 However, in the 1821 Primitive Methodist Magazine, Bourne published letters from William O’Bryan, founder of the Bible Christians, detailing the rise of female preaching in that revivalist body. Bourne’s preface to O’Bryan’s letter stuck an ­expectant eschatological tone: What chiefly marks the great promise in Joel, is, the increase of prophesying…And as the latter-day glory more and more approaches, these exercises will be more and more abundant. The great promise will be fully established…In the latter part of the promise, which respects daughters and handmaidens prophesying, or preaching, a remarkable coincidence has taken place in our connexion, and in the connexion which arose in Cornwall. It is really surprising, that the two connexions, without any knowledge of each other, should each, nearly at the same time, be led in the same way, as it respects the ministry of women. Both connexions employed women as exhorters, and as local and travelling preachers.130 Bourne believed that the Spirit was at work in a special way in his time and that the preaching ministry of women was a sure sign that the final consummation was on its way. Although the historical trends moved in the opposite direction, Bourne expected an ever-increasing number of female preachers. No Desire to Divide, but Little Reason to Stay Bourne’s bottom-up and pneumatocentric theology engaged and empowered ordinary Christians in effective ways, but it left little room for the role of the church in relation to the orders of ministry and ecclesial oversight. This is quite clear in the way that Bourne described his own calling to preach. He provided numerous examples of direct impressions from the Spirit which led him to conclude that he was called by God.131 He furthermore saw the conversion of sinners as clear divine proof that he was so called to preach.132 Bourne added to this, as a particular point of emphasis, the fact that his call came directly from God himself. As he recounted it in his later years, the moment he stood up and preached his first sermon, he had been ‘raised up’ as a preacher.133 He cited, approvingly, from Wesley’s comment on ‘grace, gifts and fruits’ as necessary qualifications for the preacher in the 1780 Minutes,134 but it would seem that there was no role for a ministry of oversight to confirm the reality of such claims—at least in so far as they concerned himself. Whereas Wesley could appeal to his own ordination, even if he hedged on the necessity of episcopal sanction for his revival activities, Bourne overlooked the need for any ecclesial oversight whatsoever. The Spirit, in Bourne’s mind, led him directly, and he seemed to view the fact that his guidance came ‘from no man’ as confirmation of the Spirit’s work. It is not difficult to see how

‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ 63 one who thought about the Spirit’s work in this way would not listen for the Spirit to speak through the community, particularly through its structures of authority. Bourne’s personal experience, no doubt, supported this perspective. Reflecting in his later years on his early relationship to Wesleyan Methodism, Bourne wrote: It is true, I was born again before I united with the Wesleyans; I was justified by faith and had peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. My sins were pardoned, and I had received power over sin which I had not before. Also my knowledge of the converting work was both clear and considerable; and in this respect, I cannot say that my uniting with the Wesleyans, added much, if any thing [sic] to me.135 He was converted alone, rather than through a fellowship of believers. His ministry was started and largely carried on without the support of the Wesleyan Connexion. And his ministry continued, with little interruption, after his expulsion from that same connexion. Though he claimed he had no intention of dividing the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion, Bourne’s experience and his individualistic Spirit-centred theology left him with little reason to resist separation. Notes 1 Hugh Bourne, ‘Remarks on the Ministry of Women’, in Memoirs of the Life and Labours of the Late Venerable Hugh Bourne, ed. John Walford, vol. 1 (London: T. King, 1854), I:172–77. There are no extant copies of the original tract. It was preceded by Zechariah Taft, Thoughts on Female Preaching: With Extracts from the Writings of Locke, Henry, Martin, Etc. (Dover: Printed for the author, by G. Ledger, 1803). Mary Bosanquet had also composed an important defence of her own preaching ministry in a letter to John Wesley in 1771; however, her arguments were not published until Zechariah Taft printed a portion of her letter in The Scripture Doctrine of Women’s Preaching, Stated and Examined (York: Printed for the author by R. and J. Richardson, 1820), 19–21. 2 Hugh Bourne, ‘The Journal of Hugh Bourne’ (n.d.), June 12, 21, 1808, notebook C2, 67–68, DDHB 3/1-19, Methodist Archives and Research Centre, John Rylands Research Centre and Library, University of Manchester. Cf. John A. Dolan, The Independent Methodists: A History (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2005), 30; John Walford, Memoirs of the Life and Labours of the Late Venerable Hugh Bourne: By a Member of the Bourne Family (London: T. King, 1854), I: 170–72. 3 Hugh Bourne, ‘The Autobiography of Hugh Bourne’ (n.d.), A text notebook 1, 64, DDHB 2/1-3, Methodist Archives and Research Centre, John Rylands Research Centre and Library, University of Manchester. Bourne’s incomplete MSS ‘Autobiography’ was written in various drafts beginning in the 1840s. The MSS ‘Journal’ was written contemporaneously and covers scattered periods of his life between 1803 and 1851. 4 John T Wilkinson, Hugh Bourne, 1772–1852 (London: Epworth Press, 1952), 62–23.

64  ‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ 5 For details about Hugh Bourne’s life, the most important early biography is Walford, Memoirs of Hugh Bourne. Walford had access to Bourne’s personal papers and quoted from them extensively. The standard modern biography is Wilkinson, Hugh Bourne. For a more sceptical treatment and discussion of some of the challenges in interpreting the source material, see Sandy Calder, The Origins of Primitive Methodism (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2016), chapter 3. 6 In one of the drafts of Bourne’s autobiography (written circa 1850), he writes of encountering some Methodists from Macclesfield at this time, ‘… It was impressed on my mind, “these have real religion.”… I believe that the impression was from the Holy Ghost.’ A few pages later he writes, ‘I then thought the Methodists in North Staffordshire were fallen, but that perhaps others were not.’ Bourne, ‘Autobiography’, B text, 11, 19. 7 John Fletcher, ‘Six Letters on the Spiritual Manifestation of the Son of God’, in Posthumous Pieces of the Late Rev. John William de La Flechere, ed. Melville Horne (Madeley: J. Edmunds, 1791), 313–86. 8 Compare the A text, notebook 1, 3 (a ‘ministerial family visit’ and ‘day of sorrow and trembling’), and the B text, notebook 1, 58–60 (‘I set to preaching the gospel to him with all my might.’) Bourne, ‘Autobiography’. 9 Hugh Bourne, History of the Primitive Methodists Giving an Account of Their Rise and Progress up to the Year 1823 (Bemersley: Printed for the author, at the Office of the Primitive Methodist Connexion, by J. Bourne, 1823), 5–6. 10 Dolan, The Independent Methodists, 17–18; Bourne, History of the Primitive Methodists, 7. 11 Bourne, History of the Primitive Methodists, 8. 12 Tim Woolley, ‘“Have Our People Been Sufficiently Cautious?” Wesleyan Responses to Lorenzo Dow in England and Ireland, 1799–1819’, Wesley and Methodist Studies 9, no. 2 (2017): 141–62. 13 The Minutes of Conference, 1807, Q20, in Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, vol. 2 (London: Thomas Cordeux, 1813), 403; See also Woolley, ‘Have Our People Been Sufficiently Cautious?’ 14 In Bourne’s autobiography, he claimed that the plan to set up in steals kitchen concerned him deeply. ‘I dreaded secession. I spoke strongly to Mr. James Steele, they having requested me to fall in with them; so they concluded that the kitchen should be for preaching only, and no society should be formed in it. I then fell in with them, and I obtained a license from the Bishop's court, and it was settled for preachings to be on Friday evening.’ Bourne, ‘Autobiography’, A text, notebook 4, 227. 15 Julia Stewart Werner, The Primitive Methodist Connexion: Its Background and Early History (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 70. 16 Dolan, The Independent Methodists, 29. 17 Dolan, 19. 18 Wilkinson, Hugh Bourne, 59. 19 His falling out with Crawfoot was not only over ministry concerns but also due to Crawfoot’s marriage to Hannah Mountford, who had rejected a proposal from Bourne. Calder, The Origins of Primitive Methodism, 93; Werner, The Primitive Methodist Connexion, 203–4 n. 50; H. B Kendall, The Origin and History of the Primitive Methodist Church (London: Primitive Methodist Publishing House, 1907), I: 148–49. 20 In 1818, Bourne published a single issue of A Methodist Magazine, in which he declared his intention to publish quarterly. However, no further issues appeared until the first of the Primitive Methodist Magazine in 1820, after which it was published monthly. 21 Stuart Mews notes that Robert Currie’s treatment of Methodist divisions did not address any theological matters prior to 1870. Stuart Mews, ‘Reason and

‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ 65 Emotion in Working-Class Religion, 1794–1824’, in Schism, Heresy and Religious Protest; Papers Read at the Tenth Summer Meeting and the Eleventh Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. Derek Baker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 366. Cf. Robert Currie, Methodism Divided: A Study in the Sociology of Ecumenicalism (London: Faber, 1968), 112ff; John Kent, Holding the Fort: Studies in Victorian Revivalism (London: Epworth Press, 1978), 60 n. 32; John W. B. Tomlinson, ‘The Magic Methodists and Their Influence on the Early Primitive Methodist Movement’, in Signs, Wonders, Miracles : Representations of Divine Power in the Life of the Church, ed. Jeremy Gregory and Kate Cooper, Studies in Church History 41 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2005), 390. 22 See the discussion of these developments in John C. Bowmer, Pastor and People: A Study of Church and Ministry in Wesleyan Methodism from the Death of John Wesley (1791) to the Death of Jabez Bunting (1858) (London: Epworth Press, 1975), 198–228; and John Kent, The Age of Disunity (London: Epworth Press, 1966), 44–85. 23 Bowmer, Pastor and People, 73. Cf. A Statement of Facts and Observations Relative to the Late Separation from the Methodist Society in Manchester: Affectionately Addressed to the Members of That Body, by Their Preachers and Leaders (Manchester: S. Russell, 1806). 24 See the discussion in Dolan, The Independent Methodists, 21–24. Dolan indicates the Band Room was the place where Jabez Bunting preached his trial sermon in 1798. Bowmer claims that Broadhurst and his wife were present on that occasion but dates the establishment of the Band Room to 1803. Bowmer, Pastor and People, 71. 25 Dolan, The Independent Methodists, 24. 26 Bowmer, Pastor and People, 73–74. 27 A Statement of Facts, 18. 28 In Thomas Percival Bunting, The Life of Jabez Bunting: With Notices of Contemporary Persons and Events, vol. 1 (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, 1859), 200–201. 29 See the discussions in Bowmer, Pastor and People, 198–228; Kent, The Age of Disunity, 44–85; and W. Reginald Ward, ‘The Legacy of John Wesley: The Pastoral Office in Britain and America’, in Evangelicalism, Piety and Politics: The Selected Writings of W. R. Ward (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014), 147–70. 30 While the Primitive Methodists have received renewed attention recently by historians, including full-length studies by Timothy Woolley and Sandy Calder, theologians have not paid much attention to figures such as Hugh Bourne. Cf. Timothy R. Woolley, ‘A New Appearance on the Face of Things: Retelling the Primitive Methodist Creation Narrative’ (Ph.D. Dissertation, Manchester, University of Manchester, 2013); Calder, The Origins of Primitive Methodism. 31 See, for example, Bourne, ‘Autobiography’, B text, 33; Hugh Bourne, Notices on the Early Life of Hugh Bourne, No. 1 (Bemersley: James Bourne, 1834), 5–6. 32 John Wesley, Sermon 55, ‘On the Trinity’, §1, in Sermons II [vol. II of The Works of John Wesley], ed. Albert C. Outler (Nashville: Abingdon, 1985), 374. 33 Bourne, ‘Autobiography’, B text, 19. 34 Bourne, B text, 17. 35 See the discussion in Randy L. Maddox, ‘Opinion, Religion and “Catholic Spirit”: John Wesley on Theological Integrity’, The Asbury Theological Journal 47, no. 1 (1992): 63–87. 36 See, Wesley’s Sermon 39, ‘Catholic Spirit’, §III.1, in Works, II:92–93. 37 Bourne, History of the Primitive Methodists, 39. 38 Bourne, ‘Autobiography’, A text, 10, 16–17. 39 Bourne, A text, 241.

66  ‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ 40 Bourne, History of the Primitive Methodists, 29. 41 Bourne, 24–25, 31–34. 42 Bourne, 13–14. 43 Bourne, 17. 44 Bourne, ‘Autobiography’, A text, 77. 45 Between 1800 and 1810, the Conference Minutes report somewhat uneven growth in the Burslem circuit, with a low membership of 750 in 1800 and 1060 in 1808, the year of Bourne’s expulsion. Burslem numbers held near 1100 through 1810. Congleton was added as a circuit in 1804, and had 1010 on the rolls in 1808, dropping to 520 in 1809. Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, 1813, 2:16, 54, 96, 136, 182, 236, 285, 340, 397; Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, vol. 3 (London: Thomas Cordeux, 1813), 24, 86, 154. 46 Bourne, ‘Autobiography’, A text, 103. 47 Woolley, ‘A New Appearance’, 56–62. 48 W. Reginald Ward, ‘The Religion of the People and the Problem of Control’, in Evangelicalism, Piety and Politics: The Selected Writings of W. R. Ward (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014), 100. 49 Bourne, ‘Journal’, 25 September 1808, notebook C3. 50 Bourne, ‘Autobiography’, A text, 7. See also his journal entry dated July 31 1809, where Bourne writes of a conflict with a Wesleyan travelling preacher at Leek: “He objected to an instantaneous work, which may almost be called the soul of Methodism. Yet so it is.” ‘Journal’, notebook E, 89. 51 Fletcher’s On Christian Perfection was serialised in the 1840 Primitive Methodist Magazine; An Address to Imperfect Believers and An Address to Perfect Christians in 1841. Other individual pieces published in the Primitive Methodist Magazine were: ‘A Discourse by Mr. Fletcher’, vol. 8, no. 9 (1827): 313–17; ‘The Test of a New Creature: Or, Heads of Examination for Adult Christians’, vol. 8, no. 10 (1827): 328–34; An untitled extract, n.s., vol. 1, no. 8 (1831): 284–85; ‘A Sermon of the Rev. Mr. Fletcher’, n.s., vol. 7, no. 2 (1837): 54–61; ‘On John Iii.8’, n.s., vol. 7, no. 6 (1837): 226–27; ‘To Miss Perronet’, n.s., vol. 8, no. 5 (1837): 195. 52 I was only able to find one example of a Wesley abstract in all the years Bourne edited the Magazine. See John Wesley, ‘On Early Rising’, ed. Hugh Bourne, Primitive Methodist Magazine n.s., 8, no. 3 (1838): 93–99. 53 See the overview in J. Russell Frazier, True Christianity: The Doctrine of Dispensations in the Thought of John William Fletcher (1729–1785) (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 58–98. 54 Melvill Horne, ed., Posthumous Pieces of the Late John William de La Flechere (Madeley: J. Edmunds, 1791), 313–86. 55 Patrick Streiff, Reluctant Saint? A Theological Biography of Fletcher of Madeley (Peterborough: Epworth, 2001), 103–4. See also Steiff’s summary of the Six Letters, pp. 103–107. 56 Fletcher, ‘Six Letters’, 313. 57 Fletcher, 315. 58 “Verily, I say unto you, though we cannot fix the exact mode, yet, we speak what we do know, and testify what we have seen, but you do not receive our witness.” Fletcher, 330. 59 Fletcher, 328. 60 See the summary in Frazier, True Christianity, 2–5. 61 See Wood’s most recent contribution, Laurence W. Wood, Pentecost and Sanctification in the Writings of John Wesley and Charles Wesley: With a Proposal for Today, Asbury Theological Seminary Series: The Study of World Christian Revitalization Movements in Pietist/Wesleyan Studies (Lexington: Emeth Press,

‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ 67 2018). To say that Fletcher’s views are more pneumatocentric is not to say that there were major disagreements between the two men. Though both exhibit a healthy balance of Christology and pneumatology, the scales are tipped a bit more in the direction of the Spirit in Fletcher’s writings. In any case, regarding my reading of Hugh Bourne, the key question is not the significance of differences between Wesley and Fletcher in their own historical context, but the way Bourne’s reading of Fletcher shaped Bourne’s theological perspective. Even if the views of Wesley and Fletcher are compatible and in substantial agreement, it is not difficult to see how readers could take their distinctive emphases in different directions. For this reason, despite Wood’s arguments, I would still affirm Donald Dayton’s argument that Fletcher’s theology (as it was received in the nineteenth century) pushed Methodism ‘further out of a Christocentric pattern of thought and close to a Pneumatocentric one.’ Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1987), 52. 62 See for example Fletcher, ‘Six Letters’, 332ff. 63 See Sermon 130, ‘On Living Without God,’ §11, Works 4:173. On this point see For a more general discussion of Wesley’s use of this language see James E. Pedlar, ‘Sensing the Spirit: Wesley’s Empiricism and His Use of the Language of Spiritual Sensation’, Asbury Journal 67, no. 2 (2012): 90. 64 Bourne, ‘Autobiography’, C text, 57. 65 Bourne, A text, 29. 66 Bourne, A text, 147. 67 Bourne, ‘Journal’, 31 July 1809, notebook E. 68 Noted several times in his Journal between June and December 1849. 69 Robert Barclay, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, as the Same Is Held Forth, and Preached by the People, Called, in Scorn, Quakers (Aberdeen? n.p., 1678). See Wilkinson, Hugh Bourne, 30. Of course, Wesley had abridged part of Barclay’s Apology as Serious Considerations on Absolute Predestination extracted from a late author (Bristol: S. and F. Farley, 1741). Wesley drew on Barclay’s Logos doctrine as ammunition against Calvinism. See the discussion in Gregory Crofford, Streams of Mercy: Prevenient Grace in the Theology of John and Charles Wesley (Lexington, KY: Emeth Press, 2010), 53–66. 70 Barclay, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, 2–3 emphasis in original. 71 Dolan, The Independent Methodists, 16. 72 Dolan, 30–31. 73 Henry D. Rack, How Primitive Was Primitive Methodism?: An Examination of Some Characters and Characteristics (Englesea Brook, UK: Published for the Englesea Brook Primitive Methodist Museum Committee, 1996), 15; On earlier Methodism and the supernatural, see Robert Webster, Methodism and the Miraculous: John Wesley’s Idea of the Supernatural and the Identification of Methodists in the Eighteenth-Century (Lexington, KY: Emeth Press, 2013). 74 Bourne, ‘Journal’, notebook C. 75 Bourne, notebook E, 23 April 1809. 76 Bourne, notebook E. 77 Dolan, The Independent Methodists, 28. 78 Bourne, ‘Autobiography’, B text, 7. 79 Dolan, The Independent Methodists, 25–28. 80 See the discussion of these dynamics in Woolley, ‘Have Our People Been Sufficiently Cautious?’, 150–55. 81 Lorenzo Dow, The Dealings of God, Man, and the Devil: As Exemplified in the Life, Experience, and Travels of Lorenzo Dow, in a Period of Over Half a Century (New York: Sheldon, Lamport & Blakeman, 1854), 21. Cf. Woolley, ‘A New Appearance’, 71.

68  ‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ 82 Woolley, ‘A New Appearance’, 72. 83 George Herod, Biographical Sketches of Some of Those Preachers Whose Labours Contributed to the Origination and Early Extension of the Primitive Methodist Connexion (London: T. King, 1855), 187–88. 84 Dolan, The Independent Methodists, 28–29. 85 Henry D. Rack, James Crawfoot and the Magic Methodists (York: Quacks the Printers, 2003), 3–4. 86 Noted several times in Bourne’s Journal between 29 March 1810 and 5 March 1813, notebooks E and F. 87 Tomlinson, ‘The Magic Methodists and Their Influence on the Early Primitive Methodist Movement’, 398. 88 Bourne, ‘Journal’, notebook F. 89 Bourne, History of the Primitive Methodists, 56. 90 Bourne, ‘Autobiography’, A text, 105. On the spread of cottage prayer meetings in the 1790s, see Ward, ‘The Religion of the People and the Problem of Control’, 96. 91 John Munsey Turner, ‘Years of Tension and Conflict 1796–1850’, in Workaday Preachers: The Story of Methodist Local Preaching, ed. Geoffery Milburn and Margaret Batty (Peterborough, UK: Methodist Publishing House, 1995), 37. 92 Stephen Hatcher, ‘The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper in Early Primitive Methodism’, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 47, no. 5 (May 1990): 221–31. 93 That is not to say that women’s preaching was the direct cause of tension between the revivalists and WM authorities. Jennifer Lloyd suggests, it was not a significant issue in either schism. Women and the Shaping of British Methodism: Persistent Preachers, 1807–1907 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 77. However, when Mary Dunnell was not allowed the Tunstall pulpit in 1807 (after having been welcomed there before) the revivalists set up a preaching place in James Steele’s kitchen, which became a centre of unsanctioned meetings for those who would later form the PMC. 94 Paul W. Chilcote, John Wesley and the Women Preachers of Early Methodism, ATLA Monograph Series 25 (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1991), 221–52. See The Minutes of Conference, 1803, Q19, in Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, 1813, 2:188–89. 95 John H. Lenton, ‘Support Groups for Methodist Women Preachers, 1803–1851’, in Religion, Gender, and Industry: Exploring Church and Methodism in a Local Setting, ed. Geordan Hammond and Peter S. Forsaith (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011), 137–55. 96 The polity-based breakaway groups—Methodist New Connexion, Protestant Methodists, Methodist Reformers, etc., did not allow women preachers. Lloyd, Women and British Methodism, 57. On women preachers among the Bible Christians, see David Shorney, ‘“Women May Preach, but Men Must Govern”: Gender Roles in the Bible Christian Denomination’, in Gender and Christian Religion: Papers Read at the 1996 Summer Meeting and the 1997 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. R. N. Swanson (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1998), 309–22. 97 Bourne, ‘Remarks on the Ministry of Women’, 185. 98 Bourne, 186. John Parkhurst’s lexicons went through several editions, beginning in 1762 (Hebrew) and 1769 (Greek) respectively, so it is difficult to know which edition Bourne was citing from. We know from Bourne’s autobiography that he received Parkhurst’s lexicons along with some other language resources from John Grant, who was the appointed itinerant in the Burslem Circuit in 1802. See Wilkinson, Hugh Bourne, 37. The Adam Clarke sermon in question was ‘The Christian Prophet and His Work: A Discourse on 1 Cor. XIV.3’, The Methodist Magazine 23 (1800): 5–15, 52–59. 99 Bourne, ‘Remarks on the Ministry of Women’, 187.

‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ 69 00 Bourne, 187–88. 1 101 Bourne, 189. 102 Bourne, ‘Journal’, 3 April 1808, notebook C. 103 Bourne, ‘Remarks on the Ministry of Women’, 189. 104 Taft, Thoughts on Female Preaching. Paul Chilcote claims he probably had read Taft, though he offers no specific reasons for this supposition. The Methodist Defense of Women in Ministry: A Documentary History (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2017), 61. Jennifer Lloyd (Women and British Methodism, 68) says Bourne might have read Taft. 105 Mary Bosanquet to John Wesley, 1771, in Chilcote, The Methodist Defense of Women in Ministry, 24–28. 106 Taft, The Scripture Doctrine of Women’s Preaching, 21. 107 Taft, 5. Emphasis in original. See similar comments in Thoughts on Female Preaching, iii. 108 Taft, The Scripture Doctrine of Women’s Preaching, 19–21. 109 Taft, 24. 110 Taft, 24. Although Taft made some comments in his 1809 tract (his second) that cast doubt on his support for the ordinary/extraordinary distinction. “Some persons when they have been closely pressed have sought for refuge by granting that these women who prophesied were called to an extraordinary work, which I think is giving up the whole point at once, as it is grants more than is contended for. And hence we may infer according to the well-established rule that he who is called to a greater may be called to an inferior work.” Zechariah Taft, “Thoughts on Women’s Preaching” (1809), in The Methodist Defense of Women in Ministry: A Documentary History (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2017), 47. However, he is quite clear in endorsing the extraordinary nature of women’s preaching in the 1820 tract. 111 Zachariah Taft, Biographical Sketches of the Lives and Public Ministry of Various Holy Women (Leeds: H. Cullingworth, 1827), I, vi. 112 Taft, I, 20–40; Henry Moore, The Life of Mrs. Mary Fletcher, Consort and Relict of the Rev. John Fletcher, Vicar of Madeley, Salop (London: Printed by T. Cordeux, 1818), 429. 113 Margaret Fell, Womens Speaking Justified, Proved and Allowed of by the Scriptures, All Such as Speak by the Spirit and Power of the Lord Jesus (London: n.p., 1666). Available in a transcribed form with original pagination at http://digital. library.upenn.edu/women/fell/speaking/speaking.html. 114 Fell, 3. 115 “Those that speak against the Power of the Lord, and the Spirit of the Lord speaking in a Woman, simply, by reason of her Sex, or because she is a Woman, not regarding the Seed, and Spirit, and Power that speaks in her; such speak against Christ, and his Church, and are of the Seed of the Serpent, wherein lodgeth the enmity.” Fell, 4–5. 116 Bourne mentioned the Spirit twice: once referring to the Samaritan woman in John 4 as “commissioned by the Holy Ghost,” and once noting that limiting prophecy to future events would be “charging the Holy Ghost with neglect,” since many prophecies were never recorded for future generations. Bourne, ­‘Remarks on the Ministry of Women’, 186, 189. 117 Bourne, ‘Journal’, 21 June 1808. 118 Bourne, ‘Autobiography’, A text, 93. 119 Fell, Womens Speaking Justified, 15. 120 Bourne, ‘Journal’, 6 March 1808. 121 Dolan describes early Independent Methodism as “entirely a lay people’s movement.” Dolan, The Independent Methodists, 15. The Quaker Methodist Peter Phillips said, “If it could be shown that a man’s preaching was better because

70  ‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ he was paid for doing it they would admit their error.” Arthur Mounfield, A Short History of Independent Methodism: A Souvenir of the Hundredth Annual Meeting of the Independent Methodist Churches, 1905 (Wigan: Independent Methodist Book Room, 1905), 7. 122 Bourne, History of the Primitive Methodists, 40–41. 123 Werner, The Primitive Methodist Connexion, 141; Hatcher, ‘The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper in Early Primitive Methodism’, 229–30. 124 Kent, The Age of Disunity, 68. 125 Kendall, The Origin and History of the Primitive Methodist Church, I: 31. 126 Bourne, History of the Primitive Methodists, 6. 127 Deborah M. Valenze, Prophetic Sons and Daughters: Female Preaching and Popular Religion in Industrial England (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1985), 94. 128 Fell, Womens Speaking Justified, 10–11. 129 Valenze, Prophetic Sons and Daughters, 78. For example, in 1807 Bourne visited Lichfield Cathedral and was overcome with an impression of judgement hanging over the place. He even heard a voice tell him, ‘Escape for thy life.’ He records in his journal that he recalled George Fox’s apocalyptic messages during his visits to Lichfield. So he was, at that time, consciously aligning himself with that Quaker apocalyptic sensibility. And what he do after? He consulted his new mentor in all things visionary, James Crawfoot, who called it “the sign of the times.” Walford, Memoirs of Hugh Bourne, I: 145; Valenze, Prophetic Sons and Daughters, 86–87. 130 Hugh Bourne and William O’Bryan, ‘On the Rise of Female Preachers in the Connexion Which Originated in Cornwall’, Primitive Methodist Magazine 2, no. 7 (1821): 161–62. 131 See, for example, Bourne, ‘Journal’, notebook E, May 27, 1809. 132 Bourne, ‘Autobiography’, A text, 129. 133 Bourne, A text, 93. 134 Bourne, ‘Journal’, 7 February 1820, notebook L. Cf. Henry D. Rack, ed., The Methodist Societies: The Minutes of Conference [vol. 10 of The Works of John Wesley] (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2011), 497. 135 Bourne, ‘Autobiography’, C text, 61.

Bibliography Barclay, Robert. An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, as the Same Is Held Forth, and Preached by the People, Called, in Scorn, Quakers. [Aberdeen?]: n.p., 1678. Bourne, Hugh. History of the Primitive Methodists Giving an Account of Their Rise and Progress up to the Year 1823. Bemersley: Printed for the author, at the Office of the Primitive Methodist Connexion, by J. Bourne, 1823. ———. Notices on the Early Life of Hugh Bourne, No. 1. Bemersley: James Bourne, 1834. ———. ‘Remarks on the Ministry of Women’. In Memoirs of the Life and Labours of the Late Venerable Hugh Bourne, edited by John Walford, 1:172–77. London: T. King, 1854. ———. The Autobiography of Hugh Bourne, n.d. DDHB 2/1-3. Methodist Archives and Research Centre, John Rylands Research Centre and Library, University of Manchester. ———. The Journal of Hugh Bourne, n.d. DDHB 3/1-19. Methodist Archives and Research Centre, John Rylands Research Centre and Library, University of Manchester.

‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ 71 Bourne, Hugh, and William O’Bryan. ‘On the Rise of Female Preachers in the Connexion Which Originated in Cornwall’. Primitive Methodist Magazine 2, no. 7 (1821): 161–67. Bowmer, John C. Pastor and People: A Study of Church and Ministry in Wesleyan Methodism from the Death of John Wesley (1791) to the Death of Jabez Bunting (1858). London: Epworth Press, 1975. Bunting, Thomas Percival. The Life of Jabez Bunting: With Notices of Contemporary Persons and Events. Vol. 1. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, 1859. Calder, Sandy. The Origins of Primitive Methodism. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2016. Chilcote, Paul W. John Wesley and the Women Preachers of Early Methodism. ATLA Monograph Series 25. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1991. ———, ed. The Methodist Defense of Women in Ministry: A Documentary History. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2017. Clarke, Adam. ‘The Christian Prophet and His Work: A Discourse on 1 Cor. XIV.3’. The Methodist Magazine 23 (1800): 5–15, 52–59. Crofford, Gregory. Streams of Mercy: Prevenient Grace in the Theology of John and Charles Wesley. Lexington, KY: Emeth Press, 2010. Currie, Robert. Methodism Divided: A Study in the Sociology of Ecumenicalism. London: Faber, 1968. Dayton, Donald W. Theological Roots of Pentecostalism. Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1987. Dolan, John A. The Independent Methodists: A History. Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 2005. Dow, Lorenzo. The Dealings of God, Man, and the Devil: As Exemplified in the Life, Experience, and Travels of Lorenzo Dow, in a Period of Over Half a Century. New York, NY: Sheldon, Lamport & Blakeman, 1854. Fell, Margaret. Womens Speaking Justified, Proved and Allowed of by the Scriptures, All Such as Speak by the Spirit and Power of the Lord Jesus. London: n.p., 1666. Fletcher, John. ‘Six Letters on the Spiritual Manifestation of the Son of God’. In Posthumous Pieces of the Late Rev. John William De La Flechere, edited by Melville Horne, 313–86. Madeley: J. Edmunds, 1791. Frazier, J. Russell. True Christianity: The Doctrine of Dispensations in the Thought of John William Fletcher (1729–1785). Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2014. Hatcher, Stephen. ‘The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper in Early Primitive Methodism’. Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 47, no. 5 (May 1990): 221–31. Herod, George. Biographical Sketches of Some of Those Preachers Whose Labours Contributed to the Origination and Early Extension of the Primitive Methodist Connexion. London: T. King, 1855. Horne, Melvill, ed. Posthumous Pieces of the Late John William De La Flechere. Madeley: J. Edmunds, 1791. Kendall, H. B. The Origin and History of the Primitive Methodist Church. 2 Vol. London: Primitive Methodist Publishing House, 1907. Kent, John. Holding the Fort: Studies in Victorian Revivalism. London: Epworth Press, 1978. ———. The Age of Disunity. London: Epworth Press, 1966. Lenton, John H. ‘Support Groups for Methodist Women Preachers, 1803–1851’. In Religion, Gender, and Industry: Exploring Church and Methodism in a Local

72  ‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ Setting, edited by Geordan Hammond and Peter S. Forsaith, 137–55. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011. Lloyd, Jennifer M. Women and the Shaping of British Methodism: Persistent Preachers, 1807–1907. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009. Maddox, Randy L. ‘Opinion, Religion and “Catholic Spirit”: John Wesley on Theological Integrity’. The Asbury Theological Journal 47, no. 1 (1992): 63–87. Mews, Stuart. ‘Reason and Emotion in Working-Class Religion, 1794–1824’. In Schism, Heresy and Religious Protest; Papers Read at the Tenth Summer Meeting and the Eleventh Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, edited by Derek Baker, 365–82. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972. Minutes of the Methodist Conferences. Vol. 2. London: Thomas Cordeux, 1813. Minutes of the Methodist Conferences. Vol. 3. London: Thomas Cordeux, 1813. Moore, Henry. The Life of Mrs. Mary Fletcher, Consort and Relict of the Rev. John Fletcher, Vicar of Madeley, Salop. London: Printed by T. Cordeux, 1818. Mounfield, Arthur. A Short History of Independent Methodism: A Souvenir of the Hundredth Annual Meeting of the Independent Methodist Churches, 1905. Wigan: Independent Methodist Book Room, 1905. Munsey Turner, John. ‘Years of Tension and Conflict 1796–1850’. In Workaday Preachers: The Story of Methodist Local Preaching, edited by Geoffery Milburn and Margaret Batty, 35–56. Peterborough: Methodist Publishing House, 1995. Pedlar, James E. ‘Sensing the Spirit: Wesley’s Empiricism and His Use of the Language of Spiritual Sensation’. Asbury Journal 67, no. 2 (2012): 85–104. Rack, Henry D. How Primitive Was Primitive Methodism?: An Examination of Some Characters and Characteristics. Englesea Brook, UK: Published for the Englesea Brook Primitive Methodist Museum Committee, 1996. ———. James Crawfoot and the Magic Methodists. York: Quacks the Printers, 2003. Shorney, David. ‘“Women May Preach, but Men Must Govern”: Gender Roles in the Bible Christian Denomination’. In Gender and Christian Religion: Papers Read at the 1996 Summer Meeting and the 1997 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, edited by R. N. Swanson, 309–22. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998. A Statement of Facts and Observations Relative to the Late Separation from the Methodist Society in Manchester: Affectionately Addressed to the Members of That Body, by Their Preachers and Leaders. Manchester: S. Russell, 1806. Streiff, Patrick. Reluctant Saint? A Theological Biography of Fletcher of Madeley. Peterborough: Epworth, 2001. Taft, Zachariah. Biographical Sketches of the Lives and Public Ministry of Various Holy Women. 2 Vols. Leeds: H. Cullingworth, 1827. ———. The Scripture Doctrine of Women’s Preaching, Stated and Examined. York: Printed for the author, by J. Richardson, 1820. ———. Thoughts on Female Preaching: With Extracts from the Writings of Locke, Henry, Martin, Etc. Dover: Printed for the author, by G. Ledger, 1803. ———. ‘Thoughts on Women’s Preaching’. In The Methodist Defense of Women in Ministry: A Documentary History, edited by Paul W. Chilcote, 43–48. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2017. Tomlinson, John W. B. ‘The Magic Methodists and Their Influence on the Early Primitive Methodist Movement’. In Signs, Wonders, Miracles : Representations of Divine Power in the Life of the Church, edited by Jeremy Gregory and Kate Cooper, 389–99. Studies in Church History 41. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005.

‘We Shall Have No Mastery’ 73 Valenze, Deborah M. Prophetic Sons and Daughters: Female Preaching and Popular Religion in Industrial England. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1985. Walford, John. Memoirs of the Life and Labours of the Late Venerable Hugh Bourne: By a Member of the Bourne Family. 2 Vol. London: T. King, 1854. Ward, W. Reginald. ‘The Legacy of John Wesley: The Pastoral Office in Britain and America’. In Evangelicalism, Piety and Politics: The Selected Writings of W. R. Ward, 147–70. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014. ———. ‘The Religion of the People and the Problem of Control’. In Evangelicalism, Piety and Politics: The Selected Writings of W. R. Ward, 93–113. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014. Webster, Robert. Methodism and the Miraculous: John Wesley’s Idea of the Supernatural and the Identification of Methodists in the Eighteenth-Century. Lexington, KY: Emeth Press, 2013. Werner, Julia Stewart. The Primitive Methodist Connexion: Its Background and Early History. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984. Wesley, John. ‘On Early Rising’. Edited by Hugh Bourne. Primitive Methodist Magazine, 8, no. 3 (1838): 93–99. Wilkinson, John T. Hugh Bourne, 1772–1852. London: Epworth Press, 1952. Wood, Laurence W. Pentecost and Sanctification in the Writings of John Wesley and Charles Wesley: With a Proposal for Today. Asbury Theological Seminary Series: The Study of World Christian Revitalization Movements in Pietist/Wesleyan Studies. Lexington: Emeth Press, 2018. Woolley, Tim. ‘“Have Our People Been Sufficiently Cautious?” Wesleyan Responses to Lorenzo Dow in England and Ireland, 1799–1819’. Wesley and Methodist Studies 9, no. 2 (2017): 141–62. Woolley, Timothy R. ‘A New Appearance on the Face of Things: Retelling the Primitive Methodist Creation Narrative’. Ph.D. diss., University of Manchester, 2013.

4

Revival and the Reformers James Caughey and the Schism of 1849

Edward Miller was one of the only itinerants to receive even a hint of approval from Hugh Bourne during Bourne’s time as a Wesleyan Methodist. Miller was a noted revivalist and protégé of William Bramwell, appointed to the Burslem circuit from 1805 to 1807. Bourne described him as a ‘good man’, but complained that Miller brought the local revival to a standstill because he opposed Bourne’s practice of rotating class leadership.1 Miller was, according to Bourne, one who had ‘lost the revival spirit’ but ‘could talk on revivalism as no other travelling preacher had been able to do; and by so doing, he could get hold of the people’s minds, and bend them to his own views’.2 The Wesleyan Methodist community had a much more appreciative view of Miller’s labours. He was a colourful and somewhat idiosyncratic character who itinerated from 1799 to 1824, having been converted in Sheffield at the beginning of a dramatic West Yorkshire revival in 1792. The son of a prominent organist from Doncaster, Miller wandered all the way to India and back and embarked upon a successful musical career before his conversion and eventual transition to the Wesleyan ministry. Edward Miller’s story was preserved through the efforts of James Dixon.3 Dixon was elected President of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference in 1841 and was a leading moderate of his generation—conservative in overall orientation, but wary of centralisation. He was born in 1788 at Castle Donnington and entered the ministry in 1812, remaining active for nearly five decades before his death in 1871.4 A close friend (and eventually son-in-law) of Richard Watson, Dixon rose to a position of high esteem among his colleagues, known as a fine preacher, ardent supporter of the missionary society, and vocal critic of Roman Catholicism and the Oxford Movement.5 He is perhaps best known for the book he wrote about American Methodism, which came out of his 1848 tour of North America, both as British delegate to the Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and as President of the Canadian Methodist Conference.6 Dixon’s book about Miller was drawn chiefly from the revivalist’s extant correspondence, along with personal reminiscences. It was also interspersed with plenty of editorialising from Dixon about the nature of revival and the Spirit’s work in the church through both extraordinary and ordinary means. DOI: 10.4324/9781003224327-4

Revival and the Reformers 75 Dixon was not a revivalist, but he was open-minded and saw the importance of revivalist ministry—if balanced alongside pastoral ministry that provided greater depth, wisdom, and stability. His assessment of Miller’s time at Burslem fits this pattern. Noting that Miller found the circuit to be in dismal condition when he arrived, Dixon claimed Miller had a vital evangelistic ministry in the circuit, and left it with an increase of 150 members.7 The issue, Dixon lamented, was a deep-rooted local attitude of ‘jealousy of the ministerial office’ and ‘fondness for disputation, especially on matters of church government, with the usual amount of hatred, ill-will, underhand plotting, and bitter strife which these questions never fail to engender’.8 Presumably, Dixon’s remarks were an uncharitable assessment of the motivations of Hugh Bourne and his fellow Primitive Methodists. As I noted in Chapter 3, Bourne was driven more by his Spirit-centred spirituality than by concerns over church polity. The Primitive Methodists did not hold their first formal Conference until 1820, twelve years after Hugh Bourne was expelled from the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion. That is hardly indicative of a body that was motivated by disputes about church government! But if Dixon misread the motivations of the Primitive Methodists, he nevertheless understood the theological danger in a pneumatology that exalted the extraordinary means over the ordinary means. The Holy Spirit, Dixon cautioned, must not be expected through special services only, because that would ‘reduce the regular sabbath and the services of the sanctuary, to the position of dry, unmeaning ceremonies’.9 Dixon wrote the memoirs of Miller in 1841, the same year that James Caughey arrived in the United Kingdom for what would become a sixyear stay. One of the first things Caughey did when he arrived was make the trip from Liverpool to Manchester to attend the Wesleyan Methodist Conference—the same Conference which elected James Dixon as President. Caughey and Dixon were both prominent figures in British Methodism in the 1840s, and both were caught up in the fracturing of the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion that came to a head in 1849. Although there were more than a dozen schisms in the English Methodist family in the sixty years after John Wesley’s death, the 1849 episode that led to the eventual formation of the United Methodist Free Churches and the Wesleyan Reform Union was the most explosive and largest division, taking an estimated 100,000 members from the ranks of Wesleyan Methodism. As in many of the earlier conflicts, the split exposed tensions between the ‘high Methodist’ party, which favoured strong centralised pastoral authority, and ‘low Methodism’, which was more open to revival and participation in governance, and less concerned about maintaining Connexional control on all forms of ministry. This turbulent period was well-treated in standard works on Methodist divisions, and a host of other studies have dealt with the divisions in various ways, typically setting the debates in the social and political context, both nationally and on a local level.10 As with Primitive Methodism, the 1840s has received more treatment by historians than by theologians, and the theological theme that

76  Revival and the Reformers received the most attention is the ‘high’ Wesleyan doctrine of the ‘pastoral office’ with its strong view of church discipline and the authority of the ministry.11 There is a need for a closer examination of the non-Wesleyan Methodist side of the debates, especially from a theological perspective. James Caughey’s departure from Britain in 1847 at the request of Conference was one of the sparks that lit the fire of 1849. The fiery Irish-American revivalist had spent six years campaigning in Wesleyan Methodist churches in the 1840s. Caughey is often remembered for his lasting influence on William Booth, which began when Booth heard Caughey preach in 1846. He became a mentor to Booth and his partner in life and ministry, Catherine Mumford Booth.12 Richard Carwardine and John Kent have both highlighted Caughey’s importance, and he is discussed to a lesser extent by a few other scholars.13 Still, given the scale of his impact, he remains a slightly neglected figure, and his theological perspective has not been discussed. Caughey was born in the north of Ireland on 9 April 1810 but moved to America as a child. He had Scottish roots and was raised Presbyterian. Not a great deal is known of his early life and conversion, but what we do know is very typical of a young man who found religion in the burnedover district of upstate New York in the 1820s and 1830s. He was working in a Flour Mill in Troy, NY before he was converted at a revival at 19  years of age and joined the Methodists. Not long after he began to find his place in ministry, and in 1834, he was ordained a deacon by Troy Annual Conference, with ordination as elder following two years later.14 Daniel Wise, who edited and editorialised some of Caughey’s letters and journals, presented the young preacher as a self-educated yet voracious reader, and his later preaching would seem to confirm that assessment.15 Wesleyan Methodist Missionary William Harvard, writing to Jabez Bunting in 1839 while serving in Canada, described Caughey as ‘a devoted and intelligent Irishman’.16 His early career gave no indication of the significant impact he would later have abroad, though he became involved in several local revival campaigns while serving in upstate New York before he began his transatlantic travels. Caughey’s ‘special calling’, to preach in Canada and Europe, came on 9 July 1839, in Whitehall, New York. He repeatedly returned to this ‘impression of the Holy Spirit’ throughout his ministry as justification for his selfsupervised itinerancy. Caughey described the divine commission he received as follows: The will of God is, that thou shouldst visit Europe. He shall be with thee there, and give thee many seals to thy ministry. He has provided thee with funds. Make thy arrangements accordingly; and next Conference, ask liberty from the proper authorities, and it shall be granted thee. Visit Canada first; when this is done, set sail for England. God shall be with thee there, and thou shalt have no want in all thy journeyings; and thou shalt be brought back in safety to America.17

Revival and the Reformers 77 At the following Annual Conference Caughey requested leave from his regular duties and was given a certificate of good standing signed by Bishop Robert R. Roberts. His first foray was indeed to Canada, where he spent several months campaigning in Montreal and Quebec City through the winter of 1841. He claimed between four hundred and five hundred converts.18 After a brief return home to settle financial matters, he passed through Quebec on his way to catch a steamer from Halifax to Liverpool in July 1841. Not having made any arrangements as to where he would preach, he arrived in time to attend the 1841 Conference at Manchester, where he met Thomas Waugh and William Steward, key Methodist leaders in Ireland who secured his first preaching opportunity in Dublin. He attracted sufficient response to his preaching to secure one invitation after another, preaching in Dublin, Limerick, Bandon, and Cork, before sailing to Liverpool in October 1842, having requested that he be ‘located’ by his home Conference so he could continue his ministry indefinitely. To this point, Caughey had seen significant success, with approximately 1200 conversions in Ireland, but there was still no indication of the dramatic results he would achieve in England in the following five years.19 His principal English campaigns were in industrial communities in the north and the midlands: Liverpool (October 1842–April 1843), Leeds (April–September 1843), Hull (October 1843–May 1844), Sheffield (May– September 1844), Huddersfield (December 1844–April 1845), and Birmingham (December 1845–May 1846). These efforts were interspersed with shorter stays in such places as Nottingham, Lincoln, Sunderland, and Chesterfield.20 In total Caughey claimed over 21,000 converts, and over 9,000 who had claimed entire sanctification during his ministry in Ireland and England.21 Although these numbers are difficult to verify, Caughey was rather meticulous about record-keeping and seems to have made an effort to discount inflated numbers. Even allowing for some exaggeration, it was a remarkable feat.22 While Caughey had many supporters, his techniques were controversial, and they attracted opposition from the high Wesleyan party. As discussed in the previous chapter, English Methodism had a somewhat ambivalent relationship with revivalism since the turn of the nineteenth century, stemming from the earlier visits of the most eccentric of American revivalists, Lorenzo Dow. While Caughey relied on divine impressions and his services could be noisy, he was much less erratic than Dow, and he did not mix republican political sentiments with his preaching. However, Caughey’s independent ministry was a threat to church discipline from the perspective of those pushing for the centralisation of Conference authority and a high doctrine of the pastoral office. His case was vigorously discussed at the 1843, 1844, and 1845 Conferences, before the 1846 Conference decided to write to Caughey’s bishop in America, requesting that the revivalist be called home.23 The Conference President, William Atherton, subsequently interpreted this decision as a positive ban of Caughey from Wesleyan pulpits, though many of the Superintendents

78  Revival and the Reformers took a different view and continued to work with Caughey in the ensuing months, infuriating Bunting and his allies.24 After nearly a year of continued ministry, Caughey complied with the order and sailed home on 20 July 1847. The Conference Minutes of 1847 included a note of caution, affirming the place of ‘genuine and scriptural Revivals of Religion’, but condemning the ‘spirit of unholy dissension, strife, and disorder’, that had been stirred up by ‘certain persons’. … The tendency and operation of the proceedings, to which reference is here made, have been to produce serious discords of opinion, feeling, and conduct among Brethren, and to create that internal disunion which is truly and scripturally condemned as divisive and schismatical. In connection with this great evil, the Conference regret to perceive, not indeed generally, but yet in too many instances, a disposition to adopt (perhaps unawares) views and sentiments which, on the alleged ground of concern for special and extraordinary Revivals, have the effect of alienating in some degree the affections of our people from the wellaccredited, long-tried, and officially-responsible Ministers and Pastors of our churches,—of lessening them in public estimation,—of diminishing their legitimate and beneficial influence,—of substituting something new into regular for the ordinary Ministry and standing Institutions of the Gospel,—and of leading some individuals, most injuriously to themselves, to undervalue the authority and eventual efficiency, under the promised blessing of the Holy Spirit, of the stated Preaching of the Word, and of other appointed means of grace. Particular mention was then made of Conference’s full approval of ‘the occasional visits of duly accredited Ministers from other countries, who may be passing through our circuits on their journeys’ for ‘temporary ministry’, but the Conference then re-stated the anti-Dow minute of 1807 that prohibited improperly ordered ministry by ‘strangers, from America or elsewhere.’25 Caughey’s effective dismissal by the Conference enflamed the tensions that had been bubbling for decades and had intensified since the conflict over the Theological Institution in the mid-1830s. He appeared in the infamous Fly Sheets, where the author accused Bunting of playing lip-service to revival while acting otherwise and decried the seeming abuses of authority that had led to Caughey’s dismissal.26 The Fly Sheets were not primarily focused on revivalism, but the actions of Conference concerning Caughey were open to criticism, and generated significant attention given Caughey’s popularity among certain segments of the Wesleyan Methodist constituency. Several pamphlets defending and attacking Caughey emerged at this time, making his ministry a key point of contention in the battle between the Wesleyans and the Reformers.27 Caughey himself disclaimed all involvement in schismatic actions, and he did not personally enter the fray of these debates. He did not preach on matters of church polity, and he kept his services (on this

Revival and the Reformers 79 tour, with very few exceptions) to Wesleyan Methodist pulpits, avoiding the other Methodist bodies where he might have been warmly welcomed.28 In the heat of the conflict, Caughey wrote, ‘Peace—no splits—no divisions in Wesleyan Methodism, is my motto—my sincere motto…I have invitations to join another body—the door is wide open—but no! Wesleyan Methodism shall not be injured by me.’29 Even if these were his sincere intentions, Caughey’s theological emphases cohered well with the Reformers’ message of lay empowerment and decentralisation of authority and therefore contributed to the ensuing schism. It is not surprising that, on subsequent transatlantic campaigns in the 1850s and 1860s, Caughey ministered almost exclusively in non-Wesleyan Methodist settings, where he was given a hero’s welcome.30 The individualistic, Spiritcentred character of his preaching clashed with the doctrine of the pastoral office prevailing in high Wesleyan circles. These tendencies are evident in the way Caughey thought about the personal guidance of the Spirit, the saving work of the Spirit, and the mediation of the Spirit through the means of grace. This separates him not only from the likes of Bunting and his circle but also from moderates like James Dixon. Dixon was seen as an ally of the Reformers, though he remained within the Wesleyan Methodist fold. He differed from Caughey, however, in his more balanced understanding of the Spirit’s work through both extraordinary and ordinary means of grace, including the corporate structures of the church. The Spirit’s Personal Guidance and ‘the Divinity of His Mission’ ‘Impressions are not the rule of conduct,’ said Jabez Bunting at the 1842 Conference, in response to a candidate who put himself forward for the mission field on that basis.31 But James Caughey was well-known for his reliance on ‘impressions’ of the Holy Spirit. The most obvious example was the story of his special calling to international ministry, noted above. He also claimed the Spirit’s special guidance and direction for his movements at various points during his British sojourn. This included both positive direction and times of waiting for direction. Thus, during his early days in Liverpool, Caughey lamented, ‘he commands me no where, and I am doing nothing for God here,’ and upon his return to Liverpool from Ireland, ‘Even up to now, I would gladly retreat, but dare not.’32 After meeting Waugh and Stewart at the Manchester Conference he recalled, ‘It was then strongly impressed upon my mind to sail to Dublin, although I did not know a soul there.’ Likewise, when he faced strong opposition in Hull during the winter of 1844, he wrote, ‘I am ready to leave England, and to return to America, upon the least clear intimation from heaven.’33 His belief that the Spirit was guiding him, however, was not simply based on divine impressions. Such leadings were corroborated by the experience of others and the unfolding of events, which were read with a keen eye to discern the hand of Providence. For example, Caughey said he went to Sheffield (the scene of his greatest success) based on

80  Revival and the Reformers a misunderstanding and therefore against his own will, but mused, ‘Perhaps the future will explain it.’34 The Spirit’s guidance certainly included inspiration for preaching. In a typical example, Caughey stated that his text had been given to him at eleven that morning, along with ‘a message from God to some particular characters in this congregation’.35 Caughey’s common practice of ‘describing particular characters’ during his sermons created a lot of controversy and led to accusations of ‘witchery’, if not simple trickery.36 Without using names, Caughey would describe a person who he said was in the congregation and then appeal to them directly to respond to his message. In the sermon noted above, Caughey described four ‘characters’, including the following example: You may be decent in your conduct; you may respect religion—believe in its great, awful, and solemn verities, but you are undecided, you halt. You have a father and a mother unconverted, who, in all probability, would give their hearts to God if you would lead the way. You have been laid on a bed of affliction; you solemnly promised God to serve him, but your resurrection to health was a resurrection to sin. God has been striving to convert you, to make your conversion instrumental to the salvation of your parents, but you have stood out; and my God has sent me to solemnly warn you against the soul-destroying sin of putting off. I tell you, if you refuse, God will speedily send Death—the windingsheet,—the coffin—the white border around your face,—the shut eye,— the blanched cheek,—the cold, cold grave.37 This prediction of impending death for someone in the congregation was common practice for Caughey.38 He defended his line of attack as the mere public rebuke of sin. If people felt the sting of his description of certain sins, that was only evidence of their guilt. He was often attacked by people claiming Caughey had obtained ‘inside information’ about them. But Caughey claimed that these descriptions came from the Spirit, responding to one such complainant, ‘No human being has told me a single word about you. I have no doubt that it was the Spirit of God,’ and to another, ‘…your sin has found you out,’ and to another, ‘God, my dear sir, has given you a warning; prepare for the blow. It is surely coming.’39 Caughey also routinely made note of other extraordinary manifestations in his life and ministry, such as the fulfilment of dreams, Pentecost-like corporate worship experiences, and seeming miracles in answer to prayer.40 He clearly assumed that ‘liveliness’ in services was a sign of the Spirit’s presence, but he affirmed that the work of God was ‘not dependent upon much noise or little, but upon an influence from heaven’.41 Caughey’s uncouth tactics were in themselves offensive to those looking to build a more respectable image for Methodism, but so were his claims that such statements were divinely inspired. Bunting reportedly mocked Caughey’s claim that the Spirit had not called him home to America.42 Benjamin Gregory, who wrote later, but recalled his own impressions as a

Revival and the Reformers 81 young Wesleyan itinerant in the 1840s, accused Caughey of ‘delivering an anonymous quasi-supernatural death warrant to whatever youthful member of his congregation might “feel like” appropriating it’.43 Carwardine follows this approach, claiming Caughey was ‘essentially a pragmatist, not a mystic’, and describing his purported calling to Europe as a ‘practical resolution’ rather than a move of the Spirit.44 Even in the introduction to Methodism In Earnest, a book made up mostly of excerpts from Caughey’s letters, Thomas O. Summers suggested that ‘his imagination transported him at times beyond the bounds of strict sobriety’. And yet, Daniel Wise, his editor, argued that Caughey ‘did not grasp his impressions blindly, hastily, or carelessly, but with solemn and serious care, sought to discern what was human and what was divine in his feelings’.45 Caughey was aware of such objections and sought to defend against them. On one occasion he narrated a dramatic ‘divine encounter’ in Dublin in which ‘promises, directions, and encouragements, were given in quick succession’ and ‘the communings of an active agent were as perceptible as any conversation I ever had with a visible friend’. He continued, But you are ready to inquire, ‘Had you no doubts whether such communications came from God?’ No, I cannot say I had, they came in such a way, and with such an holy unction, as to leave no room for doubts. I may also add there was nothing in them to excite my suspicion, nothing contrary to the written word of God; if so, I should have rejected them with horror; nothing that did not lead to purity and entire devotedness to God.46 The negative criterion of ‘nothing contrary to the written word of God’ may have been enough for Caughey, but it left the door open for a wide array of extraordinary manifestations. The high Wesleyan party, with its preoccupation on pastoral discipline, was much more sceptical of any such experiences, given the potential excesses and strange teachings that could follow.47 For Caughey and his supporters, however, the seemingly providential ordering of events and the remarkable success of the campaigns were enough to ‘demonstrate the divinity of his mission’ as given to him in Whitehall, New York.48 An anonymous 1847 pamphlet even included a point-by-point exegesis of Caughey’s ‘impression’, noting the ways it was fulfilled in detail. 49 No pastoral or Connexional approbation seemed necessary in the light of such evidence, and indeed, it is not hard to see how the actions of Conference against Caughey would seem out go against the leading of the Spirit. Another of his defenders wrote, ‘Either what Mr. Caughey has narrated was a real manifestation of God in his soul, and an intimation of he will of God concerning him, or it was a delusion,’ and went on to answer the dilemma, as follows: ‘By his six years’ labours in these realms, some thousands of souls have been ‘brought out of darkness into God’s marvellous light.’ Is that delusion?’50

82  Revival and the Reformers Salvation through the Work of the ‘Holy Wooer’ Caughey’s pneumatocentric theology also comes through very clearly in his approach to salvation. While he was famous for ‘inspiring terror’, such that Carwardine accused him of trying to ‘frighten his audience into the kingdom of God’, Caughey understood such warnings as means whereby the Spirit would inflict the conscience of his hearers.51 He affirmed that there would be no concern for our own salvation without the Spirit’s ‘strivings’ with us. ‘Without the Spirit no conviction of sin, no contrition for the past no softening tendency, no melting view of Calvary, no concern for the soul, ever will be felt.’52 This Spirit-centred view of conversion is also evident in the way he appealed for his hearers to respond by ‘yielding’ to the Spirit. The focus on ‘yielding’ places priority on divine agency in the way of salvation, as opposed to emphasising the role of human decision in conversion. In his sermon ‘The Strivings of the Spirit’, he memorably described the Spirit as ‘the Holy wooer’, and appealed to a backslider: ‘Will you now yield to God?… you grieve the blessed Spirit, and he will come less and less powerfully every time.’53 For Caughey, the Spirit was drawing the sinner to God, and the sinner’s power of choice was a negative power to refuse the Spirit’s entreaties. Such resistance to the Holy Spirit was, for Caughey, the unforgivable sin of blaspheming the Spirit, which he argued was ‘not a sudden work, not some one deed, but a quenching of the Spirit—a settled resistance, day by day, till the blessed Spirit is vexed, quenched, driven away’.54 Even the threat of death was sometimes specifically connected to this process, since he saw death as the ultimate result of quenching the life-giving Spirit. Caughey took this to an extreme by making threats of ‘sudden death’ to those who grieved the Spirit but held out hope for any who were still alive. He suggested that one might hasten their physical death by resisting the Spirit and yet find eternal salvation before they died.55 By contrast, the prospect of a ‘happy death’ was also the work of the Spirit, for those who died having received the blessing of entire sanctification would face death without any pangs of conscience. One who was justified but not yet entirely sanctified might have their eternal reward but would face the ‘sting of death’ as they reflected on their life in their dying hours. The threat of such a troubled deathbed was seen by Caughey as the Spirit’s pleading, via the conscience, to go on to perfection and hence a confident death.56 Another indication of Caughey’s Spirit-centred view of salvation was his stress on the instantaneous character of both justification and sanctification, in line with the dominant trend in American Holiness teaching.57 Caughey said, ‘…there is no such thing in the Scriptures as gradual conversion, or gradual purity…Pardon and purity are doctrines clearly taught in the Bible; and in the very nature of things they must be sudden in their attainment.’58 This was a favourite theme of Caughey, and he often stated that a true Christian ought to be able to identify the place and time of their conversion. ‘If ever God pardon a sinner, there is a last moment when his sins are

Revival and the Reformers 83 unpardoned, and a first, in which, for the sake of Christ, they are all forgiven him. It is a matter of no small consequence that he should be able to distinguish such a period in his past history.’59 Likewise, he believed one should be able to make a distinct profession of entire sanctification, which could be claimed by faith in an instantaneous work of the Spirit. Caughey recounted an appeal for entire sanctification in Hull based on the theme, ‘Why not now?’ where he stressed the present availability of full cleansing: ‘If you dare to believe, he cleanses now’.60 In Leeds he reported ‘many witnesses for entire sanctification’ and advocated for special weekly holiness services where the holiness message would be ‘clearly, pointedly, and frequently preached’.61 Clarity of teaching was essential if his hearers were to be able to exercise their grace-enabled faith in the promises of God. So he observed, ‘in those congregations where justification by faith and the witness of the Spirit are not preached, few, if any, are raised up to testify that Jesus Christ hath power upon earth to forgive sins; whereas, just the contrary takes place where these are clearly and fully preached’.62 A sermon on ‘The Omnipotence of Faith’ quoted Fletcher’s saying, ‘Come to a naked promise with naked faith’ a concept that denoted faith without regard to emotion, and was typical also of Phoebe Palmer’s theology of sanctification. Whereas in relation to temporal matters, we must believe with qualifications, ‘in reference to justification and holiness’, Caughey said, ‘we may pray with unlimited faith’.63 Such faith, while focused on the promises of God as its object, could only be exercised in the power of the Spirit. The dramatic nature of the instantaneous work of both justification and sanctification highlighted the divine agency and power of the Spirit in salvation. Carwardine claimed Caughey’s requirement for detailed knowledge of the circumstances of one’s conversion ‘sowed doubt and confusion’ among Methodists who ‘had thought themselves converted’ but now responded to be assured of their salvation, pointing out that even moderate Wesleyan voices like James Dixon taught that the Spirit’s work need not have a conscious beginning.64 This was not simply a clash between American and British understandings of salvation, for the British Methodists were divided on these questions as well, with Adam Clarke and Richard Watson standing at the head of two competing strands of thought, the one emphasising the dramatic and sudden work of the Spirit, the other emphasising gradual growth.65 Those emphasising the present possibilities of the Spirit’s work in the individual were empowering the individual to seek transformation now and were therefore much less likely to see the need for strong pastoral authority and standardised discipline on the local level or in the broader Connexion. A vision of spiritual life that was predominantly gradual, on the other hand, would lend itself to the need for steady, stable structures that would hopefully facilitate such growth by the maintenance of discipline in doctrine and practice. While Caughey was not explicitly undermining pastoral work and the disciplined structures necessary to sustain it, his individualistic and instantaneous approach to the Spirit’s work in salvation and his silence regarding the

84  Revival and the Reformers corporate and gradual work of the Spirit could easily fuel the fires of division and dissent against unpopular Conference decisions. The Spirit and the Means of Grace: the ‘Moving Power’ of the ‘Grand Machinery’ Whether Carwardine was right in characterising Caughey as a pragmatist, he was certainly correct in saying that Caughey was not a mystic, for he espoused a quintessentially active spirituality. He strongly affirmed that the Spirit was the ‘original and efficient cause’ of all soul-winning, but that the Spirit normally works through means.66 His approach to ministry was clear witness to his convictions, for he pursued ‘a working life that was nothing less than a continuous protracted meeting’.67 Indeed, most were convinced that he was too focused on the ‘machinery’ of revivalism, leading to the accusation that he was ‘making revivals’.68 While Caughey did not hesitate to speak of the machinery of the revival, he would claim that ‘all the grand machinery of the gospel will do nothing without a moving power – the power of the Holy Ghost’.69 The means must be owned by the Spirit, he maintained, and this sometimes required a period of persistence in exercising the means while waiting for the Spirit to move. Indeed, it was necessary, he believed, to be convinced of human helplessness even in the midst of such vigorous activity, and to bathe the entire campaign in fervent prayer for the movements of the Spirit.70 Caughey’s focus on the Spirit was shared with that of earlier revivalists such as Hugh Bourne, but Caughey was more fixated on the revival preacher as the instrument of the Spirit’s activity than Bourne, who, as we saw in the previous chapter, had a more broadly participatory view of the Spirit’s work. The people’s role in a revival, for Caughey, was primarily to pray for the anointing of the preacher.71 Caughey believed that ‘words are the instruments by which the Spirit of God affects the mind’ and argued in response to his critics that the kind of preaching that was needed for results was preaching that appealed ‘the whole man’, including intellect and passions. He was appealing to beliefs about divine judgment and sin that were already accepted and attempting to make the hearer ‘feel what they already know’. But in order to bring them to this point, he was blunt: ‘They must be made to tremble, and be broken down before the Lord God of hosts, or they can never be saved.’72 Despite the obvious attention to techniques aimed at effectiveness, he had been committed from an early stage to the ‘absolute necessity of the immediate influence of the Holy Ghost to impart point, power, efficacy, and success to a preached gospel’ and stated that without this anointing ‘the finest, the most splendid talents remain comparatively useless’.73 There was indeed, in Caughey, a very close identification of the work of the Spirt and the preached word, which he once described as ‘the lightning flashes of the Spirit’. In one passage he even spoke of a ‘range of influence’ of the Spirit in the vicinity of the chapel where the preaching was taking place.74

Revival and the Reformers 85 In principle, Caughey affirmed that the Spirit worked both through ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’ means of grace and rejected the accusation that his focus on special efforts for revival undermined the regular means of grace. His initial response when arriving in a new town was not to criticise the local Ministers. In fact, he was generally positive in his assessments of Methodist Ministers—until they opposed his ministry. For example, on hearing his future critic Bunting preach at the 1841 Conference, Caughey commented, ‘High as were my expectations, I was not disappointed.’ He also reacted positively to the sermon of Robert Newton, ally of Bunting and soon-tobe enemy of Caughey. His only negative comment in those early days in England followed a powerful sermon by John McLean, which he believed did much good but could have done more if McLean had stayed to lead the prayer meeting and ‘draw the net ashore’.75 As evidence that Caughey was supportive of local Ministers and of the ordinary means of grace, Daniel Wise provided a letter from a layman, recounting Caughey’s last sermon in Dublin. At the conclusion, he earnestly requested all present, but especially the young converts, to be attentive to the means of grace, more especially those for Christian communion; and urged upon them the necessity of exercising liberality in the cause of God. He then spoke of the kindly bearing of the preachers towards him, and of their brotherly love; and with a delicacy of feeling which did him honour, he expressed his fears that, from the way he had been labouring amongst them, they might expect too much from their ministers. To guard against this he informed them, that if he was stationed among them, as his brethren around him were, it would be utterly impossible for him to fulfil the duties of the circuit, and at the same time carry on the meetings, evening after evening, as he had done.76 Caughey’s position was that his ‘extraordinary’ efforts for revival were no discredit to the ordinary means, but rather that the extraordinary means ‘if successful, must, in the nature of the case, confer honour upon the ordinary services’. On prayer meetings, for example, he would say, ‘a lively prayer meeting after the evening sermon greatly promotes the design of the Christian ministry’.77 Writing to an American friend from Leeds in September 1843, Caughey recalled a town that had harboured such objections. Long and anxiously did they desire a revival; but entertained at the same time an aversion to extraordinary means. And why? Lest the ordinary services, which they admitted were inefficient, should be brought into discredit by the extraordinary; as if another gospel was to be preached in the latter, while in fact, the proposal was, only to preach the gospel a little oftener,—say every night in the week in the same chapel, instead of one or two nights…They did not see that it is with mind as it is with matter—hammer long enough upon a rock, and you will break it in pieces; repeat your strokes upon mind, and it must also break down.

86  Revival and the Reformers Everybody knows, that one day in the week, however heavy the hammer and rapid the blows, cannot accomplish so much, as if the same were wielded every day of the week.78 Just as Caughey argued that revival preaching proclaimed the same truths as ordinary preaching though the focus might be on the emotions, he argued that revival services were preaching the same gospel, just with greater intensity and frequency.79 However, it is not difficult to see why Caughey’s emphasis on extraordinary means and his arguments against those who rejected revival techniques were interpreted as an attack on the ordinary Ministry. Revivalism was a litmus test for Caughey; though he affirmed the ordinary means, he would agree with Finney that ‘Men are so spiritually sluggish, there are so many things to lead their minds off from religion and to oppose the influence of the Gospel, that it is necessary to raise an excitement among them, till the tide rises so high as to sweep away the opposing obstacles.’80 Just so, Caughey wrote, ‘We need a gale every now and then to sweep through the streets and lanes of our great towns to carry of the smoke and unhealthy exhalations...and in some places nothing but a tornado can clarify the spiritual atmosphere, so as to render it fit to breathe in, or to see heaven through by faith.’ That being the case, it followed that ‘neglect upon the part of ministers and leading members to carry out fully a revival…weakens the church of God, and grieves the Holy Spirit.’ He therefore said of those Ministers who opposed revivalism as he understood it: I have ever considered an anti-revival Methodist preacher as a phenomenon in Methodism. It would be almost as difficult for a man of that character, unless a consummate hypocrite, to get into the ranks of American Methodism, as for a Jesuit; and I believe the remark will equally apply to Wesleyan Methodism in these kingdoms. I can, however, easily conceive how a minister may lose the life of God out of his soul, and fearfully backslide from first principles. A criminal indifference to zealous efforts for the salvation of sinners may characterize his movements. Is it not possible for him to impart the same feeling to the officers of the church during the years of his stay upon the circuit?81 Once, he even suggested, ‘Many of the Methodists are holding on to sin – indulging in things that grieve the Holy Spirit.’82 Thus, it is not surprising that even the author of the Fly Sheets, in championing Caughey, stated that he ‘came down upon’ the ordinary means of Wesleyan Methodism.83 Some of Caughey’s suspicion that revival was not sufficiently pursued came from his surprise that so many of his converts came from Methodist Societies.84 This made him suspect some weakness in the Wesleyan Methodist system. Caughey’s musings about these issues were interpreted as criticism of the ordinary means of grace and the ordinary ministry as established in

Revival and the Reformers 87 British Methodism. Yet his detractors have exaggerated his harshness, for he was somewhat circumspect in his assessments. After noting that many of his converts from Dublin, Limerick Cork, Liverpool, and Leeds had been meeting in class for years without ‘satisfactory evidence of their adoption into the family of God’, Caughey continued, I am not sufficiently acquainted with the religious state of the Wesleyan body in this country, to say, whether it is thus with the societies generally, or that similar developments would be exhibited in case of a revival in other towns of the kingdom. My mind has been greatly exercised by it, but in my communications to America I have refrained from speculations, and entertained my correspondents with plain matters of fact, which fell under my own observation.85 It was, thus, the extraordinary means of ‘special services’ for revival that Caughey saw as essential to the identity of Methodism, which, he believed, had always been ‘a system of aggression against the devil and all his works’. He warned, ‘Whenever and wherever she loses this distinguishing feature in her economy, she must dwindle away into insignificance.’86 The Spirit, the Church, and Caughey’s ‘Eccentric Orbit’ It is not that Caughey’s critics opposed revivals per se. Caughey claimed support for the importance of revivals from the Conference Address to the Societies in 1840, signed by none other than his opponent Robert Newton (then President), along with Secretary John Hannah: ‘Some churches regard revivals of religion as gracious singularities in their history: we regard them as essential to our existence. If a regular series of divine visitations, issuing in the conversion of sinners, be not vouchsafed to us, we must either change the spiritual constitution of our discipline, or we shall pine away from among the tribes of Israel.’87 However, the ‘high’ Wesleyans did not support any form of revival that threatened their understanding of church discipline. Bunting complained at the 1845 Conference that it was irregular for a preacher to occupy Wesleyan pulpits without being responsible to give an account of their teaching and conduct to Conference, and yet added: ‘My feelings have always been of the revival order…But I speak upon a point of ecclesiastical order.’88 William Carter, a Lay Minister who wrote in defence of Caughey, nevertheless acknowledged, The whole of his proceedings in Great Britain and Ireland were anomalous; his whole course was erratic. He had struck out a new line of things. He had come like a comet from another system, moving in an eccentric orbit of his own, and was seen a perfectly new phenomenon in Methodism. That the Conference should have so long tolerated the irregularity was a wonder; that it should tolerate it any longer was not likely.89

88  Revival and the Reformers In fact, Caughey’s pattern was not completely erratic, but it rested upon different assumptions about how divine authority was exercised in the church. He never entered a pulpit or engaged in a campaign in any town without permission. In this, he was less offensive (and less aggressive, to use Caughey’s term) than John Wesley, who would preach in the open air when refused a pulpit. Caughey went where he was invited; the invitations sometimes came from the Ministers, but often originated with lay leaders and local preachers, among whom he had strong support, who then approached circuit authorities.90 While Caughey’s claims to divine guidance were difficult for many to accept, they were not foreign to the Wesleyan tradition, nor were they wholly subjective, in that his ministry bore fruit and received affirmation from others. The question, really, was how such affirmation should be made. Caughey’s Spirit-centred approach read these invitations, and the results that followed, as divine seals of approval for his ministry. The immediate operation of the Spirit through his preaching ministry and the affirmation of godly people was approbation was enough, not to mention his status as a located Minister. Again, we see the pattern set by Wesley’s relationship with the Church of England mirrored in a later revivalist’s relationship with Wesleyan Methodism. Caughey’s practice implied that there was, effectively, no need for the approval and oversight of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference. The Spirit’s work was emphasised on the individual level in his own life and the life of his hearers and discerned personally by him in the reception of his ministry, but he seemed to have little conception of the Spirit speaking corporately through the connexional authorities. The high Wesleyan party, on the other hand, viewed authority primarily through the lens of the pastoral office, which was rooted in a strong commitment to church discipline as divinely mandated. This was a more Christocentric view of authority in the church, in that they argued that the pastoral office was first exercised by Christ, and then handed down to his successors. This approach is clearly seen, for example, in John Beecham’s Essay on the Constitution of Wesleyan Methodism, first published in 1829.91 The high Wesleyans did not claim that they had a monopoly on the discernment of the Spirit, but in giving pastors exclusive responsibility for ‘ruling’ the church they effectively claimed that they alone could discern the voice of the Spirit with respect to certain questions. Bunting, unaware of this dynamic, ironically complained of Caughey’s self-superintendency: ‘One of the worst kinds of Popery is this Methodist Popery.’92 Despite its crude façade, Caughey’s practice of itinerant ministry was based upon a broader (if ad-hoc) discernment of the Spirit’s voice amongst the people of God. However, he swung to another extreme, effectively making the discernment of the Spirit through the Conference an irrelevant afterthought. Thus, one side presumed the discernment of the Spirit regarding the Ministry to be exclusively concentrated in the Connexional authorities, whereas the other side made the Connexional authorities irrelevant to the Spirit’s reviving work.

Revival and the Reformers 89 The Spirit and the ‘Common Means of Grace’: James Dixon on Revival Sadly, some of the mediating voices in Wesleyan Methodism were drowned out in this polarising debate. James Dixon offers an example of an approach to the Spirit’s work in the church that avoids the extremes of Caughey on the left and Bunting on the right. While Dixon shared Bunting’s political conservativism, he often clashed with him on matters of centralisation, so much so that the Reformers asked him to assume leadership in 1849.93 On the other hand, in the case of Samuel Warren’s revolt over the Theological Institution, he sided firmly with the Conference.94 His son, writing of James Dixon’s opposition to a perceived alteration of the ordination service by Bunting without the approval of Conference, called him ‘a most resolute maintainer and guardian of the original constitution of Methodism’.95 He was difficult to pin down, and ‘known to have long entertained independent opinions’.96 Thus, though Dixon had significant concerns about revivalism, he spoke up for the American visitor at the 1844 Conference, cautioning, ‘We should not interfere with the work of God.’97 In his biography of William Miller, Dixon offered a careful and circumspect reflection on the meaning of revival. In an undated letter circulated to the societies in Manchester, Miller had described revival as ‘a revival of the simple power of primitive Christianity’.98 Dixon provided extended commentary on this statement, indicating his ambivalence about the term ‘revival’. He seems to have maintained that it was the undoubted privilege of Christian societies and churches, as well as individuals, to enjoy this power; but knowing that it was often lost, or but partially experienced, he, like most others, when it was in fact manifested in any place, called it a ‘revival’. The point he insisted upon, was the privilege of the church today to enjoy ‘the primitive power of Christianity’. This is undoubtedly the case, and it is as important as true.99 Similarly, while describing Miller as a revivalist, Dixon said that term ‘might never have been used’ because it was often used vaguely.100 Revivals, in Dixon’s view, were simply displays of ‘the primitive power of Christianity’, through which the Spirit saved, sanctified, and made the ordinances effective. However, revivals were not the ideal, nor should they be considered inevitable, or portrayed as new dispensations of the Spirit. The power of the Spirit, he wrote, ‘unhappily manifests itself at present only in the form of revivals; but this only marks the unfaithfulness of the church’.101 Rather than revivals, the church should aspire to constant growth and health. On an individual level, he wrote, ‘The piety of the individual Christian should never be suffered to sink into decay, and need a succession of revivals. His state should be always progressive.’102 Moreover, it was wrong to always expect revivals: ‘Revivals cannot be perpetual: they would cease to be so, if this were the case.’103

90  Revival and the Reformers Dixon was wary of putting too much hope in revivals and thereby neglecting to seek and expect the Spirit’s presence in all of life and ministry. Furthermore, he was clear that the Spirit of God might be ‘displayed in the agitations and thunder of a revival, or the “still small voice” of a more quiet and gentle process’.104 Indeed, in his ex-presidential address, Dixon ascribed Methodism to the Spirit’s influence in both ways: as a ‘silent and gentle power’ and through ‘rich and glorious effusions’, according to God’s will.105 Likewise, in discussing sanctification, in contrast to Caughey’s heavy emphasis on the instantaneous work of the Spirit, Dixon affirmed both a gradual and instantaneous aspect to entire sanctification. Dixon’s son, the Anglican historian Richard Watson Dixon, wrote of his father: …although his own convictions and experience led him to hold the necessity of conversion to God, yet the greatness of his mind prevented him from ever insisting upon instantaneous and sensible conversion in all cases. The work of the Holy Spirit is often gradual and gentle; the Divine life begins as it were without beginning, and grows with scarcely conscious growth.106 James Dixon noted that Edward Miller was charged with inconsistency for claiming a repeated succession of ‘baptisms of the Spirit’ and always identifying the most recent of these as his entry into a life of entire sanctification. Dixon resolved the issue by framing sanctification as a ‘progressive work’ which, in Miller’s case, began with ‘an instantaneous deliverance from sin’ and was marked by multiple subsequent distinct and dramatic works of the Spirit as inflexion points in his advancement in holiness.107 Dixon, like Caughey, understood that the Spirit’s work was essential to the Christian life, but for Dixon, this meant that God would not withdraw or add to his provision of the Spirit at various times.108 The Spirit’s power, he argued, was in constant supply. He decried, therefore, any intimation that conversions were limited to revivals, rather than available through ‘the ordinary operations of the gospel’ and the ‘common means of grace’. This notion may lead to very pernicious consequences. To expect the display of God’s converting power as something extraordinary, is to reduce the regular sabbath and the services of the sanctuary, to the position of dry, unmeaning ceremonies. Why should present conversions be limited to a revival? Or, rather, why should they not be sought for in every service, from the beginning to the end of the year? Then, conversions are usually attributed to some remarkable effusions of the Spirit. As His offices belong to the Christian economy, and are inherent in the system, He will always be accessible to faith, just as Jesus Christ is so in his merit and power.109

Revival and the Reformers 91 In a quote that seems to directly refute Caughey’s characterisation of revival, Dixon stated that Christians had ‘no right’ to think of the Spirit’s work as ‘something extraordinary…as, in fact, a kind of a whirlwind, sent down immediately from heaven, to purify the atmosphere of the church.’ Rather, they must affirm ‘the Holy Spirit pervades every thing [sic] in Christianity, which is truly of its own essence; and is, in fact, omnipresent in the church.’110 Thus Miller was presented as an example of one who did not neglect adequate preparation and theological study, though he preached through the ‘unction, guidance, presence, and power of the Holy Ghost’, and once even stopped mid-sermon to declare that he had received an impression that someone in the meeting had just received a blessing.111 While James Caughey admitted that one might sometimes need to wait for the Spirit’s power to descend and bring about revival, he proposed that such waiting should be done while aggressively pursuing the use of programmatic revival techniques. Dixon, by contrast, placed greater emphasis on Miller’s appeal to his hearers to wait for the blessing of the Spirit, without recourse to ‘any human apparatus or means to bring about a revival of the work of God’.112 Again, though Dixon had great confidence in the preaching of the gospel and believed it would bear fruit, he cautioned against too mechanistic a view of the relation between the use of certain means and the desired results: ‘though effects ought to be sought, and earnestly prayed for, yet it would be improper to expect them in perfect uniformity, and in any specific mode.’113 Too much reliance on particular means or techniques might undermine both the sovereignty of the Spirit and the constant availability of the Spirit through the regular ministrations of the church. So also, there was a danger that some dramatic conversions during revivals might not be the result of the genuine work of the Spirit, and rather simply the results of mere human excitement. This cast of religious character, it is to be feared, in some cases indeed, leads to mischief. This class of persons often seem dissatisfied, restless, and incapable of profitably enjoying the sober course of things in the ordinances of God’s house, however clearly and fully the gospel may be preached, and however spiritual and edifying services may be, unless revival is going on. This is undoubtedly a great evil. The soul cannot live on excitement. To be healthy and happy, the Christian must be capable of enjoying the feast of truth and grace, provided, by the reading of the Scriptures, and the plain, clear, and faithful communication of the ‘glorious gospel of the blessed God,’ though the messenger may not be a ‘son of thunder.’114 Dixon himself, according to his son, was not a revivalist, though he may have been one ‘in theory’; whereas Miller was a ‘bright enthusiast’, Dixon was an

92  Revival and the Reformers enthusiast of a ‘different order—impassioned, melancholy, with sympathies drawn from everything, far-reaching, far-feeling, filled with smouldering fire, knowing despondency, knowing despair’.115 And indeed, James Dixon wrote in his work on Miller and elsewhere of the necessity of diverse types of ministerial gifts in the ecclesial economy, sometimes with a direct reference to revivalism. The quiet, tranquil pastor, who is bringing out of his Lord’s treasury ‘things new and old’, for the instruction, confirmation, and ‘perfecting’, of those who have been called ‘out of darkness into marvellous light’, by the more rousing and energetic preaching of his brother in the gospel, may be as faithful to his own vocation as the other, and equally useful in his sphere.116 Those who had the energy and vigour to engage in revival-type ministry were necessary for the conversion of sinners, but without pastors, converts would never develop the kind of roots needed for ongoing growth. In Dixon’s mind, the genius of the Methodist system was its regular rotation of ministers, ensuring that a variety of ministerial gifts were shared with the people in order to meet their varied needs, and according to the ‘eclectic’ movements of the divine will.117 Attachment to a particular pastor, he worried, could lead to ‘religious imbecility’ and inhibit true spiritual growth, and although the Methodist itinerant system guarded against this, he worried that such attachments were encouraged among Methodists by the ‘systematic revivalists’.118 Thus, just as he asserted it would be wrong to expect the Spirit to only work through revivals, so also he argued it was ‘extremely improper to exalt one class of God’s ministers at the expense of another’ since pastors and revivalists could only fulfil their ultimate purpose when working together.119 Dixon illustrated this principle with an anecdote from Miller’s time at Sheffield (1803–1805), when Miller and some other young revivalists had been praying over Joseph Entwistle, presented by Dixon as the opposite of a revivalist, ‘remarkable for placidity, meekness, serenity of mind, and mildness of expression’, and yet universally admired. As his young colleagues prayed for Entwistle to catch their revival spirit, With his usual sweetness, Mr. Entwistle said – ‘I thank you brethren, but what do you want? I am very happy and the love of God; I enjoy his salvation; possess the witness of his spirit, and am, in my way, endeavouring to glorify him.’ The issue was such as might be expected; each retained his respective religious identity; Mr. Entwistle departed to move in his own sphere of beautiful and tranquil piety, and his honest, mistaken friends, to blaze forth in their own heaven of fervent holiness and zeal.120

Revival and the Reformers 93 In a striking contrast to Caughey, who used the analogy of a hammer beating a rock to smash it to pieces, Dixon presents the faithful pastor as one who uses his hammer to patiently sculpt something beautiful: Whilst this is going on with such men as Mr. Miller, ministers of another class and style of gifts, are working out great results, but in a perfectly different manner. They have no thunderbolts to hurl; but, like the sculptor in working a beautiful form from a sightless block, add stroke upon stroke; and as their doctor the manner are not very alarming, the parties operated upon by the truth, are able to bear the repeated assaults. In this manner, great good is often accomplished, though the person who is its instrument is not much encouraged by any remarkable movement.121 Although Dixon was characteristically a defender of Methodism and Methodist polity, he suggested that the circuit system could undermine the value of pastoral wisdom and experience. Reflecting on Miller’s retirement due to ill health fifteen years before his death, Dixon lamented that the rigours of life as a travelling preacher were such that capable men were forced to retire in the prime of their pastoral capabilities, simply due to exhaustion. Moreover, in the Methodist Ministry, youthful and captivating preaching was valued, while more patient and careful scriptural teaching was undervalued. The church needed both, Dixon insisted: the careful ministry of pastoral superintendence, and the awakening and aggressive work of evangelistic preaching. Without ‘the matured mind, the rich experience, the calm wisdom, the tender and affectionate heart, the pastoral qualities—only to be acquired by long service’, the ministry and the church would suffer greatly.122 Perhaps the contrast with Caughey’s view of ministry was most clear in Dixon’s positive comments on the role of the Conference, found in his expresidential lecture of 1842. The Conference was an evangelical enterprise, Dixon argued, that arose organically out of the theological convictions and ministry of the Wesleys and fulfilled the essential functions of defining doctrine and establishing church order. It was episcopal, not in the sense of being centred around a bishop, but in the sense of exercising the function of oversight, which could be secured in several ways. Dixon portrayed this episcopal oversight as essential in order to coordinate the varied gifts of the ministry. John Wesley had originally played this role, and the ‘unsuitable instruments’ of the preachers were ‘moulded by the plastic power of this great master of circumstances’ such that ‘the chaos was reduced to order, and the elements which, in their separate state, were weak as water, became compact, massive and strong’.123 But now, since the Connexion had grown beyond its initial stages, the Conference exercised the episcopal function. Elsewhere he described such human councils in the church as ‘centres of life and authority’.124 The contrast with James Caughey’s individualistic understanding

94  Revival and the Reformers of the Spirit’s imprimatur upon his ministry without respect to Conference oversight is stark. Most importantly, Dixon avoided playing off the organisation of the Connexion against its missionary activity; rather, he stated that the Conference was ‘an assembly of ministers, convened for evangelical purposes: it is an entire pastorate, meant to take measures for the propagation of the Faith’.125 This evangelistic function was not negated by the establishment of the Missionary Society, which some might interpret as implying that the organ of oversight is not missionary. Whilst the organisation [sic] of Missionary Societies amongst many other churches has been altogether an ab-extra movement; that is, the isolated impression, scheme, and zealous charity, of individual Christians, who have thus risen above their church-system, and put in motion many of the best institutions of the day; our organisation itself, in the highest form, that of the Conference, has been eminently Missionary. Hence, long before the body chose to form a regular Missionary Society, the church, as such, was seen to move in that capacity, and, by the direct acts of its assembled pastorate, to send forth its Evangelists into various parts of the world…let it be recollected, that the institution of our Missionary Society introduced no new principle amongst us, as was the case amongst them.126 Likewise, he maintained that the organisation of the itinerancy and the circuit system were both functions of Methodism’s aggressive and evangelistic spirit.127 He also identified discipline, including the continual scrutiny of both the doctrine and life of the preachers, as an essential mark of the church, in order to secure a ‘spiritual ministry, sustaining the double function of preaching the pastoral care’.128 In short, Dixon provided a thorough theological defence of the Methodist system which Caughey was circumventing and undermining, at least implicitly. Like Caughey and other revivalists, Dixon believed that a genuine revival of true Christian zeal should leave no room for divisions, but he did not, as Carwardine suggests, simply see revival as ‘the great healing medicine for churches racked by disunity and party division’.129 First, his view of revival was, as we have seen, circumspect and somewhat ambivalent, and he was not a naïve advocate for revivalism. Secondly, he avoided the trap, often found among revivalists, of downplaying the structures of the church and exalting ignited piety above all else. Dixon gave a clear role for Conference to play in maintaining unity, though it was one that shied away from the centralisation espoused by Bunting and his circle. Unity was preserved, Dixon believed, through a discipline that was rigorous and yet ‘of the most catholic nature’, on the basis of essential evangelical truth.130 Dixon was motivated to emphasise evangelical catholicity, in part, by the rise of the Oxford Movement, fear of which lurks on nearly every page of his Methodism in its Origin, Economy, and Present Position. ‘It is the peculiar and imperative duty,’ he wrote,

Revival and the Reformers 95 ‘of all who really hold evangelical truth, to cultivate the spirit of union. The times call for this: the elements of the opposite tendency are converging to a point of fearful combination.’131 But the principle of catholic unity should be applied within Methodism as well, and he believed he saw this exemplified in American Methodism. He was particularly taken by what he saw as the ‘moderation’ of the American Conference, and the way the bishops remained above the fray of Conference debates, focusing on points of order and regulation. Thus, he suggested that in the Methodist Episcopal Church, there was ‘no low Methodism and high Methodism, no ins and outs, no government and its partisans to keep in office, or to remove’.132 This type of situation, of course, required submission to the authority of Conference by her members, even when the actions of Conference were displeasing. So Dixon, though an abolitionist, lamented the separation of the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion in America from the Methodist Episcopal Church, and urged patience for all reformers: Reformers often forget that great bodies are slow in their movements. It is vain for a single man to start up with the idea that he is to change the course old organizations, just by enhancing the truth he imagines he has discovered. Such men must have patience, reiterate their opinions, make up their minds often to be defeated, and, moreover, be treated with some severity. If their position in the church is left them, they may consider themselves well off.133 This advice, published in the eventful year of 1849, summarised Dixon’s own commitments to the Connexion, in spite of his ongoing sparring with some of its decisions and key figures. Caughey’s Unwitting Contribution While James Caughey never explicitly stated so, his message, his methods, and his actions demonstrated an implicit disregard for Conference unity. James Dixon realised that Caughey’s confidence in the power of the Spirit to work through ‘extraordinary means’ must be matched by trust in the Spirit’s presence through the ordinary means. Without such balance, the revivalist will always look askance on the broader church. And yet, on the other hand, he realised that revivals could be genuine, and left the door open to the dramatic and surprising work of the Spirit, avoiding the fixation on centralised control that was gripping high Wesleyan Methodism. Dixon’s combination of confidence in the ordinary and openness to the extraordinary is a closer approximation of John Wesley’s perspective on the Spirit and the means of grace than we find in the more polarised positions of the 1840s. Caughey was a lightning rod for controversy because he exposed divisions already at play within the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion. In the end, Carwardine notes that the battle lines in 1849 closely aligned with the battle lines

96  Revival and the Reformers over Caughey: Bunting, Atherton, and Newton against Beaumont, Everett, and Dunn. Sheffield, the scene of Caughey’s greatest triumphs, became the stronghold of Reform Methodism. It is therefore difficult to avoid Carwardine’s conclusion: ‘The conflict caused by Caughey and his revivalism, then, was both prophetic of and contributory to the great upheaval in Wesleyanism.’134 Though it has not been generally recognised, part of his ‘contribution’ was theological: he cast a vision of the Spirit’s work that was dramatic, immediate, and empowering to the individual, thereby amplifying the clash of theological presuppositions between ‘low’ and ‘high’ Methodism concerning the nature of the Spirit’s work in the church. Notes 1 Hugh Bourne, ‘The Autobiography of Hugh Bourne’ (n.d.), A text, notebook 1, f. 22, DDHB 2/1-3, Methodist Archives and Research Centre, John Rylands Research Centre and Library, University of Manchester. 2 John Walford, Memoirs of the Life and Labours of the Late Venerable Hugh Bourne: By a Member of the Bourne Family (London: T. King, 1854), 1: 114. See also Hugh Bourne, History of the Primitive Methodists Giving an Account of Their Rise and Progress up to the Year 1823 (Bemersley: Printed for the author, at the Office of the Primitive Methodist Connexion, by J. Bourne, 1823), 8; Hugh Bourne, ‘On the Origin of the Primitive Methodist Connexion, with Notices on the Origin of the Wesleyan Connexion’, Primitive Methodist Magazine n.s., 6 (1836): 300. 3 James Dixon, Memoir of the Late Rev. William Edward Miller, Wesleyan Minister (London: Hamilton, Adams and Company, 1842). 4 On Dixon’s life, see Richard Watson Dixon, The Life of James Dixon, D.D., Wesleyan Minister (London: Wesleyan Conference Office, 1874); Samuel Dunn, Memorials of the Venerable James Dixon (London: George J. Stevenson, 1872); George J. Stevenson, Methodist Worthies: Characteristic Sketches of Methodist Preachers of the Several Denominations, with Historical Sketch of Each Connexion, vol. 1 (London: T.C. Jack, 1884), 307–19; Wesley and His Successors: A Centenary Memorial of the Death of John Wesley (London: C.H. Kelly, 1891), 151–54. 5 On these themes, see James Dixon, Letters on the Duties of Protestants with Regard to Popery (Sheffield, UK: G. Challoner, 1840); The Present Position and Aspects of Popery, and the Duty of Exposing the Errors of Papal Rome. A Lecture. (London: Mason, 1840); and Dixon’s 1842 presidential address—highly charged with anti-Tractarian polemics: Methodism in Its Origin, Economy, and Present Position: A Sermon (London: James Dixon, 1843). 6 At that time, the British Wesleyan Methodist Conference still supplied the President for the Canadian Conference. See James Dixon, Methodism in America: With the Personal Narrative of the Author, During a Tour Through a Part of the United States and Canada (London: Printed for the author by J. Mason and J. Peart, 1849). 7 Dixon, Memoir of William Edward Miller, 119–21. This is confirmed by the Minutes, against Bourne’s negative assessment of Miller’s tenure. Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, vol. 2 (London: Thomas Cordeux, 1813), 285, 340, 397. 8 Dixon, Memoir of William Edward Miller, 100. 9 Dixon, 162.

Revival and the Reformers 97 10 John Kent, The Age of Disunity (London: Epworth Press, 1966), 51–85; Robert Currie, Methodism Divided: A Study in the Sociology of Ecumenicalism (London: Faber, 1968), 44–82; W. Reginald Ward, Religion and Society in England, 1790-1850 (New York: Schocken Books, 1973), 135–76, 236–78; D. A Gowland, Methodist Secessions: The Origins of Free Methodism in Three Lancashire Towns, Manchester, Rochdale, Liverpool (Manchester: Published for the Chetham Society by Manchester University Press, 1979); David Hempton, Methodism and Politics in British Society, 1750–1850 (London: Routledge, 1984), 92–96, 197–202. 11 John Kent, Jabez Bunting, the Last Wesleyan: A Study in the Methodist Ministry After the Death of John Wesley (London: Epworth Press, 1955); Reginald Kissack, Church or No Church? A Study of the Development of the Concept of Church in British Methodism (London: Epworth Press, 1964); John C Bowmer, Pastor and People: A Study of Church and Ministry in Wesleyan Methodism from the Death of John Wesley (1791) to the Death of Jabez Bunting (1858) (London: Epworth Press, 1975). 12 Roger J. Green, The Life and Ministry of William Booth: Founder of the Salvation Army (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005), 16–19; Norman Murdoch, Origins of The Salvation Army (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994), 1–16. 13 Richard Carwardine, Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America 1790–1865 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978), 102–33; John Kent, Holding the Fort: Studies in Victorian Revivalism (London: Epworth Press, 1978), 77–87, 310–15, et passim; Charles H. Goodwin, ‘James Caughey’s Challenge to Wesleyan Concepts of Ministry and Church Growth; 1841–1846’, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 49 (May 1994): 141–50; Michael R. Watts, The Dissenters, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 614–25; Nigel Scotland, Apostles of the Spirit and Fire: American Revivalists and Victorian Britain (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2009), 91–115; Todd Webb, Transatlantic Methodists: British Wesleyanism and the Formation of an Evangelical Culture in Nineteenth-Century Ontario and Quebec (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013), 150–55, 160–62; Peter Bush, ‘James Caughey, Phoebe and Walter Palmer and the Methodist Revival Experience in Canada West, 1850–1858’ (M.A. Thesis, Kingston, ON, Queen’s University, 1985). 14 Carwardine, Transatlantic Revivalism, 109; James Caughey, Earnest Christianity Illustrated; or, Selections from the Journal of the Rev. James Caughey, ed. Daniel Wise (Boston: J. P. Magee, 1855), 9. 15 Wise, commenting in Methodism in Earnest: Being the History of a Great Revival in Great Britain, ed. R. W. Allen and Daniel Wise (Boston: C. H. Peirce, 1850), 11. 16 William Harvard to Jabez Bunting, 11 November 1839, in Early Victorian Methodism: The Correspondence of Jabez Bunting, 1830–1858 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 236. 17 Caughey, Methodism in Earnest, 46–47. Caughey clarifies that this message did not come in so many words by an audible voice, but as a definite impression that was difficult to express. 18 Caughey, 84; Webb, Transatlantic Methodists, 151–52. 19 Caughey, Methodism in Earnest, 121–217. 20 See the summary in Carwardine, Transatlantic Revivalism, 111–14. 21 Summarised in Caughey, Methodism in Earnest, 426. 22 He habitually distinguished between converts ‘from the world’ and ‘from the societies,’ and tried to account for actual increase in society membership. So, through his labours in Leeds in 1843, he reported that 1600 had professed justification, but bemoaned the fact that this only meant an increase of 350 to the Leeds circuits. Caughey, 320–21.

98  Revival and the Reformers 23 Benjamin Gregory, Side Lights on the Conflicts of Methodism During the Second Quarter of the Nineteenth Century, 1827–1852 (London: Cassell, 1898), 344–45, 368–69, 390–91, 400–402. 24 See William Vevers letter to Bunting, March 23 1847, in Ward, Early Victorian Methodism, 350. Caughey’s history with Atherton goes back to his early campaigns in Liverpool. After preaching for nine weeks in the north circuit with a supportive Ministry that included Joseph Beaumont, the Leaders from the south circuit invited him to conduct services there. Atherton, Superintendent of the south circuit, ‘received us politely, and though evidently not at all enthusiastic upon the subject, yielded to the request of the Leaders.’ Caughey, Methodism in Earnest, 229. 25 Minutes of Conference, 1847, QXXXIX, in Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, vol. 10 (London: John Mason, 1848), 551–53. 26 The Fly Sheets: Nos. 1,2,3, and 4, To Which Is Now Added a New Fly Sheet, No. 5. (Birmingham, UK: William Cornish, 1849), 65ff. See Bunting’s claims that he was not anti-revival in Gregory, Side Lights, 390, 403. 27 ‘A Wesleyan Methodist’ (anon), The Whole Case Stated: Correspondence on the Case of J. Caughey and the British Wesleyan Conference (London: W. Brittain, 1846); ‘A Wesleyan Methodist’ (anon), A Brief Memoir of the Labours and a Vindication of the Character and Call of the Rev. J. Caughey (London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co., 1847); William B. Carter, The Case Tested: An Inquiry into the Character and Labours of the Rev. James Caughey, and the Action of the British Wesleyan Conference Thereon (London: Whittaker and Co, 1847); William Vevers, Wesleyan Methodism Vindicated, and the ‘Christian Witness’ Refuted: A Reply to the Attacks in That Publication, in 2 Letters (London: John Mason, 1847), 16–22. 28 Caughey kept his temperance lectures separate from his revival campaigns and normally gave temperance lectures outside of Wesleyan chapels—sometimes in secular locations, or in other denominational buildings, such as when he spoke on temperance in a Primitive Methodist Chapel in Sheffield on July 3 1844. Caughey, Methodism in Earnest, 396. 29 Letter to unknown recipient, dated September 11 1846, in Brief Memoir, 77. 30 Carwardine, Transatlantic Revivalism, 175–76. 31 Gregory, Side Lights, 322. 32 Caughey, Methodism in Earnest, 123, 226. 33 Caughey, 126, 353. 34 Caughey, 384. 35 James Caughey, A Voice from America, or, Four Sermons Preached in England by the Rev. J. Caughey, the Great American Revivalist, 2nd ed. (Manchester: Smiths and Wilkinson, 1847), 3. 36 James Caughey, Letters on Various Subjects, vol. 2 (London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co., 1845), 135. 37 Caughey, A Voice from America, 7. 38 See, for example, Caughey, Methodism in Earnest, 339, 343, 362. 39 Caughey, Letters on Various Subjects, 1845, 2:124, 126, 132. See also Caughey, Methodism in Earnest, 395. 40 Caughey, Methodism in Earnest, 136–37, 403, 340–41, 360–61, 391. 41 Caughey, 154, 173, 386. 42 The Fly Sheets, 67. 43 Gregory, Side Lights, 391. 44 Carwardine, Transatlantic Revivalism, 110. 45 Carwardine, 110; Methodism in Earnest, vi, 43, 51. 46 Caughey, Methodism in Earnest, 132–33.

Revival and the Reformers 99 47 See Robert Webster’s discussion of the ‘reluctant death’ of Methodist emphasis on the supernatural in the nineteenth century, in Methodism and the Miraculous: John Wesley’s Idea of the Supernatural and the Identification of Methodists in the Eighteenth-Century (Lexington, KY: Emeth Press, 2013), 195–202. 48 Daniel Wise, commenting in Methodism in Earnest, 148. 49 Brief Memoir, 39–43. 50 Carter, The Case Tested, 15, 18. 51 Carwardine, Transatlantic Revivalism, 118–19. Wise wrote, ‘No unpardoned sinner can avoid a sense of guilt under his appeals…This was his greatest strength.’ Caughey, Methodism in Earnest, 194. 52 Caughey, A Voice from America, 4. 53 Caughey, 7. 54 Caughey, 7–9. 55 Caughey, 9–10; See also James Caughey, Showers of Blessing from Clouds of Mercy, ed. R. W. Allen (Boston: J. P. Magee, 1860), 127–28. 56 Caughey, A Voice from America, 19–28. 57 Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1987), 68–73; Melvin Easterday Dieter, The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1980), 18–32. 58 Caughey, A Voice from America, 29–30. 59 Caughey, Letters on Various Subjects, 1845, 2:59. See also Caughey, A Voice from America, 9–18; Caughey, Methodism in Earnest, 130. 60 Caughey, Methodism in Earnest, 341. 61 Caughey, 288. See also James Caughey, Revival Miscellanies, ed. R. W. Allen and Daniel Wise (Boston: J. P. Magee, 1851), 202–3. 62 Caughey, Letters on Various Subjects, 1845, 2:179. 63 Caughey, A Voice from America, 34–38; Fletcher to Mr. Vaughan, Sep. 4, 1762, in Posthumous Pieces of the Late Rev. John William de La Flechere, ed. Melvill Horne (Madeley: J. Edmunds, 1791), 118; On Palmer, see Elaine A Heath, Naked Faith: The Mystical Theology of Phoebe Palmer (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2009), 69–72. 64 Carwardine, Transatlantic Revivalism, 125. Dixon’s views will be taken up below. 65 John Kent, ‘The Wesleyan Methodists to 1849’, in A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, ed. Rupert E Davies, A. Raymond George, and E. Gordon Rupp, vol. 2 (London: Epworth, 1978), 237–38; John Munsey Turner, ‘Victorian Values - or Whatever Happened to John Wesley’s Scriptural Holiness?’, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 46, no. 6 (October 1988): 165–68. 66 Caughey, Methodism in Earnest, 24. 67 Carwardine, Transatlantic Revivalism, 118. 68 Gregory, Side Lights, 344–45, 403. 69 Caughey, A Voice from America, 4. 70 Caughey, Methodism in Earnest, 75, 150, 266. 71 Caughey, 40; James Caughey, Letters on Various Subjects, vol. 3 (London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co., 1846), 266–67. 72 Caughey, Methodism in Earnest, 234, 238–39, 241. 73 Caughey, 14–15; see also Caughey, Revival Miscellanies, 200–204. 74 Caughey, A Voice from America, 5; Caughey, Methodism in Earnest, 346. 75 Caughey, Methodism in Earnest, 124. 76 Caughey, 145. Note that the letter (from Richard Craig), was dated March 9, 1847—after the Conference had requested that Caughey be called home to America. 77 Caughey, 40, 125. 78 Caughey, Letters on Various Subjects, 1845, 2:241.

100  Revival and the Reformers 79 But note Newton’s charge that Caughey was not preaching the gospel, in Gregory, Side Lights, 400. 80 Charles Grandison Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1868), 10; See also the comment of Thomas O. Summers, in his introduction to Methodism in Earnest, iii: “without them, formality and earthlymindedness will over-spread the church, and it will be consequently powerless as an agent for the conversion of the world.” 81 Caughey, Letters on Various Subjects, 1845, 2:237–40. 82 Caughey, A Voice from America, 35. 83 The Fly Sheets, 65. 84 See, for example, Caughey, Methodism in Earnest, 231, 238. 85 Caughey, Letters on Various Subjects, 1845, 2:236. 86 Caughey, 2:239; see also Caughey, Revival Miscellanies, 200. 87 Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, vol. 9 (London: John Mason, 1843), 119. Caughey quoted this passage in Methodism in Earnest, 329. 88 Gregory, Side Lights, 390; see also 401, 403. 89 Carter, The Case Tested, 9. 90 Carwardine, Transatlantic Revivalism, 131. 91 John Beecham, An Essay on the Constitution of Wesleyan Methodism, 3rd ed. (London: John Mason, 1851), 81–124; Ward, Religion and Society in England, 1790–1850, 129–52. 92 Gregory, Side Lights, 344. 93 Kent, ‘The Wesleyan Methodists to 1849’, 258. 94 Dixon, Life of James Dixon, 184–85. 95 Dixon, 124. The issue at hand was the introduction of questions from the Book of Common Prayer ordination service; Dixon was mistaken, and the questions had been introduced by Conference authority. Dixon, 124–30. 96 Dixon, Life of James Dixon, 313. 97 Gregory, Side Lights, 369. 98 The letter is reproduced in Dixon, Memoir of William Edward Miller, 148–51. Miller was appointed to Manchester for two years, 1811–1813, so the letter could date from that time, but when Dixon discusses Miller’s time in Manchester he claims none of Miller’s letters from that time survived. Other appointments in the vicinity included Rochdale (1807–1809) and Oldham (1816–1818). Dixon, 121–36. 99 Dixon, Memoir of William Edward Miller, 152. 100 Dixon, 57. 101 Dixon, 152. 102 Dixon, 152–53. 103 Dixon, 115. 104 Dixon, 158. 105 Dixon, Methodism in Its Origin, 64. 106 Dixon, Life of James Dixon, 483. 107 Dixon, Memoir of William Edward Miller, 241–46; see also 165–72. 108 Dixon, 158–59. 109 Dixon, 161–62. 110 Dixon, 162–63. 111 Dixon, 61–63. 112 Dixon, 79. 113 Dixon, 187. 114 Dixon, 41. 115 Dixon, Life of James Dixon, 251–52. 116 Dixon, Memoir of William Edward Miller, 57–58. 117 Dixon, Methodism in America, 157.

Revival and the Reformers 101 18 Dixon, Memoir of William Edward Miller, 205. 1 119 Dixon, 60. 120 Dixon, 112. Compare Caughey, Letters on Various Subjects, 1845, 2:241, noted above. 121 Dixon, Memoir of William Edward Miller, 188. 122 Dixon, 267. But note his concerns that too much attention to providing for pastoral needs and excellent preaching at larger and more prosperous societies might lead to evangelistic stagnation, in Methodism in Its Origin, 163–66. 123 Dixon, Methodism in America, 155–56. 124 Dixon, 220. 125 Dixon, Methodism in Its Origin, 160. 126 Dixon, 162. 127 Dixon, 162–66. 128 Dixon, 108–11. 129 Carwardine, Transatlantic Revivalism, 133, citing Dixon, Memoir of William Edward Miller, 184–85. 130 Dixon, Methodism in Its Origin, 107. 131 Dixon, 130. In this passage, he identifies the essentials as ‘the doctrines of our Lord's atonement, justification by faith only, and the necessity of the new birth.’ 132 Dixon, Methodism in America, 241. 133 Dixon, 418. 134 Carwardine, Transatlantic Revivalism, 133.

Bibliography ‘A Wesleyan Methodist’ (anon). A Brief Memoir of the Labours and a Vindication of the Character and Call of the Rev. J. Caughey. London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co., 1847. ———. The Whole Case Stated: Correspondence on the Case of J. Caughey and the British Wesleyan Conference. London: W. Brittain, 1846. Beecham, John. An Essay on the Constitution of Wesleyan Methodism. 3rd ed. London: John Mason, 1851. Bourne, Hugh. History of the Primitive Methodists Giving an Account of Their Rise and Progress up to the Year 1823. Bemersley: Printed for the author, at the Office of the Primitive Methodist Connexion, by J. Bourne, 1823. ———. ‘On the Origin of the Primitive Methodist Connexion, with Notices on the Origin of the Wesleyan Connexion’. Primitive Methodist Magazine 6 (1836): 68–72, 95–102, 138–46, 174–80, 219–26, 259–65, 297–304, 338–41, 373–78, 418–23, 457–59. ———. The Autobiography of Hugh Bourne, n.d. DDHB 2/1-3. Methodist Archives and Research Centre, John Rylands Research Centre and Library, University of Manchester. Bowmer, John C. Pastor and People: A Study of Church and Ministry in Wesleyan Methodism from the Death of John Wesley (1791) to the Death of Jabez Bunting (1858). London: Epworth Press, 1975. Bush, Peter. ‘James Caughey, Phoebe and Walter Palmer and the Methodist Revival Experience in Canada West, 1850–1858’. M.A. Thesis, Queen’s University, 1985. Carter, William B. The Case Tested: An Inquiry into the Character and Labours of the Rev. James Caughey, and the Action of the British Wesleyan Conference Thereon. London: Whittaker and Co, 1847.

102  Revival and the Reformers Carwardine, Richard. Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America 1790-1865. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978. Caughey, James. A Voice from America, or, Four Sermons Preached in England by the Rev. J. Caughey, the Great American Revivalist. 2nd ed. Manchester: Smiths and Wilkinson, 1847. ———. Earnest Christianity Illustrated; or, Selections from the Journal of the Rev. James Caughey. Edited by Daniel Wise. Boston: J. P. Magee, 1855. ———. Letters on Various Subjects. Vol. 2. 5 Vols. London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co., 1845. ———. Letters on Various Subjects. Vol. 3. 5 Vols. London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co., 1846. ———. Methodism in Earnest: Being the History of a Great Revival in Great Britain. Edited by R. W. Allen and Daniel Wise. Boston: C. H. Peirce, 1850. ———. Revival Miscellanies. Edited by R. W. Allen and Daniel Wise. Boston: J. P. Magee, 1851. ———. Showers of Blessing from Clouds of Mercy. Edited by R. W. Allen. Boston: J. P. Magee, 1860. Currie, Robert. Methodism Divided: A Study in the Sociology of Ecumenicalism. London: Faber, 1968. Dayton, Donald W. Theological Roots of Pentecostalism. Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1987. Dieter, Melvin Easterday. The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1980. Dixon, James. Letters on the Duties of Protestants with Regard to Popery. Sheffield: G. Challoner, 1840. ———. Memoir of the Late Rev. William Edward Miller, Wesleyan Minister. London: Hamilton, Adams and Company, 1842. ———. Methodism in America: With the Personal Narrative of the Author, During a Tour Through a Part of the United States and Canada. London: Printed for the author, by J. Mason and J. Peart, 1849. ———. Methodism in Its Origin, Economy, and Present Position: A Sermon. London: James Dixon, 1843. ———. The Present Position and Aspects of Popery, and the Duty of Exposing the Errors of Papal Rome. A Lecture. London: Mason, 1840. Dixon, Richard Watson. The Life of James Dixon, D.D., Wesleyan Minister. London: Wesleyan Conference Office, 1874. Dunn, Samuel. Memorials of the Venerable James Dixon. London: George J. Stevenson, 1872. Finney, Charles Grandison. Lectures on Revivals of Religion. New York, NY: Fleming H. Revell, 1868. Fletcher, John. Posthumous Pieces of the Late Rev. John William De La Flechere. Edited by Melvill Horne. Madeley: J. Edmunds, 1791. Goodwin, Charles H. ‘James Caughey’s Challenge to Wesleyan Concepts of Ministry and Church Growth; 1841–1846’. Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 49 (May 1994): 141–50. Gowland, D. A. Methodist Secessions: The Origins of Free Methodism in Three Lancashire Towns, Manchester, Rochdale, Liverpool. Manchester: Published for the Chetham Society by Manchester University Press, 1979. Green, Roger J. The Life and Ministry of William Booth: Founder of the Salvation Army. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2005.

Revival and the Reformers 103 Gregory, Benjamin. Side Lights on the Conflicts of Methodism During the Second Quarter of the Nineteenth Century, 1827–1852. London: Cassell, 1898. Heath, Elaine A. Naked Faith: The Mystical Theology of Phoebe Palmer. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2009. Hempton, David. Methodism and Politics in British Society, 1750–1850. London: Routledge, 1984. Kent, John. Holding the Fort: Studies in Victorian Revivalism. London: Epworth Press, 1978. ———. Jabez Bunting, the Last Wesleyan: A Study in the Methodist Ministry After the Death of John Wesley. London: Epworth Press, 1955. ———. The Age of Disunity. London: Epworth Press, 1966. ———. ‘The Wesleyan Methodists to 1849’. In A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, edited by Rupert E Davies, A. Raymond George, and E. Gordon Rupp, 2:213–75. London: Epworth, 1978. Kissack, Reginald. Church or No Church? A Study of the Development of the Concept of Church in British Methodism. London: Epworth Press, 1964. Minutes of the Methodist Conferences. Vol. 2. London: Thomas Cordeux, 1813. Minutes of the Methodist Conferences. Vol. 9. London: John Mason, 1843. Minutes of the Methodist Conferences. Vol. 10. London: John Mason, 1848. Munsey Turner, John. ‘Victorian Values – or Whatever Happened to John Wesley’s Scriptural Holiness?’ Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 46, no. 6 (October 1988): 165–84. Murdoch, Norman. Origins of The Salvation Army. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1994. Scotland, Nigel. Apostles of the Spirit and Fire: American Revivalists and Victorian Britain. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2009. Stevenson, George J. Methodist Worthies: Characteristic Sketches of Methodist Preachers of the Several Denominations, with Historical Sketch of Each Connexion. Vol. 1. London: T.C. Jack, 1884. Fly Sheets: Nos. 1,2,3, and 4, To Which Is Now Added a New Fly Sheet, No5. Birmingham: William Cornish, 1849. Vevers, William. Wesleyan Methodism Vindicated, and the ‘Christian Witness’ Refuted: A Reply to the Attacks in That Publication, in 2 Letters. London: John Mason, 1847. Walford, John. Memoirs of the Life and Labours of the Late Venerable Hugh Bourne: By a Member of the Bourne Family. 2 Vols. London: T. King, 1854. Ward, W. Reginald, ed. Early Victorian Methodism: The Correspondence of Jabez Bunting, 1830-1858. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976. Ward, W. Reginald, ed. Religion and Society in England, 1790–1850. New  York: Schocken Books, 1973. Watts, Michael R. The Dissenters. Vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Webb, Todd. Transatlantic Methodists: British Wesleyanism and the Formation of an Evangelical Culture in Nineteenth-Century Ontario and Quebec. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013. Webster, Robert. Methodism and the Miraculous: John Wesley’s Idea of the Supernatural and the Identification of Methodists in the Eighteenth-Century. Lexington, KY: Emeth Press, 2013. Wesley and His Successors: A Centenary Memorial of the Death of John Wesley. London: C.H. Kelly, 1891.

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Separate but Non-sectarian The Salvation Army’s Ecclesiological Ambiguities

In Methodism in Earnest, editor Daniel Wise offered only a one-paragraph summary of James Caughey’s 1846 campaign in Nottingham: The revival in Nottingham was more glorious than all. Mr. Caughey opened his commission there on the 10th of May, 1846, and in the short space of one month upwards of fourteen hundred were converted to God. Sunday, the 31st of May, and two days following, Mr. Caughey spent at Castle Donington, and one hundred and eighty persons were converted to God. He then returned to Nottingham, and completed his engagement on the 12th of June.1 These results were relatively modest by Caughey’s standards. The Nottingham campaign’s lasting impact came through the impression it made on a seventeen-year-old street preacher named William Booth. Looking back forty years later, Booth recalled Caughey as an ‘extraordinary preacher’ known for ‘thrilling anecdotes and vivid illustrations’, and remarked, ‘I had up to that time never heard his equal; I do not know that I have since.’ Caughey and his ministry inspired Booth’s confidence in the power of God and in ‘the absolute certainty with which soul saving results may be calculated upon, when proper means are used for their accomplishment’. He continued, I saw as clearly, as if a revelation had been made to me from heaven, that success in spiritual work, as in natural operations, was to be accounted for, not on any mere abstract theory of divine sovereignty, or favouritism, or accident, but on the employment of such methods as were dictated by common sense, the Holy Spirit, and the Word of God.2 Caughey embodied the ‘new measures’ revivalism described in Charles Finney’s Lectures on Revival. Booth would continue to look to Caughey as an exemplar and spiritual mentor, reconnecting with him at various points during Caughey’s subsequent British tours, and again in America in 1886.3 An early encounter in February 1858 was particularly significant. Booth and his wife Catherine met with Caughey at Sheffield, where they attended his DOI: 10.4324/9781003224327-5

Separate but Non-sectarian 105 services, shared a meal, and consulted on the possibility of breaking free from denominational ties. Caughey advised Booth to wait until his ordination in the Methodist New Connexion was complete—advice which Booth followed. The Booths also had Caughey baptise their second son, Ballington. Catherine’s esteem for the American was such that she kissed his hand, writing to her parents that she ‘felt more gratified than if it had been Queen’s Victoria’s’.4 The Booths wanted to follow in Caughey’s footsteps and serve as freelance itinerant revivalists, ministering wherever they found a welcome, without Conference oversight and accountability. They would eventually make that move, three years later, after several attempted compromises on the part of Methodist New Connexion authorities. Four years of travelling around England came to an end in 1865, when William Booth reportedly ‘found his destiny’ in east London.5 While they eventually found freedom from denominational affiliation, their trajectory in ministry was inextricably entangled with the story of divided mid-century Methodism. William Booth was born on 10 April 1829 and baptised in the Church of England but came to personal faith in Wesleyan Methodism through his association with Wesley Chapel, Broad Street, Nottingham.6 Forced to withdraw from school and apprentice in pawnbroking by the death of his father, the teenage Booth began unauthorised street preaching before eventually taking up local preacher status during Samuel Dunn’s appointment to Nottingham. Dunn would soon become associated with the Wesleyan Reformers via his expulsion from the Wesleyan Methodist Conference in 1849, along with James Everett and William Griffith, under suspicion of authoring the Fly Sheets.7 William Booth left Nottingham for London shortly after Dunn’s expulsion and initially continued to move in Wesleyan Methodist circles as a local preacher. As the Wesleyan Reformers emerged out of the conflict, it was only natural that Booth would consider aligning with them, given his connections with Dunn and the way the Fly Sheets had leveraged the Wesleyan Conference’s treatment of Caughey as a rallying point. Though not a thoroughly convinced Reformer, William had joined their number by the time he met his future wife Catherine early in 1852. This move came partly because his benefactor Edward Rabbits had become a Reformer, and partly because he’d been excluded from membership by his Wesleyan Superintendent John Hall, seemingly over a dispute about street preaching.8 He left pawnbroking behind and took up a full-time ministry with the Reformers on 9 April, though his initial appointment ended by mutual agreement after only three months. A brief flirtation with Congregationalism ended when he encountered their Calvinist theology; he returned to the Reformers and served two years at Spalding before moving to the Methodist New Connexion in 1854.9 The New Connexion initially made him an evangelist in London, but then assigned him to circuit ministry, first at Brighouse and then Gateshead. He continued to request that he be freed from all local responsibilities, and eventually left the New Connexion after he was instead appointed to the

106  Separate but Non-sectarian Newcastle Circuit at the 1861 Conference in Liverpool.10 By the time he left Methodism in all its forms behind, he had nevertheless been deeply formed in a Methodist ethos, albeit a revivalist brand of Methodism, as represented by his mentor Caughey. Four years of independent itinerant revival campaigning ensued before the Booth family moved to London in 1865. London offered opportunities for Catherine, whose reputation as a speaker was growing, but it was William’s revival campaign in East London that birthed the organisation known in its early years as ‘the Christian Mission’.11 The name change to ‘the Salvation Army’ in 1878 coincided with a re-branding of every aspect of its operations on a military model and marked the beginning of a period of rapid expansion, not only in England but on the continent, in British colonies, and in America.12 In addition to its founding and the 1878 re-naming, two other moments are ecclesiologically significant in early Salvation Army history. The first was in 1882–1883, when merger negotiations with the Church of England faltered, and the Army made non-observance of the sacraments its official policy. The second came around 1890, when Booth articulated his mature theology of redemption as ‘salvation for both worlds’, the spiritual and the temporal, and re-cast the Salvation Army’s mission as a ‘war on two fronts’, rather than a strictly evangelistic effort.13 As noted in the introduction, Robert Currie classified the divisions of nineteenth-century Methodism into ‘secessions’ focused on constitutional issues and ‘offshoots’ which grew out of revivals.14 Booth’s ministerial experience prior to 1865 was primarily amongst the Wesleyan Reformers and the Methodist New Connexion, two secessionist bodies that emerged from sharp divisions over matters of polity. But the Salvation Army more closely mirrored Currie’s pattern of a denominational ‘offshoot’, following the path of revivalist bodies such as the Primitive Methodists and the Bible Christians. The Army was unique, however, in that it was not formed out of an immediate separation from another Methodist body. Hugh Bourne may have operated his revival ministry with virtual independence of the Wesleyan Methodist authorities, but he did so while he remained an active Wesleyan Methodist. Because William and Catherine Booth had been independent evangelists since 1861, the relationships between the early Christian Mission and other religious bodies were more tangential than they were for groups like the Primitive Methodists. But still, the parallels are clear: Booth and Bourne both broke ties with established Wesleyan bodies because they wanted to operate as freelance evangelists; in both cases, a loosely organised revival operating alongside established denominations provided the network and organisation that would eventually develop into a denomination. This pattern was repeated in Holiness denominations in the United States, many of which emerged out of holiness and camp meeting associations.15 Salvationists defended their new movement using many of the same arguments that were used by other revivalists, arguing that their founders never intended to start

Separate but Non-sectarian 107 a new denomination and they gained most of their members through new evangelistic work rather than ‘sheep-stealing’. What made the Salvation Army unusual is that Salvationists continued to maintain that they were not another denomination, even after they had clearly begun to function as a denomination. They were autonomous, with no ties to any ecclesial body that claimed to be ‘a church’, and their members had no church home outside of the Salvation Army. The denial of church status while taking on church functions was indicative of the profound ambiguity in early Salvationist ecclesiology. Indeed, it represented the culmination of the trajectory of British Methodist revivalism: the church had been eclipsed as a meaningful theological category. The visible church was, at best, an afterthought for William Booth, but more often than that it was a foil against which he railed to gain support for his new movement. Of course, as the movement institutionalised and followed the familiar sociological trajectory from ‘movement’ or ‘sect’ to ‘church’, the ambiguity and tensions only deepened.16 The marginalisation of ecclesiology was not theologically sustainable, though the Army would not officially embrace its identity as ‘a church’ until the 1970s, and would only begin serious ecclesiological reflection in the 1980s.17 For his part, William Booth claimed his Army was a missionary agency, not a Christian denomination, even though it clearly acted like one. Booth added to the ambiguity by sometimes claiming that his movement and its officers were in no way inferior to any other church or body of clergy. Although the early Salvation Army’s ecclesiology was unique and idiosyncratic, it was built upon common assumptions shared by other Wesleyan revivalists in the nineteenth century. Thus, it throws into sharp relief many of the challenges facing nineteenth-century Wesleyan ecclesiology. The ‘Unsectarian’ Aspirations of Victorian Evangelicalism Early Salvationists combined high expectations for ‘genuine’ Christianity with open-heartedness towards true Christians across the denominational spectrum. According to Roger Green, Booth believed the universal Church was composed of all believers who had experienced justification by faith and who witnessed to Christ in word and deed.18 Salvationists saw themselves as part of the universal Church and never claimed that they alone were the true Church. They aimed to avoid controversy with other denominations in matters of Christian faith and practice and saw the salvation experience as something which transcended theological differences. So, Catherine Booth wrote in 1883: ‘We believe God cares very little about our sectarian differences and divisions. The great main thing is the love of God and the service of humanity; and when we find people actuated by this motive, we love them by whatever name they are called.’19 William Booth claimed that by not holding membership in any church, Salvationists were ‘non-sectarian’ and could ‘promote general godliness and harmony’ and ‘avoid as the very poison of hell all controverted questions’.20

108  Separate but Non-sectarian To a certain extent, the Booths could claim to be following the example of John Wesley. As I noted in Chapter 2, Wesley admired genuine Christians from a variety of traditions, including those who he believed to be in serious doctrinal error.21 Early Methodism avoided formal doctrinal tests for membership and even for the Preachers, who were only required to preach the doctrine contained in the first four volumes of Wesley’s Sermons and his Notes on the New Testament.22 The Booths could also find precedent for avoiding a fixation on doctrinal matters among nineteenth-century Methodists. Wesleyan Methodism largely maintained the early Methodist tradition, despite commissioning a draft set of articles in 1805 (prepared, but never adopted), and adding emphasis on depravity, the divinity of Christ, the atonement, the witness of the Spirit, and holiness in the 1807 Minutes.23 The non-Wesleyan breakaway denominations, on the other hand, articulated basic doctrines, at least in some form.24 The Primitive Methodists named a number of doctrines in a one-paragraph summary, without offering any substantive statement of the doctrines listed.25 The United Methodist Free Churches went a little bit further in developing basic statements of doctrines that preachers were required to uphold.26 The Methodist New Connexion had the most formal set of articles of belief among the British Methodist traditions, and formulated these early in their history—a defence of their Methodist character against slander, according to William Baggaly’s later account.27 William Booth would eventually borrow from the New Connexion’s articles of faith when he prepared the Salvation Army’s articles.28 Even in this case, by comparison with the statements of faith in other traditions, the Methodist bodies clearly did not place great emphasis on doctrinal precision and preferred to keep binding theological commitments to a minimum. However, it would be wrong to suggest that Wesley or later Methodists were indifferent about theology. Booth’s reluctance to enter theological debate may have gone further than others in the Wesleyan tradition, but even he tenaciously upheld fundamental evangelical doctrines. He followed Wesley in affirming that theological diversity was inevitable and acceptable, provided these diverse views did not undercut the soteriological core of the Christian gospel. Similarly, both Wesley and Booth would prioritise the transformative experience of faith in Christ over orthodoxy for its own sake. William Booth explicitly claimed that his non-sectarian vision for the Army was rooted in his Wesleyanism, and even suggested that Salvationists could succeed where Wesley had failed in this regard. His ambition was that the Army would ‘spread far and wide a spirit of love and hearty co-operation’ and ‘lessen the dividing walls of sectarianism’.29 These anti-sectarian convictions enabled early Salvationists to support common missionary efforts among those who shared a vibrant evangelical faith, beyond the somewhat ambiguous doctrinal boundaries of Methodism. This reflected the revivalist influence of their day, which presupposed that evangelical Protestants shared enough common ground to work together

Separate but Non-sectarian 109 on revival campaigns and ‘home missions’. Extra-denominational mission agencies were common in London, going back to the London City Mission, founded in 1835. Its agents, however, avoided revivalist piety, worked closely with local churches, and were tightly managed such as to avoid transgressing on the role of the clergy.30 Differences between Anglican evangelicals and nonconformists eased beginning in the 1830s, leading to broader pan-evangelical cooperation by the time of the 1859–1860 revival.31 This led to the growth of non-denominational home mission halls staffed by lay evangelists—the more immediate ground for the beginnings of Booth’s ministry in East London.32 Booth interacted with independent lay revivalists such as Richard Weaver, Reginald Ratcliffe, and R. C. Morgan, in whose magazine, The Revival, Booth first announced his intention to begin a ‘Christian Revival Association’ in East London.33 Whatever the degree of integration such missions had with denominations or local churches, they did not define themselves as ‘churches’ nor did they aspire to become churches. In its early phase as the Christian Mission, Booth’s organisation was clearly established along these lines. By Booth’s own account, his original vision was to send his converts to the churches, but he found that they were not welcome in the churches, nor did they desire to join with them. Booth wrote, ‘We were thus driven to providing for the converts ourselves.’34 So, from a very early stage, the Salvation Army was functioning as a church home for its members, while continuing to define itself as a mission, rather than a church. When William Booth addressed the Wesleyan Methodist Conference in 1880, he continued to take this line and explicitly identified the Army as an extradenominational mission agency. They were not interested in setting up a church but establishing a mission to the unchurched. ‘We do not fish in other people’s waters. We are not chargeable with that…No, we get our converts out of the gutters, we fish them out of the slush and slime.’35 Victorian evangelicals cooperated in missionary activity because they shared a common set of orienting convictions, and because they viewed Christian unity as a ‘spiritual’ or ‘invisible’ reality. This understanding of unity emerged out of the Reformation and was particularly emphasised by such nineteenth-century bodies as the Evangelical Alliance (founded 1847), in contrast to Roman Catholic and Anglo-Catholic emphases on the visible unity of the church via the episcopate.36 As John Read notes, similar convictions were held by Congregationalist David Thomas, who had an important impact on the Booths.37 But framing unity as primarily an ‘invisible’ reality also legitimised denominational separation, and could lead to a seeming lack of concern for thorny ecclesiological questions in general. None of the branches of Methodism adopted an article of faith concerning the church until the formation of the Rules of the United Methodist Church in 1907.38 Due in large part to the debate surrounding the ‘pastoral office’, the Wesleyan Methodists had developed a significant body of ecclesiological literature by the 1870s, as seen especially in the contributions of Benjamin Gregory

110  Separate but Non-sectarian and John H. Rigg.39 But the other Methodist bodies were far less engaged in such questions. New Connexion theologian William Cooke’s Christian Theology, Explained and Defended (1848)—a standard theology text in that denomination—provides a telling example. Cooke was the leading thinker in the New Connexion and served as William Booth’s teacher when Booth studied for ministry in the New Connexion.40 This text worked its way systematically through Christian doctrine, with nine of eighteen chapters focused on soteriology and one on Christian ministry, but it had no chapter on the church.41 Likewise, Cooke’s Catechism contained only a one-sentence definition of the church and a one-sentence answer to the question, ‘Who is the head of the church?’, both of which were dealt with at the very end of a chapter on the means of grace which focused mainly on sacramental questions.42 This, arguably, mirrored the prioritisation of the means of grace over the church per se, seen in Wesley’s sermon ‘On Zeal.’43 Cooke’s theology text illustrates of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s famous comparison between Protestant and Catholic ecclesiology: ‘Protestantism makes the individual’s relation to the Church dependent upon his relation to Christ, while Catholicism, contrariwise, makes the individual’s relation to Christ dependent on his relation to the Church.’44 More specifically in relation to Booth, Cooke represents a strand of Methodist theology that marginalised ecclesiology, relativising and downgrading the institutional life of the Church in relation to its true ‘spiritual’ or invisible nature. William Booth was formed in this type of Methodism and began his efforts in East London intending to lead a non-sectarian and revivalist home mission organisation. The early Salvationists’ lack of concern regarding the ambiguities of their ecclesial status should be seen against this background. Participatory Postmillennial Pragmatism William Booth’s understanding of the church was also built upon his high view of human participation in God’s work of redemption—again, a reflection of the particular strand of Wesleyan revivalism he had imbibed through figures like Caughey. He believed Christians were truly divine agents, playing an essential role in God’s plan to establish his kingdom on earth. According to Roger Green, ‘the one true sign of the Church’ for Booth was ‘participation in the work of redemption, both personal redemption and, after 1889, social redemption, leading ultimately to the establishment of the kingdom of God’.45 The Salvation Army had no official stance regarding the eschatological debates concerning the millennium, but Booth’s theology and ethos generally cohered with a postmillennial view, which fuelled his robust understanding of human agency. The Booths believed that the Church had the means to usher in the worldwide triumph of the gospel prior to the apocalyptic intervention of the second coming.46 So Catherine Booth stated in Popular Christianity, that God had ordained that the kingdom of God would be established by ‘human instrumentality’ and rejected

Separate but Non-sectarian 111 the notion that Christians were to wait for some cataclysmic divine intervention to bring it about. In the end the kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ; but we have to go and conquer them, just as the Israelites had to conquer Canaan, in the faith, and by the strength, of our God. It has only been for want of faith that the world has not been conquered long ago. Oh, what a delusion many Christians labour under with respect to the extension of the Kingdom of God! They have a notion that the Kingdom is to take the world by stealth; that men are to be turned to God without any connection of means with the event; that it is going to be done by a sort of internal miracle, and the Church has been waiting for this miracle for 1800 years. Consequently the work is not done, because this notion is in direct opposition to the orders in coordination of the king. If ever the world is subdued, it will be by his servants carrying out their Lord’s instructions, and setting themselves to subdue it.47 Like many nineteenth-century evangelicals, the Booths lived expectantly, believing that the dawn of the millennium was almost upon them and that it was time for the Church to mobilise for the final advance of the gospel. Since the millennium loomed on the horizon, the institutional forms of the Church were relativised and given a subordinate position in relation to the function they might serve in this grand mission. As Roger Green has noted, postmillennialism ‘does not comport well with a strong ecclesiology’.48 The specific mention of ‘means’ in the above quote from Catherine Booth links human agency to Finney and Caughey’s emphasis on the use of ‘new measures’ to bring about revival, which the Booths believed was the way to establishing the millennial reign of Christ. The Army creatively developed a wide variety of novel means to bring sinners to a saving knowledge of Christ; indeed, one could argue the entire movement itself, with its unique name and military culture, terminology, and discipline was a full-scale expression of ‘new measures’ revivalism, extended throughout the life of the organisation. Nothing was spared in the shift from ecclesiastical to military terminology. Clergy became officers, laypeople became soldiers, prayer meetings became knee drills, and so on. William Booth had a biblicist view of Christian practice and did not feel bound by Christian tradition. This meant that the development of new methods was ‘very desirable… supposing that such are in accordance with the great doctrines and principles taught in the Bible’.49 Booth even admitted that he believed the church was in competition with secular forms of entertainment, and needed to offer something exciting and different to the masses.50 The unique and novel institutional forms and evangelistic methods of The Salvation Army emerged out of this set of views and assumptions about church and mission.

112  Separate but Non-sectarian As we would expect, the Booths’ theology of the Holy Spirit followed the dominant trends of Wesleyan revivalist thought in their day. They carried forward Fletcher’s emphasis on the ‘dispensation’ of the Spirit and focused primarily on the Spirit’s instantaneous work in bringing about ‘entire sanctification’ via Spirit-baptism. The Booths’ thinking cohered with other leading holiness advocates such as Phoebe Palmer and William Arthur. The Booths embraced Palmer’s altar theology or ‘shorter way’ to holiness in an ongoing threefold process of consecration, faith, and testimony—though John Read has helpfully noted that Catherine’s theology was more nuanced than Palmer’s, and closer to Wesley on some distinctive points.51 Still, the ‘altar theology’ language comes through clearly in various ways. The basic idea of the ‘shorter way’ was that a faith-filled act of entire consecration of oneself on the altar—understood to be Christ himself—would culminate in the consecrated gift’s consumption by the sanctifying fire of the descending Spirit. Palmer’s theology was on full display in William’s counsel to Catherine in a time of prayer in 1861: William said, ‘Don’t you lay all on the altar?’ I said ‘I am sure I do.’ and then he said, ‘And isn’t the altar holy?’ I replied in the language of the Holy Ghost, ‘The altar is most holy, and whatsoever touch it is holy.’ ‘Then,’ said he, ‘are you not holy?’ I replied with my heart full of emotion and some faith, ‘Oh, I think I am.’ Immediately the word was given me to confirm my faith, ‘Now are you clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.’ And I took hold, with a trembling hand, and not unmolested by the tempter, but I held fast at the beginning of my confidence, and it grew stronger, and from that moment I have dared to record myself dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God through Jesus Christ my Lord.52 The stress on a dramatic, instantaneous, cleansing work of the Spirit as the gateway to holiness was also given poetic expression in one of William Booth’s hymns, ‘Thou Christ of Burning, Cleansing Flame’, which climaxed with a plea for the Spirit to descend upon the altar and consume the offering of total consecration offered by the worshippers: O see us on thy altar lay Our lives, our all, this very day, To crown the offering now we pray, Send the fire!53 The song encapsulates many of the dominant themes in Booth’s view of the Spirit, carrying forward and extending the trajectory seen in Bourne and Caughey: an emphasis on Pentecost as a present reality to be experienced by believers through a baptism of the Spirit, which would bring about a dramatic and instantaneous work of cleansing and empowerment for service.

Separate but Non-sectarian 113 As David Rightmire has noted, these convictions left ecclesiology subordinated to pneumatology in Wesleyan-Holiness theology—another trend that William Booth typifies.54 The clearest example is Booth’s autocratic leadership as ‘the General’ of his Army. He left the New Connexion in 1861, so certain of his own calling that, as Green says, ‘he could not see God’s will working through the denomination or its leadership’.55 To put that in other terms, Booth did not see the Conference as a means of grace through which the Spirit might work; he followed Wesley’s rule of obeying his conscience, believing he had a special call from God. This led to his independent ministry and eventually to the formation of a new ministry where he gave oversight to a global ministry but was subject to no oversight himself.56 Booth believed the Holy Spirit had a key role in leading God’s people to develop unusual and novel means of spreading the gospel, and clearly believed that revival services and their associated ‘altar calls’ were the paradigmatic means through which such transformative encounters with the Spirit would take place. He also saw the outpouring of the Spirit as an eschatological sign, a conviction which would become a hallmark of Pentecostalism in the following generation (albeit modulated into a premillennial key).57 The millennial reign of Christ, according to Booth, would be ‘preceded by further and mightier outpourings of the Holy Ghost than yet known’, and thus global evangelisation would ‘be carried on with greater vigour, although, in substance, on the same lines as those on which the apostles fought and died’.58 A golden age of gospel influence over the whole world was possible now if the Church would rise up and fulfil its mandate in the power of the Spirit. The Church per se, however, did not feature prominently in Booth’s expectant vision. The millennial kingdom would arrive as the ‘throne of righteousness’ was ‘set up in the hearts of men’ who were wholly sanctified by ‘the power and operation of the Holy Spirit’. 59 The progression of the work of redemption began with the Spirit’s work in individuals and moved to the advent of the millennium as believers lived holy lives and reversed the curse of sin in the world through their influence.60 ‘Just in proportion as these principles triumph in the hearts and consciences of men will millennial blessedness prevail.’61 Even more explicitly, Booth could speak of how Salvationists hastened the coming millennium by spreading the principles of ‘that millennial kingdom which God has already established in his own heart’.62 In summary, early Salvation Army ecclesiology was shaped by revivalist pragmatism, expectant Spirit-centred postmillennial missionary urgency, and an ‘unsectarian’ vision for the Church. All of this was undergirded by common Protestant evangelical presuppositions about the priority of spiritual unity over institutional unity and continuity, and Wesleyan-Holiness convictions about the instantaneous, personal work of the Holy Spirit. The practices and institutions that gave shape to church life were seen as merely functional in relation to the mission of evangelism, and the existence of separated denominations was not seen as a hindrance to that mission, except insofar as ‘sectarian’ attachment to one’s own traditions might become a barrier to innovation.63

114  Separate but Non-sectarian Church, Movement, or Army? This set of theological assumptions provides the context for the Army’s ambiguous ecclesial status. William Booth did not want his organisation to become entangled in churchly trappings and insisted that the Army was a missionary agency. In many ways, he could claim that there were precedents in the various voluntary societies that had existed alongside the churches in England since the late seventeenth century and the more recent home-mission agencies of his own time. The notable difference, as noted above, was that members of those societies were also members of some regular church body; otherwise, the lines between specialised voluntary society and denomination would be blurred. Booth wanted to carve out a unique space for his Army on the ecclesiological map. It was to be an autonomous mission, independent of all the churches, both as an institution and in terms of the church membership of its soldiery.64 Like the leaders of other ‘offshoots’, Booth claimed that the Army was not competing with denominations but aiming to convert people and send them to the churches, and yet their converts were not comfortable in the churches, nor were they well received. The claims of rejected converts date from the early history of the Christian Mission, meaning that, from almost the beginning, the Mission’s converts made their spiritual home in the Mission and not in the churches. Thus, Harold Hill argues that ‘the point at which the Mission became the de facto community of faith for its adherents probably came earlier rather than later, probably 1867,’ and that by 1878, it was functioning as a denomination, although Salvationists continued to deny such a characterisation.65 The Salvation Army may have been functioning like a denomination in 1878, but its status seems to have been far from settled in the mind of William Booth, given the negotiations he held with the Church of England in 1882. A special committee was stuck by the Anglicans to explore the possibility of making the Army an agency of the Church. The membership of the committee indicates it was viewed as a serious matter: future Archbishops of Canterbury Edward Benson and Randall Davidson, leading scholars J. B. Lightfoot and B. F. Westcott, and George Wilkinson, soon to be appointed bishop of Truro.66 Booth had entered into similar discussions with other church bodies, though they were not as substantive.67 The fact that such discussions took place indicates that there were lingering questions about the Army’s ecclesial status, both inside and outside the movement. On the Salvation Army side, the question of permanent autonomy from other churches was still undecided. The talks with the Church of England did not progress very far, bumping up against several issues, the first of which was Booth’s autocracy, followed by questions concerning doctrine, sacramental ambiguities, women in leadership, emotionalism, and irreverence in worship.68 Throughout the negotiations Booth maintained that he was not founding another church, but an Army. By the time the talks fell apart, he had become

Separate but Non-sectarian 115 convinced that he must protect the Army’s autonomy and independence in order to ensure its future. His autocratic authority was non-negotiable since it was ‘necessary for the effectiveness of our War’. 69 Of course, a redoubled emphasis on his movement’s identity as ‘an Army’ did not resolve the movement’s ambiguous ecclesial status. The negotiations were an opportunity for theological clarity, but as Roger Green has noted, his ‘lack of an ecclesiology’ hindered him at this important juncture.70 William Booth wrote his 1883 ‘New Year’s Address to Officers’ announcing the discontinuation of sacramental observance while the talks with the Church of England were unravelling.71 In this oft-quoted and somewhat tentative statement, one of the reasons he proposed for ceasing observance was, ‘we are not professing to be a church, nor aiming at being one, but simply a force for aggressive salvation purposes’. 72 However, he simultaneously announced that he would introduce a ‘formal service for the dedication of children’—a tacit acknowledgement that the Army was functioning as a church home. 73 As Norman Murdoch notes, ‘While rejecting the church’s sacraments, the army [sic] was producing its own.’74 It is no coincidence that in the same ‘New Year’s Address’ Booth dealt directly with the question of the Army’s ecclesial status. Although he admitted that some people were ‘quite anxious and agitated’ about the Army’s relationship to the churches, Booth claimed he felt no anxiety about the matter.75 He said he had been struck by an epiphany while attending a meeting of church leaders, ‘as if a voice from heaven had said and is still saying, that we are to be an Army, separate from, going before, coming after, and all round about the various existing Churches’.76 The churches, he concluded, should relate to the Army as something akin to the Fire Brigade. ‘You cheer them on, encourage them, subscribe to their funds, go to their assemblages and bless them. We say, “Do the same with us.”’77 Booth was setting forth a vision of the Army as missionary ‘first responders’ who were on the front lines of the battle to further the coming of God’s kingdom. Thus, by 1883, Booth had crystallised his vision of the Army as a body ‘separate from, going before, coming after, and all round about’ the churches—part of the universal Church and working alongside denominational churches, but standing apart as a unique body. However, Booth wanted the Army to be seen not only as ‘separate’, but as ‘separate but equal’, and some of his statements in this regard add further ambiguity to the Army’s status. Eason and Green draw attention to Booth’s 1888 claim that the Army had ‘six thousand two hundred and seventeen clergymen and clergywomen’.78 Bramwell Booth quoted a more extensive statement by his father: The Salvation Army is not inferior in spiritual character to any Christian organization in existence. We are in no wise dependent on the Church…We are, I consider, equal every way and everywhere to any

116  Separate but Non-sectarian other Christian organization on the face of the earth (i) in spiritual authority, (ii) in spiritual intelligence, (iii) in spiritual functions. We hold ‘the keys’ as truly as any Church in existence.79 Eason and Green rightly note that this ‘was not the language of a mission seeking to funnel converts into the larger church’.80 Booth seems to have seen the Army as peculiar and unique, perhaps something like a religious order, as Harold Hill has argued.81 Nevertheless, it was different from a religious order in that the Army was fulfilling the functions of a church for its soldiery and understood itself to be on an equal footing to the established churches. Booth rejected the chance to resolve this tension by making the Army an agency of the Church of England. And yet he did not take the logical next step by moving in the other direction and embracing denominational status. The sacramental question must be understood as a reflection of this broader ecclesiological ambiguity, since he explicitly justified the non-observance of sacraments as part of an attempt to avoid the trappings of a church.82 Even still, this autonomous mission could not avoid fulfilling the functions of a church for its members, as the introduction of funeral and dedication rites demonstrates. Salvation for Both Worlds: Booth, Hughes, and Social Christianity William Booth’s mature vision for ‘social salvation’ further illustrates his lack of concern for the church’s role in the economy of salvation, particularly when contrasted with that of his Wesleyan Methodist contemporary, Hugh Price Hughes. Work among the poor had always been part of the Salvation Army’s mission, but in its first quarter century, such efforts were not coordinated as a systematic attempt to eliminate social problems. Moreover, earlier work to relieve physical misery was generally regarded as a secondary matter in relation to the work of winning converts to Christianity. Gradually, and on a local level, this began to change in the 1880s, as Salvation Army workers came to grips with the longer-term challenges of poverty.83 But Booth continued to emphasise evangelism and did not offer any new vision for the Salvation Army’s mission until the end of the decade. In 1889 and 1890, he outlined not only a change in strategy but a change in his view of salvation itself. This broadened view of God’s redeeming work undergirded a new ‘Social Reform Wing’ for his Army—an institutional expression of a ‘dual mission’. 84 Booth outlined the change in thinking in the January 1889 issue of the Salvation Army mission magazine, All The World, titling his article ‘Salvation for Both Worlds.’ He looked back on his earlier life and claimed that he had viewed work aimed at relieving this-worldly suffering as ‘trivial—nay, almost contemptible’, but he had gradually become more concerned with the temporal sufferings of the people he was trying to reach. However, since he could see no real solution to the complex issues at hand, he continued to

Separate but Non-sectarian 117 focus on eternal salvation, until he came to the realisation that temporal as well as eternal suffering proceeded from human rebellion against God and the resulting disorder of human desires. This new insight led him to alter his understanding of the gospel itself, and of his own vocation. He now proclaimed that he had ‘two gospels to preach – one for each world, or rather, one gospel which applied alike to both’. God’s redemptive work in Christ ‘came with the promise of salvation here and now, from hell and sin and vice and crime and idleness and extravagance, and consequently very largely from poverty and disease, and the majority of kindred woes’.85 All The World was read mainly by Salvationist insiders; the broader public was introduced to Booth’s expanded vision through his most wellknown book, In Darkest England and The Way Out. The book was prepared, Booth admitted, with significant editorial assistance from journalist W. T. Stead, a supporter of the Army’s efforts.86 Stead famously served three months in prison for his role in the ‘Maiden Tribute’ affair, in which he, Bramwell Booth, and a former prostitute-turned-Salvationist Rebecca Jarrett demonstrated how easy it was to traffic in young women by purchasing one themselves.87 In Darkest England contained an ambitious ‘Scheme of Social Salvation’ focused primarily on employment, to be achieved through the establishment of three types of colonies—‘self-helping and self-sustaining communities’ which would enact Salvation Army principles. In the ‘city colony’, there would be institutions designed to rescue the poor and provide them with temporary shelter and employment. Those who were not rehabilitated to a stable life in the city colony might be sent to a ‘farm colony’ in order to be trained for agricultural work. Those who did not find such work in Britain could be sent to an ‘over-seas colony’, where the Salvation Army would ‘create a home for these destitute people’.88 The book went on to describe these efforts in significant detail, incorporating already-established work with new proposals in a wide variety of areas.89 Although Booth had spoken of this new venture as a change in his thinking and practice, the degree of evolution has been debated by both insiders and outside observers.90 Booth continued to maintain that his ‘ultimate design’ was evangelisation, but that he now saw that caring for physical needs had intrinsic value. Even if he was not able to win all to the gospel, he might ‘at least benefit the bodies, if not the souls, of men’.91 Most of his contemporaries were sympathetic to his aims. However, soon after Darkest England’s release, critics such as Henry Mason, Vicar of All Saints in East London claimed that the scheme was a sign that the Salvation Army’s initial efforts had failed, while T. H. Huxley claimed that the Salvation Army’s fanatical zeal was a greater problem than the social ills it proposed to heal 92 Booth’s midtwentieth century successor, Frederick Coutts, attempted to respond to these criticisms and argue for greater continuity in Booth’s theology and ministry on the basis of a more holistic view of salvation.93 More recently, Norman Murdoch took up the ‘failure in east London’ perspective against Coutts and made it central to his assessment of Darkest England.94 Roger Green’s more

118  Separate but Non-sectarian balanced analysis suggested that the scheme of social salvation was best understood as a ‘second mission’ or a ‘dual mission’, underwritten by a broadened theology of redemption.95 Thus, Booth could claim that social work was a dimension of the ‘one gospel applied alike’ to the present and future worlds.96 The work of ‘saving souls’ for eternity remained the highest good, though the grandiosity and wealth of detail in Darkest England obscured this emphasis, and Booth was not as always clear in explaining the relationship between social and spiritual mission.97 A generous interpretation, however, suggests that he continued to believe that personal regeneration through the work of the Holy Spirit was the only hope for true and lasting social reform. So, in Darkest England, he wrote, ‘if the inside remains unchanged you have wasted your labour. You must in some way or other graft upon the man’s nature a new nature, which has in it the element of the Divine. All that I propose in this book is governed by that principle.’98 Whatever the case may be regarding the degree of change in his views in 1890, the absence of the church from his theology of redemption remained constant. His Army, equal to but independent of the churches, was proposed as the best instrument, in God’s hands, for social redemption. The disregard for the church in Booth’s theology of social redemption stands in contrast to that of his younger contemporary, Hugh Price Hughes (1847–1902). Described by William Strawson as ‘one man in Methodism in whom the holiness tradition and social concern were fused’, Hughes was a leader in the so-called ‘Forward Movement’ of progressive Methodists.99 Hughes had risen among the ranks of Wesleyan Methodist ministers early in his career and established himself as a leading younger voice by the time of his successful appointment to the Oxford circuit in the early 1880s. This was followed by a year as a Connexional evangelist, which afforded him the opportunity to conduct revival services throughout the country. By the time he arrived as Superintendent of the desirable Brixton Hill circuit in 1884, he had also begun to publicly call for greater emphasis on Christian social responsibility, which he advanced under the banner of ‘Christian socialism’. Andrew Mearns’s 1883 pamphlet, The Bitter Cry of Outcast London, had greatly moved him and convinced him, as Christopher Oldstone-Moore puts it, that ‘it was of the utmost importance that evangelism be infused with socialist truth, and socialism be infused with the evangelical truth’.100 Hughes caused a stir at an interdenominational conference on the poor in April 1884, by publicly endorsing the controversial term ‘socialism’ for the first time, much to the chagrin of Tory evangelical Lord Shaftesbury.101 However, Hughes did not advocate significant state intervention in markets or radical social levelling. On the contrary, as he put it the following March in a speech to the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, he saw the world moving towards ‘a condition of things in which every man could occupy the position to which his character entitled him’.102 His ‘socialism’ emphasised that Christians should recognise that poverty and other social issues were not simply matters of individual sin and vice; sin must be reckoned with in its collective as well as

Separate but Non-sectarian 119 its personal dimensions.103 As such, all Christians—but especially those with means and education—should recognise a moral responsibility to respond to social problems and to seek the reform of social structures and institutions as a means of overcoming sin’s corporate as well as personal effects. As Hughes began his ministry in Brixton Hill in the fall of 1884, he made plans for a newspaper that would provide a means of building public support for this broadened perspective on evangelism. On 1 January 1885, the first issue of the Methodist Times was published, modelled on the Pall Mall Gazette, whose then-editor, W. T. Stead, Hughes greatly admired. In his first editorial Hughes declared that The Methodist Times was ‘a journal written by young Methodists for young Methodists’, whose increasing exposure to higher education demanded an adaptation of methods and message by the Methodist Church. He maintained that the ‘broad, Catholic, tender-hearted theology of early Methodism’ was ‘the goal towards which the best modern thought, the discoveries of science, and the generous humanitarianism of our day are perpetually tending’. He urged a broad vision of Christian engagement with society: ‘…it is our supreme duty not merely to save our own souls, but to establish the Kingdom of God upon earth. Christianity which does not interest itself in politics, literature, science, and art, is a very imperfect Christianity. Above all, we must do our utmost to promote the social welfare of the people.’104 Hughes continued to expand on his vision of ‘social Christianity’ in the pages of The Methodist Times. It was explicitly political; not partisan, but progressive and pro-democracy. In a lead article from 23 April 1885, Hughes argued that democracy itself was rooted in the teachings of Christianity, but that Christian leaders in Britain and Europe had mistakenly opposed it, resulting in an unnatural and false opposition between the two which needed to be healed. If that were to occur, Christianity and democracy ‘would march together omnipotent and irresistible, to the conquest of the world, and the establishment of the millennial reign of Christ’. And it was particularly the nonconformist churches, who exhibited ‘democratic Christianity’, and rejected all clericalism and sacerdotalism, who could carry this banner forward.105 By this time Hughes was well apprised of the early Salvation Army and had already staked his position: he was very appreciative of the Army’s success but concerned about its ecclesiological and sacramental irregularities. Hughes interviewed Booth in February 1885, taking the opportunity to ask why the General had not aligned his movement with an established church. Booth stated that the overtures from the Church in 1882 came ‘too late’, and that he could not fully explain why the Army and the Wesleyan Methodists had not come together, given their obvious common ground. Hughes pressed Booth further on ecclesiological matters: Hughes: Booth: Hughes: Booth:

Did not Christ organise a Church, as well as save individuals? He created an organisation, and the Army is an organisation. Then the Army is a Church? I call it an Army.

120  Separate but Non-sectarian Hughes further pushed the idea of affiliation with the Methodist Church as the answer to several challenges Booth had acknowledged, including the ‘unsolved problem’ of the sacraments.106 The following week he reiterated this point and suggested that the Salvationists’ ‘questionable eccentricities’ might have been curbed by formal alliance with Methodism. He went further, in response to a letter from ‘A Young Methodist’, who admired the achievements of the Salvation Army, and decried Methodism’s recent tendency to ‘build more beautiful chapels and to improve the musical service’. Hughes took the opportunity to dissent from the author of the letter and from the early Salvationists in their rejection of traditional church buildings and music. It was ‘the fatal mistake of Puritanism’ to ‘crush the instinct of beauty’, a tendency which Hughes believed opened the door for the success of Catholicism and the Anglo-Catholic movement and had ‘driven away from Methodism thousands of our dearest and most devout children’.107 Hughes believed the church must engage the whole of society in order to produce lasting change. This was why it was important for him that Methodism, along with the other nonconformist churches, should throw off its identity as a ‘sect’ and take up the posture of a truly national church, ‘attempting the whole round of duties which each successive generation looks for from the Christian Church, expanding and adapting itself to meet the growing needs of the religious life of the nation’.108 This was, he believed, the providential mission of the nonconformist traditions in his day—to sanctify the rising political tide by ushering in a more democratic Christianity. For Hughes, the church was a means to an end, but a divinely ordained means nonetheless, which, along with the state, was God’s instrument for social reform. Booth, by contrast, believed the church per se was not the only corporate means that God might use, and that the Army was an equally valid and effective instrument for the salvation of the world. Hughes had increasing opportunity to enact and expound his vision of ‘Christian socialism’ when he took up the leadership of the West London Mission in 1887. Wesleyan Methodists had gradually come to embrace the ‘home mission’ emphasis that others were already pursuing in the capital, establishing the ‘London Wesleyan Methodist Mission’ at the 1885 Conference, of which the West London Mission was a branch.109 Hughes was intrigued by the opportunity, in part because the densely populated area in question encompassed the full spectrum of social class in British society, from the aristocracy to the slums. But he agreed to take it on only on the condition that he could secure the assistance of Mark Guy Pearse, the most well-known Wesleyan preacher at the time, and a celebrated author of novels and other types of literature.110 The Mission created an opportunity for Hughes to embody the principles he had begun to espouse—indeed, to form a new kind of Methodism that he hoped would meet the needs of the age. His main engagements for the week were Sunday afternoon sermons that he called ‘Conferences’ and

Separate but Non-sectarian 121 a Sunday evening evangelistic service. These were complemented by a more holiness-oriented service where Pearse preached in the mornings. Alongside these efforts, the most prominent feature of the West London mission was the ‘Sisterhood of the People’, run by Hughes’s wife Katherine Price Hughes. The Sisters were drawn mainly from an educated, privileged class of women who had freedom to dedicate themselves to service among the poor. They were given license to experiment, but their main ministry was visitation of a given district.111 Hughes used his Sunday afternoon sermons as a place to further articulate and develop his social theology. The substance of his perspective is found in the sermons collected under the names, Social Christianity and The Philanthropy of God, both originally published in 1889. He would later complement these with further collections of sermons, Ethical Christianity (1892) and Essential Christianity (1894). Social Christianity was widely read. David Bebbington comments that it was ‘probably the most influential expression of the social gospel in Britain’.112 But Hughes developed his themes in Social Christianity mainly by drawing implications from a Christological perspective, and it did not touch on the church per se in a significant way.113 The Philanthropy of God offers a better contrast with Booth. It focused on several political issues, including international relations and war, with Hughes often weighing in directly on matters of policy and politics. In this, he differed from Booth who maintained the ‘no politics’ rule as thoroughly as any of the earlier Wesleyan Methodists.114 Hughes and others representing the push for a ‘nonconformist conscience’ took a very different approach, arguing that politics and religion should not be kept apart. 115 While Hughes’s vision for social reform was broader and more robust than Booth’s, he retained the basic pattern of revivalist visions for social reform: personal regeneration through the power of the Holy Spirit was the ultimate key to all social reform. This comes through most clearly in ‘The Only Successful Missionary Method,’ preached as the annual sermon of the London Missionary Society at the City Temple on 8 May 1889. Hughes began by rooting all human misery in the human heart, that is, ‘not in circumstances, but in man himself’.116 From there he argued that all societal and institutional wrongs must be corrected through challenging the ideas on which those institutions were based. Christ, Hughes maintained, ‘did not trouble Himself at all about existing institutions’ but focused on instilling an ethical principle in the human heart.117 Thus the goal was to reconstruct society based on Christian ideas; however, such ideas could only spread through the lives of true Christians. ‘When all men think as Christ thought, all will be well. Drunkenness, lust, gambling, crime, pauperism, ignorance, slavery, war, all the social wrongs of humanity will disappear for ever; and the golden age of peace and brotherhood will be established upon earth.’118 But, he concluded, such a result could not be achieved through legislation or education, despite the good that could be done through such means. Only regeneration by the power of the Holy

122  Separate but Non-sectarian Spirit could make people real Christians, thus bringing about the ‘new ideas’ necessary for creating a truly just society. Now, what do we want in order that we may see the work of God revived—revived as in apostolic days, and as in this country a century ago?…We want the baptism of the day of Pentecost. I may express my whole thesis in this one sentence: We can neither coerce or argue human society into Christianity. We cannot make any real progress without the Spirit of God.119 For Hughes, as for Booth, there was a sense in which another Pentecost was God’s ‘only method’ for saving the human race. Hughes underscored the connection between Pentecost and social salvation in his later book, Essential Christianity. Pentecost, he wrote, filled believers with ‘moral courage’ and ‘the largest hopes with respect to the reconstruction of human society’, ultimately developing ‘not merely holy individuals, and groups of holy individuals, but a holy city’.120 Hughes was attempting to draw on latenineteenth-century revivalism’s emphasis on Pentecost to address the pressing social issues of his day, illustrating Bebbington’s comment that, while Hughes took Methodist social engagement in new directions, he ‘wished to add to the form of faith he had received rather than to subtract from it’.121 It was a creative synthesis, though ultimately, as Roger Standing notes, Hughes did not integrate the Pentecostal emphasis convincingly enough to pass it on to the next generation, so his formulations read as something of a historical curiosity today.122 Despite his view that personal regeneration was the one thing needful, Hughes was not dismissive of political reform and believed the church and the state must work together for social reform. His sermon on ‘London Pauperism’ made this point quite explicit: private charity was insufficient to address the growing challenge of extreme poverty, and therefore ‘the work must be undertaken by the State’.123 His commentary on the French Revolution developed the point more fully, lamenting that the churches resisted the impulses of revolution, which Hughes believed were the democratic impulses of the kingdom of God.124 The revolution turned into a reign of terror because it was not built upon the foundation of the Christian gospel; but at the same time, the churches had been overly focused on individual and personal salvation and had ignored the great social message of the gospel which ultimately required the administration of the state. ‘They cannot build except on our foundation. On the other hand, our foundation is intended for their building.’125 So he called upon both sides to join forces for the good of the kingdom: ‘The Revolution will be robbed of its terror when we claim, on behalf of the Kingdom of God, all that is true and attractive in it; and the Church of God will recover her lost leadership of the nations when she responds to their social as well as to their individual needs.’126

Separate but Non-sectarian 123 Based on this understanding of the complementary roles of church and state in social reform, Hughes expressed some reservations regarding Booth’s Darkest England scheme when aspects of the proposal were leaked before its publication. He returned to his ecclesiological concerns regarding the Army, claiming that its sectarian nature was a hindrance to the massive scheme’s practicability and that it should properly be undertaken by the state.127 He thought, however, that Booth’s scheme might demonstrate, on a small scale, the practicability of some solutions which could then be taken up by the state. Three days after Darkest England was published, Hughes praised it wholeheartedly, noting especially the importance of Booth’s declaration of war on ‘pauperism’, and his reluctant but now enthusiastic embrace of ‘social Christianity’. Hughes, in short, viewed the book as a vindication of his own ideas and methods: ‘We need scarcely say how greatly we rejoice over so mighty a convert to one of the essential principles of the Forward Movement and the London Mission.’128 Shortly after, a December report of the London Wesleyan Mission could not help but play off Booth’s scheme, announcing its efforts as ‘One Way Out of “Darkest London”’, echoing the grandiosity of Booth’s book and claiming its superiority in dealing with causes of social problems, as well as the symptoms addressed by Darkest England.129 So, when compared to Booth, Hughes took greater account of the necessity for state involvement to bring to fruition the kingdom plans wrought in the heart by the baptism of the Spirit. In the last decade of his life, the other feature that distinguished Hughes’s theology of social reform from Booth’s would come more to the fore: his catholicity. Dorothea Price Hughes described her father has having a ‘highly developed ecclesiasticism’, especially in his final years, which led him to stress the necessity of an ‘evangelical catholicity’ to unite nonconformists and foster the spiritual renewal that was the ultimate hope for true social renewal.130 This push towards catholicity had been gaining steam throughout the 1890s and was furthered by Hughes’s participation in the Grindelwald Conferences, a pioneering set of ecumenical meetings organised by his West London Mission colleague Henry Lunn.131 At Grindelwald, Hughes met Congregationalist Charles Berry. The two men shared a passion to press nonconformity towards a federation that would ‘recognise itself to be a conscious branch of the visible Catholic Church, with the dignity and spirituality pertaining to such full membership’.132 They joined with others in establishing the National Council of the Evangelical Free Churches, which first met in 1892 and was formalised with a constitution at its 1896 meeting, with Hughes in the President’s chair.133 The Free Church Council took up much of Hughes’s energy in the late 1890s and came to represent many of his aspirations. Its emergence and the key involvement of Wesleyan Methodists were indicative of the growing convergence of Wesleyan and nonconformist concerns and the weakening of the connection between Wesleyan Methodism and the Church of England.134 Hughes was convinced that the free churches needed to embrace a stronger, more catholic ecclesiology if they were to provide the kind of unifying spiritual force that could truly reform British society. He continued to focus on

124  Separate but Non-sectarian these themes up to the time of his death, when Dorothea Price Hughes records that her father was planning a book on ‘a proper definition and understanding of the Holy Catholic Church and her sacraments’, where he would set out his reasons for believing that Methodism was the Protestant tradition most suited to rival Roman Catholicism.135 So, it is not surprising that Hughes was critical of William Booth’s disregard for ecclesiological norms. Hughes’s daughter recalled that he viewed Salvationists’ lack of sacramental provision as ‘fatal’, and had concerns about the capabilities of Booth’s officers.136 Hughes supported Booth’s aims, but believed that the social problems Booth wanted to address required more concerted nonconformist cooperation in mission and evangelism, without eliminating the ‘theological and ecclesiastical autonomy’ of the various church bodies.137 Hughes’s central role in the emerging Free Church Council is key to understanding his convictions. The National Council, Hughes believed, embodied a broader and truer catholicity than that which was claimed by the Catholic or Anglican traditions, because of its openness to a variety of organisational forms and broad recognition of other churches—even those that did not return the favour. On this basis he could claim that he and his compatriots on the Council were ‘Catholic High Churchmen’, ‘for we do not hold ourselves in schismatic separation from our fellow Christians of other communions differently constituted from our own’.138 In 1898, Hughes chaired the committee that published a new catechism on behalf of the Council in 1898. Tellingly, the Salvation Army was not included in the Council, although the Society of Friends were members despite their non-participation in the production of the catechism.139 As Hughes stated it, the goal of the catechism was ‘to demonstrate the unanimity of theological conviction which now characterises the great Protestant Churches’ and to answer an ‘urgent’ appeal for ‘a new Catechism that was Catholic rather than denominational’.140 He was pleased with the oneness of spirit that emerged and in the way the committee was able to bridge theological divides, including the Calvinistic versus Arminian positions. What is most interesting about the catechism is the section on the church, which defined the ‘Holy Catholic Church’ as ‘that Holy Society of believers in Christ Jesus which he founded, of which He is the only Head, and in which He dwells by His Spirit; so that, though made up of many communions, organised in various modes, and scattered throughout the world, it is yet One in Him.’141 Hughes emphasised that the text avoided any reference to the ‘invisible church’, a notion he dismissed as ‘invented in the sixteenth century’, and clearly affirmed the visible church as a divine creation, ‘organised by Christ and His Apostles as a visible, audible, and tangible society’.142 Booth might have taken comfort that the sacraments, while identified as a means of grace, were not identified as an essential mark of the church—only ‘the presence of Christ, through His indwelling Spirit, manifested in holy life and fellowship’ was given that status.143 But the catechism left no room for avoiding the necessity of the visible church itself, as did Booth.

Separate but Non-sectarian 125 The Eclipse of Ecclesiology Though never an officially Methodist body, the Salvation Army should be seen as part of the tangled mess of nineteenth-century Methodism. Hughes and Booth represent the two trajectories of British Methodist ecclesiology in the nineteenth century. Hughes’s brand of broad-minded evangelical catholicity, aspiring to national status alongside the Established Church, was the result of generations of evolution in Wesleyan Methodist ecclesiology and growing comfort with a nonconformist identity. Booth’s idiosyncratic movement, on the other hand, represented the extreme terminus of the Methodist revivalist approach to the church—the full eclipse of ecclesiology. As Earl Robinson has noted, many of the Army’s ecclesiological ambiguities were inherited from Methodism’s eventual, if reluctant, separation, and the resulting lack of clarity in Methodist ecclesiology.144 But it was particularly the revivalist strand of British Methodism that carried on and extended these ecclesiological weaknesses, thrown into high relief in early Salvationism. Booth’s functionalised understanding of the church and its mission made the question of ecclesial identity superfluous. The Holy Spirit was using the Army to bring people to the experience of salvation and sanctification, thus fulfilling the mission of the Church universal—and Booth believed it was doing so more effectively than the churches. Why would it not be seen as equal to the churches? And if institutional forms were wholly subordinate to missionary purposes, why would Booth’s effective organisation seek integration within another ecclesial institution? This line of thinking was not a great leap from Cooke’s omission of the Church from his Christian Theology text. Like other revivalist offshoots, the Army wanted to avoid theological controversy, build unity around the religion of the heart, and follow the personal leading of the Spirit, even if meant going against ecclesial overseers and subordinating institutional forms to the mission of reaching new converts. While the Army’s status was more extra-denominational than the other Methodist offshoots, they all began as informal missional efforts working loosely alongside established churches before eventually starting off on their own. Early Salvationists sought to make that arrangement permanent, preserving their status as an extra-denominational mission in perpetuity. In seeking to avoid the institutional church, thereby succumbed to an idiosyncratic form of institutionalisation without realising it. In the end, they became an offshoot sect, as Cardinal Manning predicted in his 1882 article in The Contemporary Review. Nevertheless, we have a conviction that the Salvation Army will either become a sect, or it will melt away. This world is not the abode of disembodied spirits…The history of Christianity abundantly proves that neither the human intellect nor the human will can alone perpetuate any teaching without change. Nor can human authority or human obedience perpetuate itself without an organization. But what is such an organization but a sect…?145

126  Separate but Non-sectarian Notes 1 James Caughey, Methodism in Earnest: Being the History of a Great Revival in Great Britain, ed. R. W. Allen and Daniel Wise (Boston: C. H. Peirce, 1850), 423. 2 William Booth, ‘How We Began’, in Boundless Salvation: The Shorter Writings of William Booth, ed. Andrew M. Eason and Roger J. Green (New York: Peter Lang, 2012), 29 (originally published 1886). 3 On Booth’s relationship with Caughey, see Roger J. Green, The Life and Ministry of William Booth: Founder of the Salvation Army (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005), 16–19; Norman Murdoch, Origins of The Salvation Army (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994), 7–12. 4 Frederick Booth-Tucker, The Life of Catherine Booth (London: The Salvation Army, 1892), I:217–19. 5 George Scott Railton, The Authoritative Life of General William Booth, Founder of The Salvation Army (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1912), 56. 6 The most important recent biography of Booth is Green, Life and Ministry of William Booth. Other significant recent treatments are Gordon Taylor, The Life and Legacy of William Booth, 2 vols (London: Salvation Books, 2019); David Malcolm Bennett, The General: William Booth, 2 vols (Longwood, FL: Xulon Press, 2003); and Roy Hattersley, Blood and Fire: The Story of William and Catherine Booth (London: Abacus, 1999). The most important early biographies are: Harold Begbie, The Life of William Booth: The Founder of the Salvation Army, 2 vols (London: Macmillan, 1920); Frederick Booth-Tucker, William Booth, The General of The Salvation Army (New York: The Salvation Army Printing and Publishing House, 1898); St John G. Ervine, God’s Soldier: General William Booth, 2 vols (Toronto: W. Heinemann, 1934); Railton, The Authoritative Life of William Booth. 7 Benjamin Gregory, Side Lights on the Conflicts of Methodism During the Second Quarter of the Nineteenth Century, 1827–1852 (London: Cassell, 1898), 444–59. Coincidentally, Dunn would also later author a biography of James Dixon: Memorials of the Venerable James Dixon (London: George J. Stevenson, 1872). 8 Gordon Taylor, William Booth: The Man and His Mission (London: Salvation Books, 2019), 49–50; Green, Life and Ministry of William Booth, 46–49. 9 Roger J. Green, Catherine Booth: A Biography of the Cofounder of the Salvation Army (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996), 47–50; Begbie, Life of William Booth, I: 145; Glenn K. Horridge, The Salvation Army, Origins and Early Years: 1865-1900 (Godalming, UK: Ammonite Books, 1993), 14. 10 Green, Life and Ministry of William Booth, 83–91. 11 ‘The Christian Mission’ is used for simplicity’s sake, since the movement went through five name changes in its first thirteen years: The Christian Revival Association, The East London Christian Revival Union, The East London Christian Revival Society, The Christian Mission, and finally The Salvation Army. See Horridge, The Salvation Army, 15. n 10. 12 Salvationists saw the rapid growth of their movement between 1878-1890 as a sign of divine blessing upon their embrace of militant symbolism and structure. See, for example, Robert Sandall, The History of The Salvation Army (London: The Salvation Army, 1947), II: 1–5. For an alternative account, which sees efforts prior to 1877 as ‘Failure in East London,’ see Murdoch, Origins of The Salvation Army, 71–114. 13 A detailed study of this theological shift is found in Roger J. Green, War on Two Fronts: The Redemptive Theology of William Booth (Atlanta: Salvation Army Supplies, 1989). 14 Robert Currie, Methodism Divided: A Study in the Sociology of Ecumenicalism (London: Faber, 1968), 54–55.

Separate but Non-sectarian 127 15 See Melvin Easterday Dieter, The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1980), 110–37. 16 For sociological analysis of the Salvation in relation to Troeltsch’s church/sect typology, see Roland Robertson, ‘The Salvation Army: The Persistence of Sectarianism’, in Patterns of Sectarianism, ed. Bryan R. Wilson (London: Heinemann, 1967), 49–105; Bruce Power, ‘Towards a Sociology of The Salvation Army’, Word and Deed: A Journal of Salvation Army Theology and Ministry 2, no. 1 (May 1999): 17–33; Andrew M Eason, ‘The Salvation Army in Late-Victorian Britain: The Convergence of Church and Sect’, Word and Deed: A Journal of Salvation Army Theology and Ministry 5, no. 2 (May 2003): 3–28. 17 See my discussion of these developments in Division, Diversity, and Unity: A Theology of Ecclesial Charisms (New York: Peter Lang, 2015), 222–34; see also W. David O. Taylor, Like a Mighty Army? The Salvation Army, the Church, and the Churches (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 100–147. 18 Green, War on Two Fronts, 31–32. 19 Catherine Mumford Booth, The Salvation Army in Relation to the Church and State (London: The Salvation Army, 1883), 29. For more on Catherine Booth’s ecclesiological views, see John Read, Catherine Booth: Laying the Theological Foundations of a Radical Movement (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012), 119–51. 20 William Booth, ‘What Is The Salvation Army?’, The Contemporary Review 42 (August 1882): 181. 21 See the discussion of this issue in Randy L. Maddox, ‘Opinion, Religion and “Catholic Spirit”: John Wesley on Theological Integrity’, The Asbury Theological Journal 47, no. 1 (1992): 63–87. 22 See the Model Deed from the ‘Large Minutes’ of 1763 in The Methodist Societies: The Minutes of the Conference [vol. 10 of The Works of John Wesley], ed. Henry D. Rack (Nashville: Abingdon, 2011), 869–70. 23 Minutes of Conference, 1807, Q23, in Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, vol. 2 (London: Thomas Cordeux, 1813), 403. 24 Oliver A. Beckerlegge, ‘Our Doctrines’, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 40, no. 3 (1975): 69–72, 74–79. 25 The Primitive Methodist Deed Poll appealed to Wesley’s Notes and Sermons at one point, but later listed key ‘religious tenets or doctrines’ without offering any statement of explanation: ‘…general redemption by Jesus Christ; repentance; the justification of the godly by faith’, etc. Deed Poll of the Primitive Methodist Connexion, Enrolled in His Majesty’s High Court of Chancery, Dated February 4, 1830 (Bemersley: James Bourne, 1837), 9, 15. 26 Rules of the United Societies of the Wesleyan Association and Wesleyan Reformers (London: Adams and King, 1857), 10–11. 27 William Baggaly, A Digest of the Minutes, Institutions, Polity, Doctrines, Ordinances and Literature of the Methodist New Connexion (London: W. Cooke, 1862), 219–24. 28 Compare the New Connexion’s twelve articles to the Salvation Army’s eleven: Baggaly, 222–23; Sandall, History of The Salvation Army, I:288–89. 29 Booth, ‘What Is The Salvation Army?’, 181–82. 30 Donald M. Lewis, In Darkest London: The Manuscript Journal of Joseph Oppenheimer, City Missionary (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2018), 3–19. 31 On this trend see Donald M. Lewis, Lighten Their Darkness: The Evangelical Mission to Working-Class London, 1828–1860, Contributions to the Study of Religion 19 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986). 32 Horridge, The Salvation Army, 9–11. On the rise of extra-denominational revival efforts Richard Carwardine, Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America 1790–1865 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978), 189–90; and John Kent, Holding the Fort: Studies in Victorian Revivalism (London: Epworth Press, 1978), 100–28.

128  Separate but Non-sectarian 33 The Revival, 17 August 1865, cited in Horridge, The Salvation Army, 15. 34 Booth, ‘How We Began’, 39. 35 William Booth, ‘Wesleyan Methodist Conference’, in Boundless Salvation: The Shorter Writings of William Booth, ed. Andrew M. Eason and Roger J. Green (New York: Peter Lang, 2012), 176. 36 See the papers collected in Philip Schaff and Samuel Ireneaus Prime, eds., History, Essays, Orations, and Other Documents of the Sixth General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance, Held in New York, October 2–12, 1873 (New York: Harper Brothers, 1874), especially Charles Hodge, ‘The Unity of the Church Based on Personal Unity with Christ’ (139–144), R. Payne Smith, ‘Christian Union Consistent with Denominational Distinctions’ (145–149), and Gregory T. Bedell, ‘Spiritual Unity not Organic Unity’ (150–153). 37 John Read, Catherine Booth: Laying the Theological Foundations of a Radical Movement (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2013), 130–31. 38 Beckerlegge, ‘Our Doctrines’, 75–79. 39 See the summary in William Strawson, ‘Methodist Theology 1850-1950’, in A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, ed. Rupert E. Davies, A. Raymond George, and Gordon Rupp, vol. 3 (London: Epworth Press, 1983), 192–97. This is not to deny that major Wesleyan Methodist theologians such as Richard Watson and William Burt Pope included substantive discussions of the Church in their theology texts. 40 Green, Life and Ministry of William Booth, 68–69. 41 William Cooke, Christian Theology, Explained and Defended, 2nd ed. (London: Bakewell, 1848). For a further summary and discussion of Cooke’s text see Timothy Larsen, A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 93–96. 42 William Cooke, A Catechism: Embracing the Most Important Doctrines of Christianity, Designed for the Use of Schools, Families, and Bible Classes (London: Methodist New Connexion Book-Room, 1851), 64–72. 43 See the discussion above in Chapter 2. 44 Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith in Outline, trans. D. M. Baillie (Edinburgh: W. F. Henderson, 1922), 10. 45 Green, War on Two Fronts, 56. 46 See Philip W. Davisson, ‘Sweeping Through the Land: Postmillennialism and the Early Salvation Army’, Word and Deed: A Journal of Salvation Army Theology and Ministry 5, no. 2 (May 2003): 29–50. 47 Catherine Mumford Booth, Popular Christianity (London: The Salvation Army Book Depot, 1887), 88–89. 48 Roger J. Green, ‘Facing History: Our Way Ahead for Salvationist Theology’, Word and Deed: A Journal of Salvation Army Theology and Ministry 1, no. 2 (1999): 29. 49 William Booth, ‘The General’s New Year Address to Officers’, in Boundless Salvation: The Shorter Writings of William Booth, ed. Roger J. Green and Andrew M. Eason (New York: Peter Lang, 2012), 190. 50 Booth, 196. 51 See the selection from Palmer’s The Way of Holiness (1843) in Thomas C Oden, ed., Phoebe Palmer: Selected Writings, Sources of American Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), 166–79. See Read, Catherine Booth, 77–82. See also Kent, Holding the Fort, 325–40. 52 Catherine Booth to her parents, 11 February 1861, in Booth-Tucker, The Life of Catherine Booth, I:273. 53 Salvation Army Songs (London : Salvation Army Book Dept, 1911), 270, #383. For other examples of ‘altar theology’ in early Salvation Army songs, see Kent, Holding the Fort, 338–40.

Separate but Non-sectarian 129 54 R. David Rightmire, ‘Subordination of Ecclesiology and Sacramental Theology to Pneumatology in the Nineteenth-Century Holiness Movement’, Wesleyan Theological Journal 47, no. 2 (2012): 27–35. 55 Green, Life and Ministry of William Booth, 88. 56 See further discussion in Pedlar, Division, Diversity, and Unity, 141–44. 57 See Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1987), 143–71. 58 William Booth, ‘The Millennium; or, the Ultimate Triumph of Salvation Army Principles’, in Boundless Salvation: The Shorter Writings of William Booth, ed. Andrew M. Eason and Roger J. Green (New York: Peter Lang, 2012), 60. This echoes Wesley’s late statements in Sermon 63, ‘The General Spread of the Gospel,’ §16ff, in Albert C. Outler, ed., The Works of John Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985), 492ff. 59 Booth, ‘The Millennium; or, the Ultimate Triumph of Salvation Army Principles’, 61–62. 60 Booth, 64–66. 61 Booth, 69. 62 Booth, 71. 63 See George Scott Railton’s claim that the Army was not a ‘sect’ because they avoided like ‘the plague…every denominational rut, in order to perpetually reach more and more of those who lie outside every church boundary.’ George Scott Railton, Heathen England, 3rd ed. (London: S. W. Patridge & Co., 1879), 145. 64 There were exceptions to this non-membership policy in some Scandinavian and Eastern European contexts. See Tom Aitken, Blood and Fire, Tsar and Commissar: The Salvation Army in Russia, 1907–1923 (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2007), 188–91; and Gudrun Maria Lydholm, Lutheran Salvationists? (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2017). 65 Harold Hill, Leadership in the Salvation Army: A Case Study in Clericalisation (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2006), 44–46. 66 Bramwell Booth, Echoes and Memories (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1925), 60; Stuart Mews, ‘The General and the Bishops: Alternative Responses to Dechristianisation’, in Later Victorian Britain, 1867–1900, ed. T. R. Gourvish and Alan O’Day (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan Education, 1988), 221; Norman Murdoch, ‘The Salvation Army and the Church of England, 1882–1883’, Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 55, no. 1 (1986): 31–55. 67 On discussions with both the Congregationalists and Methodists, see Murdoch, ‘The Salvation Army and the Church’, 33. 68 Randall T. Davidson, ‘The Methods of The Salvation Army’, The Contemporary Review 42 (August 1882): 192–99; Murdoch, ‘The Salvation Army and the Church’, 46. See Roger Green’s summary of the negotiations in Green, Life and Ministry of William Booth, 140–45. 69 Booth, Echoes and Memories, 69–70. 70 Green, Life and Ministry of William Booth, 144. 71 See Andrew Eason’s summary of the move towards non-observance in ‘The Salvation Army and the Sacraments in Victorian Britain: Retracing the Steps to Non-Observance’, Fides et Historia 41, no. 2 (Summer-Fall 2009): 51–71. The most extensive theological treatment of this subject is found in R. David Rightmire, The Sacramental Journey of the Salvation Army: A Study of Holiness Foundations (Alexandria, VA: Crest Books, 2016). 72 Booth, ‘The General’s New Year Address to Officers’, 192. Catherine Booth was more ardent in her rejection of sacraments and strongly influenced William on this question. See Read, Catherine Booth, 178–204. 73 Booth, 193.

130  Separate but Non-sectarian 74 By June of 1883, a funeral service had been introduced. Murdoch, ‘The Salvation Army and the Church’, 44. 75 Booth, ‘The General’s New Year Address to Officers’, 190. 76 Booth, 191. Emphasis in original. 77 Booth, 191. 78 Cited from a May 12 1888 War Cry article in Andrew M. Eason and Roger J. Green, eds., Boundless Salvation: The Shorter Writings of William Booth (New York: Peter Lang, 2012), 172. 79 Booth, Echoes and Memories, 68. 80 Eason and Green, Boundless Salvation, 172. 81 Harold Hill, ‘Four Anchors from the Stern’, The Practical Theologian 5, no. 1 (2007): 26–41. 82 In an 1895 interview Booth stated: ‘We came to this position originally by determining not to be a Church. We did not wish to undertake the administration of the Sacraments, and thereby bring ourselves into collision with existing Churches.’ Cited in Begbie, Life of William Booth, I: 432. 83 For an overview of these initiatives, see Green, Life and Ministry of William Booth, 166–68. 84 On this transition see especially Roger J. Green, ‘An Historical Salvation Army Perspective’, in Creed and Deed: Toward a Christian Theology of Social Services in The Salvation Army (Toronto: The Salvation Army, 1986), 45–81; Green, War on Two Fronts, 76–95; Murdoch, Origins of The Salvation Army, 146–67. 85 William Booth, ‘Salvation for Both Worlds’, in Boundless Salvation: The Shorter Writings of William Booth, ed. Andrew M. Eason and Roger J. Green (New York: Peter Lang, 2012), 53–54. 86 Summaries of the book and discussion of its authorship can be found in Gordon Taylor, William Booth: The General and His Army (London: Salvation Books, 2019), 208–26; Bennett, The General, II: 291–300; Green, War on Two Fronts, 91–95; Murdoch, Origins of The Salvation Army, 159–64; Pamela Walker, Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down: The Salvation Army in Victorian Britain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 236–41. 87 See the reports in the Pall Mall Gazette beginning 6 July 1885. For a summary of Salvation Army involvement, see Walker, Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down, 137–39. Jarrett was also convicted and served six months for her role, while Bramwell was acquitted. Despite the scandal, the campaign succeeded in pressuring Parliament to pass a law raising the age of consent from 13 to 16. 88 William Booth, In Darkest England, and the Way Out (London: Funk & Wagnalls, 1890), 91–93. 89 See Part II, which comprises the majority of the book, Booth, 85–285. 90 See the helpful historiographical summary in Mark R. Teasdale, ‘The Language of Salvation in William Booth’s “In Darkest England”’, Wesley and Methodist Studies 13, no. 1 (2021): 31–43. 91 Booth, Darkest England, Preface (no page number). 92 For Mason, see The Times, 18 November 1890, 7; for Huxley, The Times, 1 December 1890, 13. See further discussion in K. S. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 195–96; Taylor, William Booth: The General and His Army, 215–19. 93 Frederick Coutts, Bread for My Neighbour: The Social Influence of William Booth (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1978), 19–20. For discussion of how this analysis is rooted in Coutts’s own theological priorities, see James E. Pedlar, ‘“O Boundless Salvation”: Save Souls, Grow Saints, and Serve Suffering Humanity - The Army’s Holistic Vision’, in Saved, Sanctified and Serving: Perspectives on Salvation Army Theology and Practice, ed. Denis Metrustery,

Separate but Non-sectarian 131 Paternoster Theological Monographs (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2016), 39–40. 94 Murdoch, Origins of The Salvation Army, 147. 95 Green, Life and Ministry of William Booth, 175. 96 Booth, ‘Salvation for Both Worlds’, 53. 97 Green, ‘An Historical Salvation Army Perspective’, 69. 98 Booth, Darkest England, 45. See also ‘The Millennium; or, the Ultimate Triumph of Salvation Army Principles’, 68. 99 Strawson, ‘Methodist Theology 1850–1950’, 229. On Hughes and the ‘Forward Movement’ see Roger Standing, The Forward Movement: Evangelical Pioneers of ‘Social Christianity’ (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2015), 75–109. 100 Christopher Oldstone-Moore, Hugh Price Hughes: Founder of a New Methodism, Conscience of a New Nonconformity. (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999), 111. 101 ‘Public Meeting in Exeter Hall’, Christian World, 10 April 1884; OldstoneMoore, Hugh Price Hughes, 112–15. 102 ‘Working Men and the Christian Religion: Great Meeting in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester’, The Methodist Times, 19 March 1885, 182. 103 Standing, The Forward Movement, 97. 104 Hugh Price Hughes, ‘Our Raison D’Etre’, The Methodist Times, 1 January 1885, 1. 105 Hugh Price Hughes, ‘Modern Democracy’, The Methodist Times, 23 April 1885, 247. 106 Hugh Price Hughes, ‘An Interview with General William Booth on The Salvation Army’, The Methodist Times, 5 February 1885, 81–83; see also Hugh Price Hughes, ‘The Salvation Amy’, The Methodist Times, 12 February 1885, 97. 107 Hughes, ‘The Salvation Amy’, 1. See also A Young Methodist, ‘Why Not Have a “Methodist Army”?’, The Methodist Times, 12 February 1885, 99. 108 Hugh Price Hughes, ‘Is Methodism to Be a Sect or a Church?’, The Methodist Times, 18 March 1886, 181. 109 Henry D. Rack, ‘Wesleyan Methodism, 1849–1902’, in A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, ed. Rupert E. Davies, A. Raymond George, and Gordon Rupp, vol. 3 (London: Epworth Press, 1983), 132–39. But see David Bebbington’s argument that the 1850s–1870s were not such a stagnant time for Wesleyan Methodism, in ‘The Mid-Victorian Revolution in Wesleyan Methodist Home Mission’, in The Evangelical Quadrilateral, Volume 2: The Denominational Mosaic of the British Gospel Movement (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2021), 107–29. 110 On Pearse’s ministry at the Mission and his relationship to Hughes, see Derek R Williams, Cornubia’s Son: A Life of Mark Guy Pearse (London: Francis Boutle Publishers, 2008), 153–60. 111 Oldstone-Moore, Hugh Price Hughes, 166–69. 112 David W. Bebbington, ‘The Evangelical Conscience: Hugh Price Hughes as Exemplar’, in The Evangelical Quadrilateral, Volume 2: The Denominational Mosaic of the British Gospel Movement (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2021), 131–49. 113 Peter d’Alray Jones characterised Hughes social theology as ‘simple and Christcentred’, which is arguably true of Social Christianity, but misses the underlying connection between social reform, the church, and the state in Hughes broader corpus. See The Christian Socialist Revival, 1877–1914: Religion, Class, and Social Conscience in Late-Victorian England (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1968), 407.

132  Separate but Non-sectarian 114 As Shaw Clifton has detailed, the Salvation Army took up an officially neutral stance, passing no judgment on any government decisions in war time. William Booth presided over this approach during the Boer War and it was carried forward into the First and Second World Wars—a unique legacy that Salvationists regarded as necessary because of their unified international structure. Shaw Clifton, Crown of Glory, Crown of Thorns: The Salvation Army in Wartime (London: Salvation Books, 2015). See, on the other hand, Rebecca Carter-Chand’s study of the German Salvation Army’s nationalistic stance during the Nazi era: ‘Doing Good in Bad Times: The Salvation Army in Germany, 1886–1946’ (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2016). 115 David Bebbington, The Nonconformist Conscience: Chapel and Politics, 1870–1914 (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1982), 12–13. 116 Hugh Price Hughes, The Philanthropy of God: Described and Illustrated in a Series of Sermons (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1892), 238. 117 Hughes, 239. 118 Hughes, 244. 119 Hughes, 253. 120 Hugh Price Hughes, Essential Christianity: Explanatory Sermons (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1894), 161–69. 121 Bebbington, ‘The Evangelical Conscience: Hugh Price Hughes as Exemplar’, 142. 122 Standing, The Forward Movement, 190–92. 123 Hughes, The Philanthropy of God, 196. 124 Dorothea Price Hughes, The Life of Hugh Price Hughes (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1904), 437. 125 Hughes, The Philanthropy of God, 266–67. 126 Hughes, 270. 127 Hugh Price Hughes, ‘Notes of Current Events’, The Methodist Times, 18 September 1890, 956. 128 Hugh Price Hughes, ‘General Booth’s Social Christianity’, The Methodist Times, 23 October 1890, 1065. 129 ‘In Darkest London—and One Way Out: The London Wesleyan Mission’, The Methodist Times, 4 December 1890, 1249–51. 130 Hughes, The Life of Hugh Price Hughes, 442. 131 Christopher Oldstone-Moore, ‘The Forgotten Origins of the Ecumenical Movement in England: The Grindelwald Conferences, 1892–5’, Church History 70, no. 1 (2001): 73–97. 132 Hughes, The Life of Hugh Price Hughes, 442. 133 See Hughes’s summary of the early history of the Council in ‘Free Church Unity: The New Movement’, The Contemporary Review 71 (1897): 438–56. 134 Martin Wellings, ‘Wesleyan Methodism and Nonconformity’, in Evangelicalism and Dissent in Modern England and Wales, ed. David W. Bebbington and David Ceri Jones (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021), 84–87. 135 Hughes, The Life of Hugh Price Hughes, 630–32. 136 Hughes, 630. 137 Hugh Price Hughes, ‘Nonconformist Union’, The Methodist Times, 18 December 1890, 1277. 138 Hughes, ‘Free Church Unity: The New Movement’, 452. 139 Hugh Price Hughes, ‘A New Catechism’, The Contemporary Review 75 (1899): 47. 140 Hughes, 50. 141 An Evangelical Free Church Catechism for Use in Home and School (London: Thomas Law, 1898), 19. 142 Hughes, ‘A New Catechism’, 53–54.

Separate but Non-sectarian 133 143 Hughes, 54; An Evangelical Free Church Catechism, 19. See also Hughes, ‘Free Church Unity: The New Movement’, 452–53. 144 See Earl Robinson, ‘The Salvation Army—Ecclesia?’, Word and Deed: A Journal of Salvation Army Theology and Ministry 2, no. 1 (November 1999): 10. See also Albert Outler’s classic essay, ‘Do Methodists Have a Doctrine of the Church?’, in The Doctrine of the Church, ed. Dow Kirkpatrick (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1964), 11–28. 145 Henry Edward Manning, ‘The Salvation Army’, The Contemporary Review 42 (September 1882): 341.

Bibliography A Young Methodist. ‘Why Not Have a “Methodist Army”?’ The Methodist Times, 12 February 1885. Aitken, Tom. Blood and Fire, Tsar and Commissar: The Salvation Army in Russia, 1907–1923. Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007. Baggaly, William. A Digest of the Minutes, Institutions, Polity, Doctrines, Ordinances and Literature of the Methodist New Connexion. London: W. Cooke, 1862. Bebbington, David. The Nonconformist Conscience: Chapel and Politics, 1870–1914. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1982. ———. ‘The Evangelical Conscience: Hugh Price Hughes as Exemplar’. In The Evangelical Quadrilateral, Volume 2: The Denominational Mosaic of the British Gospel Movement, 131–49. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2021. ———. ‘The Mid-Victorian Revolution in Wesleyan Methodist Home Mission’. In The Evangelical Quadrilateral, Volume 2: The Denominational Mosaic of the British Gospel Movement, 107–29. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2021. Beckerlegge, Oliver A. ‘Our Doctrines’. Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 40, no. 3 (1975): 69–72, 74–79. Begbie, Harold. The Life of William Booth: The Founder of the Salvation Army. 2 Vols. London: Macmillan, 1920. Bennett, David Malcolm. The General: William Booth. 2 Vols. Longwood, FL: Xulon Press, 2003. Booth, Bramwell. Echoes and Memories. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1925. Booth, Catherine Mumford. Popular Christianity. London: The Salvation Army Book Depot, 1887. ———. The Salvation Army in Relation to the Church and State. London: The Salvation Army, 1883. Booth, William. ‘How We Began’. In Boundless Salvation: The Shorter Writings of William Booth, edited by Andrew M. Eason and Roger J. Green, 28–40. New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2012. ———. In Darkest England, and the Way Out. London: Funk & Wagnalls, 1890. ———. ‘Salvation for Both Worlds’. In Boundless Salvation: The Shorter Writings of William Booth, edited by Andrew M. Eason and Roger J. Green, 51–59. New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2012. ———. ‘The General’s New Year Address to Officers’. In Boundless Salvation: The Shorter Writings of William Booth, edited by Roger J. Green and Andrew M. Eason, 185–96. New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2012.

134  Separate but Non-sectarian ———. ‘The Millennium; or, the Ultimate Triumph of Salvation Army Principles’. In Boundless Salvation: The Shorter Writings of William Booth, edited by Andrew M. Eason and Roger J. Green, 60–71. New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2012. ———. ‘Wesleyan Methodist Conference’. In Boundless Salvation: The Shorter Writings of William Booth, edited by Andrew M. Eason and J. Green Roger, 173–77. New York: Peter Lang, 2012. ———. ‘What Is The Salvation Army?’ The Contemporary Review 42 (1882): 175–82. Booth-Tucker, Frederick. The Life of Catherine Booth. London: The Salvation Army, 1892. ———. William Booth, The General of The Salvation Army. New York, NY: The Salvation Army Printing and Publishing House, 1898. Carter-Chand, Rebecca. ‘Doing Good in Bad Times: The Salvation Army in Germany, 1886–1946’. Ph.D. diss, University of Toronto, 2016. Carwardine, Richard. Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America 1790–1865. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978. Caughey, James. Methodism in Earnest: Being the History of a Great Revival in Great Britain. Edited by R. W. Allen and Daniel Wise. Boston: C. H. Peirce, 1850. Christian World. ‘Public Meeting in Exeter Hall’. 10 April 1884. Clifton, Shaw. Crown of Glory, Crown of Thorns: The Salvation Army in Wartime. London: Salvation Books, 2015. Cooke, William. A Catechism: Embracing the Most Important Doctrines of Christianity, Designed for the Use of Schools, Families, and Bible Classes. London: Methodist New Connexion Book-Room, 1851. ———. Christian Theology, Explained and Defended. 2nd ed. London: Bakewell, 1848. Coutts, Frederick. Bread for My Neighbour: The Social Influence of William Booth. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1978. Currie, Robert. Methodism Divided: A Study in the Sociology of Ecumenicalism. London: Faber, 1968. Davidson, Randall T. ‘The Methods of The Salvation Army’. The Contemporary Review 42 (1882): 189–99. Davisson, Philip W. ‘Sweeping Through the Land: Postmillennialism and the Early Salvation Army’. Word and Deed: A Journal of Salvation Army Theology and Ministry 5, no. 2 (2003): 29–50. Dayton, Donald W. Theological Roots of Pentecostalism. Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1987. Deed Poll of the Primitive Methodist Connexion, Enrolled in His Majesty’s High Court of Chancery, Dated February 4, 1830. Bemersley: James Bourne, 1837. Dieter, Melvin Easterday. The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1980. Dunn, Samuel. Memorials of the Venerable James Dixon. London: George J. Stevenson, 1872. Eason, Andrew M. ‘The Salvation Army and the Sacraments in Victorian Britain: Retracing the Steps to Non-Observance’. Fides Et Historia 41, no. 2 (Summer-Fall 2009): 51–71. Eason, Andrew M. ‘The Salvation Army in Late-Victorian Britain: The Convergence of Church and Sect’. Word and Deed: A Journal of Salvation Army Theology and Ministry 5, no. 2 (2003): 3–28.

Separate but Non-sectarian 135 Eason, Andrew M, and Roger J. Green, eds. Boundless Salvation: The Shorter Writings of William Booth. New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2012. Ervine, St John G. God’s Soldier: General William Booth. 2 Vols. Toronto: W. Heinemann, 1934. An Evangelical Free Church Catechism for Use in Home and School. London: Thomas Law, 1898. Green, Roger J. ‘An Historical Salvation Army Perspective’. In Creed and Deed: Toward a Christian Theology of Social Services in The Salvation Army, ed. John D. Waldron, 45–81. Toronto: The Salvation Army, 1986. ———. Catherine Booth: A Biography of the Cofounder of the Salvation Army. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1996. ———. ‘Facing History: Our Way Ahead for Salvationist Theology’. Word and Deed: A Journal of Salvation Army Theology and Ministry 1, no. 2 (1999): 23–40. ———. The Life and Ministry of William Booth: Founder of the Salvation Army. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2005. ———. War on Two Fronts: The Redemptive Theology of William Booth. Atlanta: Salvation Army Supplies, 1989. Gregory, Benjamin. Side Lights on the Conflicts of Methodism During the Second Quarter of the Nineteenth Century, 1827–1852. London: Cassell, 1898. Hattersley, Roy. Blood and Fire: The Story of William and Catherine Booth. London: Abacus, 1999. Hill, Harold. ‘Four Anchors from the Stern’. The Practical Theologian 5, no. 1 (2007): 26–41. ———. Leadership in the Salvation Army: A Case Study in Clericalisation. Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2006. Horridge, Glenn K. The Salvation Army, Origins and Early Years: 1865–1900. Godalming: Ammonite Books, 1993. Hughes, Dorothea Price. The Life of Hugh Price Hughes. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1904. Hughes, Hugh Price. ‘A New Catechism’. The Contemporary Review 75 (1899): 45–57. ———. ‘An Interview With General William Booth on The Salvation Army’. The Methodist Times, 5 February 1885. ———. Essential Christianity: Explanatory Sermons. New York, NY: Fleming H. Revell, 1894. ———. ‘Free Church Unity: The New Movement’. The Contemporary Review 71 (1897): 438–56. ———. ‘General Booth’s Social Christianity’. The Methodist Times, 23 October 1890. ———. ‘Is Methodism to Be a Sect or a Church?’ The Methodist Times, 18 March 1886. ———. ‘Modern Democracy’. The Methodist Times, 23 April 1885. ———. ‘Nonconformist Union’. The Methodist Times, 18 December 1890. ———. ‘Notes of Current Events’. The Methodist Times, 18 September 1890. ———. ‘Our Raison D’Etre’. The Methodist Times, 1 January 1885. ———. The Philanthropy of God: Described and Illustrated in a Series of Sermons. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1892. ———. ‘The Salvation Amy’. The Methodist Times, 12 February 1885. Inglis, K. S. Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963.

136  Separate but Non-sectarian Peter d’Alroy, Jones. The Christian Socialist Revival, 1877–1914: Religion, Class, and Social Conscience in Late-Victorian England. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968. Kent, John. Holding the Fort: Studies in Victorian Revivalism. London: Epworth Press, 1978. Larsen, Timothy. A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Lewis, Donald M. In Darkest London: The Manuscript Journal of Joseph Oppenheimer, City Missionary. Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2018. ———. Lighten Their Darkness: The Evangelical Mission to Working-Class London, 1828–1860. Contributions to the Study of Religion 19. New York, NY: Greenwood Press, 1986. Lydholm, Gudrun Maria. Lutheran Salvationists? The Development Towards Registration as an Independent Faith Community in The Salvation Army in Norway With Focus on the Period 1975–2005. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2017. Maddox, Randy L. ‘Opinion, Religion and “Catholic Spirit”: John Wesley on Theological Integrity’. The Asbury Theological Journal 47, no. 1 (1992): 63–87. Manning, Henry Edward. ‘The Salvation Army’. The Contemporary Review 42 (September 1882): 335–42. The Methodist Times. ‘In Darkest London—and One Way Out: The London Wesleyan Mission’. 4 December 1890. The Methodist Times. ‘Working Men and the Christian Religion: Great Meeting in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester’. 19 March 1885. Mews, Stuart. ‘The General and the Bishops: Alternative Responses to Dechristianisation’. In Later Victorian Britain, 1867–1900, edited by T. R. Gourvish and Alan O’Day, 209–28. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1988. Minutes of the Methodist Conferences. Vol. 2. London: Thomas Cordeux, 1813. Murdoch, Norman. Origins of The Salvation Army. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1994. ———. ‘The Salvation Army and the Church of England, 1882–1883’. Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 55, no. 1 (1986): 31–55. Oden, Thomas C, ed. Phoebe Palmer: Selected Writings. Sources of American Spirituality. New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1988. Oldstone-Moore, Christopher. Hugh Price Hughes: Founder of a New Methodism, Conscience of a New Nonconformity. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999. ———. ‘The Forgotten Origins of the Ecumenical Movement in England: The Grindelwald Conferences, 1892-5’. Church History 70, no. 1 (2001): 73–97. Outler, Albert C. ‘Do Methodists Have a Doctrine of the Church?’ In The Doctrine of the Church, edited by Dow Kirkpatrick, 11–28. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1964. ———, ed. The Works of John Wesley. Vol. 2. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1985. Pedlar, James E. Division, Diversity, and Unity: A Theology of Ecclesial Charisms. New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2015. ———. ‘‘O Boundless Salvation’: Save Souls, Grow Saints, and Serve Suffering Humanity – The Army’s Holistic Vision’. In Saved, Sanctified and Serving: Perspectives on Salvation Army Theology and Practice, edited by Denis Metrustery, 29–41. Paternoster Theological Monographs. Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2016. Power, Bruce. ‘Towards a Sociology of The Salvation Army’. Word and Deed: A Journal of Salvation Army Theology and Ministry 2, no. 1 (1999): 17–33.

Separate but Non-sectarian 137 Rack, Henry D. ‘Wesleyan Methodism, 1849–1902’. In A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, edited by Rupert E. Davies, A. Raymond George, and Gordon Rupp, 3:119–66. London: Epworth Press, 1983. Railton, George Scott. Heathen England. 3rd ed. London: S. W. Patridge & Co, 1879. ———. The Authoritative Life of General William Booth, Founder of The Salvation Army. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1912. Read, John. Catherine Booth: Laying the Theological Foundations of a Radical Movement. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2013. Rightmire, R. David. ‘Subordination of Ecclesiology and Sacramental Theology to Pneumatology in the Nineteenth-Century Holiness Movement’. Wesleyan Theological Journal 47, no. 2 (2012): 27–35. ———. The Sacramental Journey of the Salvation Army: A Study of Holiness Foundations. Alexandria, VA: Crest Books, 2016. Robertson, Roland. ‘The Salvation Army: The Persistence of Sectarianism’. In Patterns of Sectarianism, edited by Bryan R. Wilson, 49–105. London: Heinemann, 1967. Robinson, Earl. ‘The Salvation Army—Ecclesia?’ Word and Deed: A Journal of Salvation Army Theology and Ministry 2, no. 1 (November 1999): 5–15. Rules of the United Societies of the Wesleyan Association and Wesleyan Reformers. London: Adams and King, 1857. Salvation Army Songs. London: Salvation Army Book Dept, 1911. Sandall, Robert. The History of The Salvation Army. 3 vols. London: The Salvation Army, 1947. Schaff, Philip, and Samuel Ireneaus Prime, eds. History, Essays, Orations, and Other Documents of the Sixth General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance, Held in New York, October 2–12, 1873. New York, NY: Harper Brothers, 1874. Schleiermacher, Friedrich. The Christian Faith in Outline. Translated by D. M. Baillie. Edinburgh: W. F. Henderson, 1922. Standing, Roger. The Forward Movement: Evangelical Pioneers of ‘Social Christianity. Carlisle: Paternoster, 2015. Strawson, William. ‘Methodist Theology 1850–1950’. In A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, edited by Rupert E. Davies, A. Raymond George, and Gordon Rupp, 3:182–231. London: Epworth Press, 1983. Taylor, Gordon. The Life and Legacy of William Booth. 2 Vols. London: Salvation Books, 2019. ———. William Booth: The General and His Army. London: Salvation Books, 2019. ———. William Booth: The Man and His Mission. London: Salvation Books, 2019. Taylor, W., and O. David. Like a Mighty Army? The Salvation Army, the Church, and the Churches. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2014. Teasdale, Mark R. ‘The Language of Salvation in William Booth’s “In Darkest England”’. Wesley and Methodist Studies 13, no. 1 (2021): 24–44. Walker, Pamela. Pulling the Devil’s Kingdom Down: The Salvation Army in Victorian Britain. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001. Wellings, Martin. ‘Wesleyan Methodism and Nonconformity’. In Evangelicalism and Dissent in Modern England and Wales, edited by David W. Bebbington and David Ceri Jones, 65–88. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021. Williams, Derek R. Cornubia’s Son: A Life of Mark Guy Pearse. London: Francis Boutle Publishers, 2008.

6

Catholicity of the Heart Samuel Chadwick and Methodist Union

Joyful News was one of many publications to pay tribute to William Booth when he died in 1912. Wesleyan Methodist evangelist Thomas Champness started the publication in 1883, inspired by Booth and his Anglican contemporary Wilson Carlile to ‘create such an order within the Methodist Church’.1 Joyful News was Champness’s War Cry, and in 1884, he opened the Joyful News Training Home and Mission, which evolved into Cliff College in 1904, following Champness’s retirement. Thomas Cook was the first principal of Cliff College, and when he died in 1912, he was succeeded by Samuel Chadwick, who had been teaching at the College and editing Joyful News since 1905. Thus, both the College and newspaper that Chadwick oversaw shared a spiritual heritage with William Booth, combining holiness revivalism with a passion to evangelise un-churched people. No wonder then, that Chadwick was effusive in his tribute to Booth, calling him ‘the greatest religious personality since Wesley’, ranking him with George Fox, Ignatius of Loyola, and Francis of Assisi, and stating, ‘the magnitude of his work is probably the greatest ever accomplished in a single lifetime.’ While he praised Booth’s unyielding zeal and his fidelity to a traditional evangelical theology, Chadwick was circumspect in his reflections on the Army’s social efforts, hesitating to criticise the General but stating, ‘the organiser is perfected at the expense of the prophet, and that social emphasis may weaken evangelistic power.2 Chadwick’s approach to such questions reflected the priorities of late nineteenth-century holiness revivalism, rather than the ascendant progressive social emphasis of Methodism in the early twentieth century.3 The point should not be overstated; as William Strawson has noted, critics of Chadwick and the Holiness Movement were wrong to think that he was unconcerned with social problems.4 Rather, Chadwick was worried that fixation on societal systems and political action would displace the church’s primary focus and confuse its role with that of the state. Like Hughes, he believed church and state were designed to work together to bring social change, but it was essential that neither intrude on the proper sphere of the other. The ‘divine order’ of spiritual over material should be preserved and the church should aim ‘not to control states but to make citizens; not to be political but to produce politicians; not work organisations DOI: 10.4324/9781003224327-6

Catholicity of the Heart 139 but promote righteousness.’5 The degree to which Booth’s social schemes departed from these goals is a matter of debate, but Chadwick clearly wanted to distance himself from Booth on this point. He diverged more dramatically from Booth concerning the theology of the church. While Chadwick would not de-church Salvationists over their non-sacramental worship, he was clear that their dream of being a permanent mission rather than a church was naïve. ‘The Salvation Army has no sacraments, because their aim is to evangelize the world and not to organise a church; but as the organisation develops they will become a church in spite of themselves. All Protestant Churches keep the feast.’6 Like Booth, Chadwick was a holiness revivalist and evangelist, but he was also a churchman. He is rightly remembered for his devotional writings on prayer, holiness, and Pentecost, originally published in Joyful News and later compiled in popular books.7 However, Chadwick wrote a great deal about other subjects. He wrote voluminously, in fact, during more than a quarter century as Joyful News editor (1905–1932), often contributing two articles per week. Even if we account for occasional re-publication, he wrote well over 2000 articles, no doubt enabled by the tremendous work of his longtime assistant, Annie Douglas.8 People who know of Chadwick only through his books might be surprised to learn that he wrote more articles about the church than he did about either prayer or about holiness: nearly 100 articles on the church per se, another fifty or so about the church’s mission, and fifty more on Methodist Union along with dozens on broader questions of Christian unity. If we include articles on the sticking points of church unity—the nature of ministry, the sacraments, means of grace, and free church identity— Chadwick wrote over 300 articles within the realm of ecclesiology, broadly conceived. So, there is much to be said about Chadwick’s understanding of the church, especially because the subject has not been discussed by the few scholars who have written about him.9 Chadwick’s focus on the church should not surprise us, given some of the dominant concerns facing Wesleyan Methodism in the early twentieth century: a growing ‘church consciousness’, particularly among the Free Churches, the early stages of the modern ecumenical movement, and the push towards Methodist Union.10 But it also reflects his character and commitments as a churchman. ‘Next only to my Lord’, he wrote in 1921, ‘I love my Church, and I want Methodism to become again the Power of God unto the Salvation of the World.’11 He was deeply committed to the Wesleyan Methodist Church, and heavily involved in Connexional life, serving for many years as chairman of the Sheffield District and eventually as President of the Conference in 1918. Chadwick was certainly not averse to criticising the church in general, or the Wesleyan Methodist Church in particular. However, he differed from revivalists like Booth and Caughey in that his criticism was matched by his commitment to the church’s institutional life. He considered the church ‘as sacred as the home’ and viewed it as ‘sacrilegious’ to ‘parade its faults’ before the world.12 This deep and lasting commitment may explain

140  Catholicity of the Heart why he remained a respected member of the Conference despite sometimes sharp disagreements with colleagues. Chadwick was born in 1860, in the mill town of Burnley, Lancashire, and he began working in cotton mills at age eight.13 He was converted at ten and discerned a call to preach at fifteen. He soon became a local preacher and was appointed in 1881 as an evangelist to nearby Stacksteads, a rough area where he had a personal ‘Pentecost’ experience and led a local revival.14 After two years he studied at Didsbury College (1883–1886), and following appointments in Edinburgh and Glasgow, he was ordained in 1890 and appointed to Wesley Chapel, Leeds, for three years. A year in London preceded his return to Leeds, where he remained at the Oxford Place Chapel for thirteen years—a defining tenure in Chadwick’s ministry. He began teaching at Cliff College part-time when it opened and was appointed to teach full-time in 1908. He would remain at Cliff until his death in 1932, serving as Principal from 1912.15 In addition to serving as President of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference, he was involved in the National Free Church Council, serving as its President from 1921 to 1922. Chadwick was never a full-time freelance campaigner in the style of James Caughey. Though he travelled considerably as Principal, he had also served in regular local circuit and home mission appointments, giving him a longerterm perspective on local church vitality. Chadwick was, perhaps above all, a great teacher, and as George Bailey has argued, his writings were driven by theological concerns—even if expressed in simple language—and they warrant consideration for their theological content.16 The school of thought he represented has sometimes been regarded as ‘the poor relation of the official orthodoxy’; but when viewed in comparison with earlier holiness revivalists, Chadwick is notable for theological depth.17 He tackled substantive topics in print and in the pulpit, for example, preaching through Pope’s Compendium of Theology in the late 1890s at Leeds.18 Nevertheless, he was a revivalist; he believed that the church needed revival, above all else, and his view of revival retained many late nineteenth-century features: a focus on Pentecost, a dispensational view of the Spirit’s work, a stress on Christian Perfection as a second blessing, and a prioritisation of personal reform over social reform.19 For many years Chadwick was the key leader of the Southport Convention, an annual gathering that carried the flame of the Holiness Movement well into the twentieth century.20 He was, generally speaking, theologically conservative, but moderate, as seen in his refusal to break fellowship with his more liberal Methodist colleagues, despite his strident rejection of biblical higher criticism. For example, he was critical of George Jackson’s 1912 Fernley Lecture, but stopped short of calling for his removal from his post at Didsbury College, urging respect for the Conference decision and time for further dialogue.21 And he did not associate himself with the fundamentalist Wesley Bible Union as it emerged in the aftermath of the Jackson affair.22 In addition to its theological depth, Chadwick’s revivalism was distinctive in its catholic emphasis. He was unusual among revivalists in his promotion

Catholicity of the Heart 141 of ancient spiritual practices such as keeping of the church calendar and the observance of Lent, his long fascination with aspects of Roman Catholic spirituality, and his idiosyncratic appropriation of the Roman Catholic terminology of ‘friars’ as a name for Cliff College evangelists.23 That is not to say that he was shy about expressing his differences with Roman Catholic theology. He reflected many of the views of his time about Catholicism, seeing it as a political threat and offering strident critiques of Catholic theology of the priesthood.24 But Chadwick was open to insights from Catholic spirituality because of his appreciation of varied spiritual experiences. Despite his deep concerns about Catholic views of ministry, sacrament, and church, Chadwick believed that there were Catholic Christians who had a vital and living faith in Christ, and he therefore longed for their full participation in ecumenical organisations, declaring, ‘no Reunion can be complete that leaves out the ancient see of Peter’.25 Such a ‘catholicity of experience’ characterised many aspects of Chadwick’s thought. With respect to such matters as conversion and the way of holiness, he was reluctant to reify one model of spiritual experience as ‘the way’ that God must work, though he was firm that salvation in all its aspects was always through Christ in the power of the Spirit.26 This led him to stress a ‘unity of Spirit without a trace of uniformity in manifestation’, with the Spirit appearing ‘according to the natural aptitudes and temperament of each, making all like Christ and no two exactly like each other’.27 Chadwick’s experiential catholicity or ‘catholicity of the heart’ echoed Wesley’s ‘Catholic Spirit’, as well as the approach of earlier Wesleyan Methodists such as James Dixon and William Arthur.28 While he stood in continuity with nineteenth-century holiness revivalists in many respects, he avoided some of the pitfalls of popular American Holiness Movement teachers, whose model of spiritual formation was overly rooted in experience.29 He was, as David Howarth called him, ‘a “bridge” person’ who avoided extremes.30 This mediating approach was not merely a reflection of personality; it arose from his theological convictions. His views of the Holy Spirit, the church, sacraments, and ministry enabled him to stand astride the gulf of revivalism and churchmanship and become a champion of Methodist Union. The Spirit as the Living Presence of Christ On the one hand, Chadwick’s focus on Pentecost continued the Spirit-centred dispensational trajectory of nineteenth-century Wesleyan-Holiness revivalism that traces its roots back to John Fletcher.31 He always wrote articles about the Spirit around the time of Pentecost, stressing the radical difference that Pentecost made for the early disciples and translating the salvation-historical events of Easter and Pentecost into a program of spiritual life for every believer. Pentecost was not merely a historical event for Chadwick, but a present reality; the whole Christian dispensation was the continuing ‘day of Pentecost’,32 during which the Spirit ‘reigns in the Church, as Christ reigns

142  Catholicity of the Heart in the Heavens’.33 Just as the disciples had to tarry at Jerusalem and wait for the descent of the Spirit, so all believers must wait for that great gift, which was essential for Christian life and the mission of the church.34 The focus on the empowering Spirit’s present availability gave his theology a theocentric thrust, driving home the church’s complete dependence on God, but also led to questions about the failures of the church. This, in turn, placed significant emphasis on human agency. If the Spirit was ‘straightened’ in the church, it was not because the Spirit was unavailable, but because believers were putting ‘conditions’ on the Spirit’s work.35 These features, along with an emphasis on the imagery of fire and a stress on the instantaneous work of the Spirit in imparting Christian perfection, add to the overall evidence of continuity between Chadwick’s view of the Holy Spirit and late nineteenth-century Wesleyan-Holiness revivalism.36 It is no wonder that Ian Randall identifies Chadwick as the leading exponent of ‘traditionalist Wesleyan spirituality’ in the interwar period, with Southport and Cliff College forming a ‘lonely school of prophets at odds with Methodist progressiveness’.37 This Pentecostal framework lent itself to stark contrasts and sometimes veered into hyperbole, but Chadwick’s writings on Pentecost should not be read in isolation. Compared to most holiness revivalists, his theology of the Spirit was far more balanced and sophisticated. For example, he wrote a fifteen-part series of articles between April and August of 1915 that displayed a firm grounding in classical creedal affirmations, discussing the Spirit’s divinity in relation to the Father and the Son, as well as the Spirit’s unique personhood and work in creation, redemption, inspiration, illumination, and so on.38 He avoided overly negative views of creation and material existence, arguing that ‘the Spirit redeems the material through the spiritual,’ which opened the way for an expansive view of the Spirit’s work in all creation and social life as well as individual persons.39 Overall, his theology of the Spirit reflects a classical Nicene approach, defending against any challenge to the divinity and personhood of the Spirit, deliberately grounding pneumatology in trinitarian theology, and affirming that the Spirit is active in both creation and redemption, working on both a personal and a cosmic level.40 Chadwick’s view of the Spirit was also firmly grounded in Christology. Indeed, as George Bailey has argued, it could be read as a Spirit-Christology—a reconfiguring of Christology from a more radically pneumatological perspective.41 There was little risk that his teaching on the Spirit would support fanciful excesses, since he so closely aligned Christ and the Spirit.42 He stressed the continuity between Christ’s mission, the mission of the Holy Spirit, and the mission of the church as the realisation of God’s purposes in the world. This comes through in his interpretation of kenosis, through which he emphasised the self-emptied (but still divine) Christ’s dependence on the Spirit.43 This, again, lent itself to reading the events of salvation history as a parallel to the believer’s experience of dependence on the Spirit, thus interpreting Pentecost itself as a christological event, where Christ shared with the church the glory he set aside in his self-emptying mission.44 Indeed, while stressing

Catholicity of the Heart 143 continuity of mission, he argued that there was greater spiritual capacity after Pentecost.45 He described the Spirit as ‘the Other-self of Jesus’ who comes to take the place of Christ’ in the world and who is Incarnate in the church as Christ’s body: ‘Incarnation is as necessary for the Spirit as for the Son. He can only fulfill His mission in and through men and women. The body of the believer is the temple of the Holy Ghost. The church is the body of Christ indwelt in controlled by his Spirit. In humanity the Holy Ghost finds both His opportunity and His limitations.’46 However, Chadwick stressed that the ‘limitations’ of humanity still laid open all of the possibilities of life in the Spirit that were open to Jesus in his earthly mission.47 As with all the revivalists discussed in this book, Chadwick had great confidence in the Spirit’s guidance of the church and individual believers, but he avoided simplistic appeals to individual discernment through experience. For example, in a January 1913 article on infallibility, he argued that isolated appeals to an infallible church or an infallible Bible or infallible experience were untenable. Rather, the only way to infallible guidance was to see all three as woven together and sustained by the Spirit in the church and the believer: ‘There is a Living Presence in the Church unifying the consciousness of the Body of Christ; there is a living Spirit in the Word interpreting it to the need of the soul of the age; and there is an answering witness in the heart that gives certainty to the truth of both the Church and the Word.’48 His appeal to the Spirit as ‘unifying consciousness of the Body of Christ’ is particularly striking against the background of individualistic pneumatology in nineteenth-century revivalism. He also made a clear distinction between ‘inspiration’ as the unique work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the biblical writers, and the Spirit’s work in illuminating the mind of subsequent generations of Christians so that they could properly interpret scriptural revelation and (carefully and cautiously) discern the providential hand of God in human history.49 The Spirit’s guidance, moreover, was always given in accord with human freedom and frailty, which meant that discernment required ‘thought, observation, weakness, courage, trust’.50 Chadwick emphasised the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration, and this drove him to insist on the necessity of conversion during debates about Church membership between 1907 and 1909. He often expressed concern that the contemporary church was emphasising education at the expense of evangelical conversion and focusing on social conditions rather than sin, salvation, and the costly call of discipleship.51 The true Church of the living God, must be, like its God, a living people, infused with spiritual life, which could come only through the regenerating work of the Spirit.52 However, as noted above, he was careful to make room for varied experiences of conversion. Using the same language of ‘manifestation’ that was prevalent in Hugh Bourne’s understanding of conversion, Chadwick stressed in a 1909 article that the ‘form of manifestation’ had always varied, but the results of it were the same in all.53 Thus he warned against making any ‘stereotyped test of experience’ the measure of conversion.54 The Spirit worked

144  Catholicity of the Heart in concert with the natural faculties, not producing a new personality but affecting the whole person, such that ‘there is no part of a man’s being that is not vitalised and strengthened by his power.’55 In this regard, he was fond of appealing to a marginal reading of Judges 6:34, which, Chadwick argued, should be translated that the Spirit ‘clothed itself’ with Gideon, such that the Spirit ‘thought through Gideon’s brains, felt through Gideon’s heart, looked through Gideon’s eyes, spoke through Gideon’s voice, wrought by Gideon’s hands, and yet all the time Gideon was still Gideon and the Spirit was still the Spirit.’56 This somewhat unusual way of describing the Spirit’s work, as Bailey argues, should be interpreted in light of the way Chadwick models life in the Spirit on the incarnation and the earthly life of Jesus—a way to ‘be, like Jesus, fully human through the fullness of the Spirit within’.57 The Church as a ‘Supernatural Institution’ Chadwick’s ecclesiology certainly bears the marks of revivalism. He believed revival was the greatest need of the church and the key to its vitality and missionary success. But his brand of revivalism was not simplistic or reactionary, and he gave attention to substantive ecclesiological issues. Chadwick’s interest in ecclesiology began long before the Methodist Union question had reached its zenith, as seen in a fifteen-part series of articles on the church he published between January and June of 1909. Given his stress upon the necessity of the Holy Spirit’s transforming work for personal regeneration and holiness, it is not surprising that his ecclesiology was Spirit-centred. He defined the church as ‘the creation of the Holy Spirit’ and ‘a community of believers, who owe their religious life from first to last to the Spirit. Apart from him there could be neither Christian nor Church.’58 But his christologically grounded pneumatology carried over into his ecclesiology. Chadwick defined the church primarily as the body of Christ, ‘united by the Divine Spirit’—a personal and spiritual organism rather than an organisation, sustained (but not constituted) by institutions and ordinances such as the sacraments.59 He also stressed that the church as body of Christ was the habitation of God—the place where God dwells through the Spirit—drawing on the images of temple, building, household, and tower. As such it was ‘the gift of God to his Son wrought by the power of the Holy Spirit’ who was ‘the Presence in the midst of those who meet in Christ’s Name that constitutes the Church of Christ’.60 One of his clearest statements in this regard comes from an article written in August of 1917, reflecting on the new challenges that would face the church coming out of the First World War. The last word of the New Testament says the Church is the body of Christ. The figure must be interpreted consistently, but at least three things are involved in the interpretation. The body is the habitation of a person, who finds it in the medium of revelation, an instrument of mind, heart, and will. The body of Christ is the place of His Presence,

Catholicity of the Heart 145 the revelation of His Spirit, and the instrument of His will. It is therefore the Spirit of Christ that vitalizes, animates, and directs the Church. He is master and Lord. He directs its functions, and supplies its need. The Church is identified with him.61 Thus, Chadwick used ‘body of Christ’ to indicate that the church was the possession of Christ and must conform form to Christ’s character and Christ’s mission, serving Christ alone and not any other entity or agenda.62 Chadwick saw the church as very closely identified with Christ, bearing Christ’s character, moving in the same power of the Spirit that moved Christ in his earthly ministry, and he even went so far as to call the church the ‘corporate reIncarnation of the risen Lord’.63 Through the essential Pentecostal gift of the Spirit, the work of bringing about the Kingdom that began in the earthly ministry of Jesus continued in the church: ‘In the earthly ministry the Spirit wrought in the body born of a woman; in the heavenly ministry He works through the Church which is the body of Christ.’64 In stark contrast to earlier Methodist revivalists, Chadwick did not question or downplay the importance of the church within the economy of salvation. Booth and Caughey emphasised human agency, but Chadwick identified the church itself as the body instituted by Christ to be the channel of human agency for the extension of God’s kingdom on earth. Although he did not want to define the church as a merely human institution, he sometimes described it as a divine institution—a people instituted by God as ‘the body in which is fulfilled the divine purpose in the world’—so long as it was understood that this divine institution was at its heart a living organism, whose life was drawn from God’s indwelling presence and power in its midst.65 So he argued that the church had a necessary organisational side but cautioned that many institutional or organisational functions could be done without the aid of the Spirit: ‘The supernatural is his sign and seal. Clever men can organize, but none but God can save the soul.’66 Here and elsewhere he leaned into a functional account of the church as institution, portraying it as an instrument of the kingdom of God, but not an end in itself.67 This functional emphasis did not prevent Chadwick from describing the church in lofty terms as a ‘divine creation’ and ‘supernatural institution’ of ‘divine construction’ with ‘the whole structure’ being of ‘divine quality’, having the character of a foreign embassy: ‘a bit of heaven planted upon earth’.68 Thus identified with Christ, the church exercises Christ’s ministry in the world, ordained by God to serve both as priest and as judge. ‘So complete is the identification of the church with the living Lord,’ Chadwick wrote in 1917, ‘that he declared their acts and judgments to be identical. When they bound, he bound; What they loosed, he loosed.’69 This was Chadwick’s interpretation of the classic ecclesiological notion of the ‘the keys to the Kingdom’: the church was the bearer of Christ’s gospel to human persons, which required the exercise of discipline and order within the church community. Chadwick sought to guard against any notion that the ordained

146  Catholicity of the Heart ministry might ‘monopolise’ the administration of grace by stressing that this priestly function of ‘binding and loosing’ was proper to the whole church, even though particular churches were free to ‘order’ such administration according to the needs of their time and context. 70 And he stressed repeatedly that the church’s authority must not be coercive; it must be exercised ‘without compulsion’ and in a way that was consistent with the character of human beings as free persons.71 Church authority was strong, in his view, but strictly limited to the functions for which the church was ordained: First and foremost was the witness to the Christ the Son of the living God made known to each by revelation through faith. Then the Church was the custodian of ‘the faith which was once for all delivered unto the Saints,’ and it was entrusted the discipline of the fellowship. The church also was responsible for the due observance of the sacraments and the order of worship and prayers. This summary encapsulated classic Protestant ecclesiological emphases on Word, sacrament and discipline. Chadwick presented such authority not as the possession of any person, but ‘conditioned upon a supernatural experience, the realized presence of the Christ, and the gift of the Holy Ghost’.72 It was in this sense that Chadwick could even favourably appeal to Walter Hobhouse’s description of the church as a ‘visible Divine Society’ in his 1910 Bampton Lectures. The church’s character as a community of those born of the Spirit necessitated a separation from worldly influence, which in turn necessitated a distinctive form of disciplined life which gave visible witness in the world to the transforming power of grace.73 And yet, as already noted, Chadwick was not averse to criticising the church and was keenly aware of the church’s limitations. He asserted that the church catholic was infallible because it was God’s instrument in the world, and yet he was also clear that individual churches could fail and did fail.74 Such weakness, Chadwick mused, seemed to be providential, for it forced the church to remain humble and to rely on its divine foundations, trusting in the sovereignty of the Spirit and not in human powers.75 Indeed, given the frailty of the church from a human perspective, he wrote, ‘the wonder is not that the church fails so conspicuously in the eyes of the world, but that it succeeds as well as it does.’76 Turning to the question of sacraments, Chadwick stands out starkly from his revivalist forebears. Indeed, the fact that he had a clear sacramental theology and fostered appreciation for sacramental spirituality distinguishes him from Bourne, Caughey, and Booth. His views reflect the free church emphases of his time, highlighting concerns about ‘sacerdotalism’ and any conception of sacraments that made salvation ‘the monopoly of the Church’ or imposed a necessary human priesthood between the believer and priesthood of Christ.77 So he stressed that infant baptism was not practised as a means to secure salvation for the newly born, following the predominant Methodist

Catholicity of the Heart 147 trend in his era of denying baptismal regeneration.78 Likewise, he supported infant baptism via the Wesleyan emphasis on the universality of the atonement: children could be baptised because they were born under the effects of an ‘original grace’ just as surely as they suffered the effects of ‘original sin’.79 Infant baptism, therefore, did not ‘confer’ salvation through efficacious baptismal regeneration, but rather because infants were already God’s children and could therefore be welcomed into the community through baptism. Chadwick was also very keen to dissociate the Lord’s Supper from any sense of either saving efficacy or unique mediation of grace. He wrote in 1911, ‘Communion with the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus Christ no more depends upon the Lord’s Supper then regeneration depends upon baptism. When a symbol is made a condition of reality it passes beyond its mission.’ And yet he stressed the unique place that the Eucharist had in the church, because it proclaimed the heavenly reality of Christ’s atoning sacrifice and demonstrated fellowship of those who are joined to Christ. In this way, he would describe Lord’s Supper as ‘a sermon’ that declared the gospel to the world, and a ‘unique means of blessing’.80 Thus he saw a parallel between preaching and sacrament: the preached word set forth salvation orally, and the Lord’s supper displayed it in symbolic acts.81 While emphasising that Christ was already present whenever two or three gathered in his name, Chadwick would acknowledge a ‘Real Presence’ in the Lord’s Supper in the sense that it was ‘an occasion on which we are assured in some special way of His Presence’. The Lord’s Supper had ‘its special presence and peculiar grace’, though it did not ‘differ in kind from other means of grace.’82 Clearly, he stated that the Eucharist was ‘more than a Memorial’; it was an observance that ‘cannot be ignored without loss’.83 And despite his concerns about sacerdotal worship, he believed that the ‘silent appeal of the holy sacrament’ had ‘never failed’ to sustain the church through the ‘spiritual darkness’ of the Middle Ages.84 Chadwick glossed over Wesley’s insistence on ordination for sacramental administration and emphasised that all ministerial functions were shared between laymen and preachers in the Methodist tradition. He credited Wesley’s position solely to his desire to remain part of the Anglican fold.85 Chadwick lamented the way the ‘homely table’ had been ‘turned into an altar, a memorial act into a sacrifice, a symbol of spiritual fellowship into a mystery of priestly magic, and a simple sign of love into an occasion of tyranny, bigotry, and warfare’.86 Chadwick dismissed the Catholic views of eucharistic sacrifice and priesthood as ‘sheer paganism, tacked onto the Christian religion’. He likewise the Anglo-Catholic view of the supper because it necessitated a human priesthood to effect a change in the elements through consecration. In contrast, Chadwick maintained, ‘Protestantism unfrocks the priest, but it keeps the feast.’87 The concerns of ‘high church’ Methodists regarding lay administration were rejected on the same grounds, arguing that they should be more concerned with ensuring access to the sacrament and exercising discipline in its observance. Discipline was necessary because communion implied a ‘renewal of pledges to both sides of the Covenant’; it was not only a

148  Catholicity of the Heart conveyance of blessing but a ‘partnership’, implying corporate participation in Christ’s ‘sacrificial life.’88 Thus, while Randall has noted the ‘theological isolation’ of Chadwick and his sympathisers with respect to holiness teaching, Chadwick’s relatively robust ecclesiology guarded against the divisive and sectarian forces that might have taken hold in such a situation.89 He was a revivalist with a catholic spirit, which was built upon the Christological and pneumatological foundations of his ecclesiology. His account of the church’s catholicity illustrates this point well and again sets him apart from earlier revivalists. Chadwick stressed that Christ was unique and Lord of all, and yet through his incarnation, he shared every aspect of human life with all people. Therefore the church as Christ’s body should encompass and fulfil all cultures, complete all truth, and reflect ‘all forms of beauty, purity, and ritual.’ 90 As such, no one church or people-group could claim to be the church in its entirety, but rather all churches of those who were enlivened by the living presence of Christ through the Spirit possessed ‘a Catholic Faith, a Catholic Discipline, Catholic Witness, and a Catholic Authority, by which is meant the common Inheritance, Witness, and Mission of the whole Body of true and Spirit-born believers.’91 Revivalist Reunion: Chadwick and Peake on Methodist Union The above sketch of Chadwick’s evangelical-catholic revivalism helps make sense of his erstwhile support for Methodist Union. Whereas the revivalists surveyed in the previous chapters were associated with divisions of one sort or another, Chadwick spent the last phase of his life and ministry urgently pressing for the reunification of the divided Methodist Church. Of course, Chadwick was a Wesleyan Methodist revivalist, and not based in one of the historically revivalist bodies. But it was not the heirs of Bourne and O’Bryan that presented obstacles to Methodist Union; those came from a faction within the Wesleyan Methodist ministry with a high view of the pastoral office and a hope for reunion with the Church of England, fuelled in part by the Lambeth Appeal.92 Chadwick, for his part, had blended elements of Holiness Movement spirituality with the evangelically catholic ecclesiology that had developed in late nineteenth-century Wesleyan Methodism. On the key questions of Methodist Union—doctrinal standards, sacraments, and ministry—he was closely aligned with leading figures in the historically revivalist branches of Methodism. This is evident when we compare Chadwick with the Primitive Methodist scholar, Arthur Samuel Peake (1865-1929). Despite their significant theological differences, Chadwick and Peake shared an experiential catholicity and a robust free church ecclesiology that put them on the same side of the union debates. The Wesleyan Methodists opened a formal exploration of union with the Primitive Methodist and United Methodist Churches in 1913, though the topic had been discussed informally for some time.93 Chadwick voted against

Catholicity of the Heart 149 the 1913 Conference resolution, doing so—he later claimed—‘in the interest of Methodist Unity’, because he believed the churches were not ready.94 In April 1914, he still had reservations, but the harsh realities of the war changed his perspective, and by March 1918, he wrote, ‘There is an appointed time in the movements of the Spirit, and the set time for union has come.’95 The process was largely stalled during the war but began to pick up again in 1917. Chadwick became President of the Conference in 1918—a crucial point in the discussions. In his Presidential Address, he highlighted the ‘crisis’ of the historical moment and the need for Methodism to be both revived and united: ‘The spirit of Union is one of the marked features of our time. Our divisions may have once been our glory; they are now our reproach.’96 As President, Chadwick was the chair of the Wesleyan Methodist Union committee and was often asked to chair the joint committee meetings with representatives from the other two denominations.97 Thus he was intimately involved with the union conversations in its first serious phase. Historical accounts have not named him among the most crucial figures in the union process, but he was very invested and conversant in all its details. And a Primitive Methodist participant, writing in 1920, identified him as one of the most significant personalities on the joint union committee, noting that he always commanded the attention of the committee and claiming that ‘his contributions to the debates have been invaluable’.98 While his involvement in the union committee faded gradually in the early 1920s, he remained a strong advocate of Methodist Union and used his editorship of Joyful News to promote the cause until union was completed in 1932.99 Arthur Samuel Peake was an outstanding biblical scholar who came from a family of Primitive Methodist ministers.100 He read theology at Oxford and obtained a fellowship at Merton College, but left to join the staff of the Primitive Methodist Theological Institute in Manchester, later named Hartley College. He was appointed Dean of the new Faculty of Theology at the University of Manchester in 1904, continuing to serve both institutions until his death in 1929. It was somewhat unusual for a layperson to serve as a tutor at a theological college at that time, and Peake’s embrace of higher criticism was a concern for some conservatives.101 But his saintly reputation and genuine spirituality managed to earn the trust of the hesitant, such that George Jackson credited him with saving Primitive Methodism from division over the Fundamentalist controversy that profoundly impacted American Christianity.102 Though he was a layman, Peake was a consummate churchman, like Chadwick. He was not only a local preacher with a fine reputation but was heavily involved in Connexional life and ecumenical efforts. Like Chadwick, he served as President of the Free Church Council (1928), and he was a delegate to the first World Conference on Faith and Order at Lausanne in 1927. He also served on select committee of Free Churchmen struck by the Archbishop of York to consult regarding the Lambeth Appeal. Unlike Chadwick, he has been widely recognised for his seminal role in the Methodist Union process, both on the committee and via his public comments. Notably, he

150  Catholicity of the Heart forcefully responded to the Wesleyan Methodist ‘manifesto’ against union that caused a significant stir in 1922, engaging in a lively exchange with J. Ernest Rattenbury in the Methodist press.103 Upon Peake’s death, John Scott Lidgett wrote of his contribution to Methodist Union, ‘No man did more to secure, by God’s blessing, this great result than Dr Peake.’104 Chadwick and Peake both supported Methodist Union as part of a broader movement towards unity in the church. As a dedicated free churchman, Chadwick rejected any attempt to charge nonconformists with schism. He argued that Methodism’s separation ‘involved no separation from the Catholic faith of the Church of England’, and that Methodism had never ‘cherished any bitterness against the Church from whence it came’. Moreover, he claimed the way that God had continued to use the various divided churches since the time of the Reformation showed that ‘diversity also is of the Spirit of God’ and that God had not only permitted denominational divisions but had, in some sense, ‘ordained them’.105 Within the one Catholic faith, various dissenting groups gave particular witness to some neglected aspect of truth, or protested against some perversion of truth that was prominent at the time of their founding. But this only made them ‘parts of a whole’, which provided a ‘specialised’ witness that needed to be contextualised in a broader catholic theological framework.106 This same logic applied to the intraMethodist divisions as well. In September 1907, commenting on the union of the United Methodist Free Churches, the Methodist New Connection, and the Bible Christians, Chadwick had nothing but positive things to say about the origins of these three Methodist bodies, presenting their original grievances as legitimate and the divisions as unnecessary, but also noting that time and healed the divisions and put them in a new light.107 Despite his resistance to lay blame for past divisions, Chadwick maintained that Christian unity was an obligation, and warned that wilful persistence in ‘unnecessary divisions’ was schism.108 He regarded a federation of churches as inadequate, because it would allow too much scope for current divisions to continue—a surprising commitment given the support for a federal model among prominent Free Church voices.109 Chadwick was also clear that the unity for which Christ prayed must be visible because the church was Christ’s body and ‘its unity was to be a convincing evidence to the world’.110 At the same time, Chadwick was clear that unity could not mean the absorption of all churches into one of the existing churches, as would have been the contemporary Roman Catholic expectation, and the hope of some in England who wanted a truly comprehensive Established Church. Such a move, Chadwick wrote, ‘would be to make catholicity the instrument of exclusion’. He rather called for ‘coordination upon a common basis of faith and love’ as an expression of a future recovered unity which remained ‘the one supreme need of the churches’.111 True union, Chadwick insisted, was a spiritual matter, and could not simply be achieved through organisational means. Divisions might even be exacerbated by a forced or

Catholicity of the Heart 151 premature institutional unification without the ‘spontaneous movement of the Spirit’.112 In other words, ‘unity must come before reunion’113 for ‘union is the organized expression of unity’.114 This spiritual emphasis did not mean the church ‘leave union alone and go for revival’; union might not necessarily bring revival, but revival in a united church would offer an unprecedented evangelical witness.115 In connecting unity and evangelisation, he reflected the spirit of early ecumenism as it took shape in the aftermath of the Edinburgh World Mission Conference of 1910.116 Like Chadwick, Peake acknowledged God’s hand in some of the divisions of the past, though he was more circumspect and framed the necessity of division as an accommodation on God’s part to human frailty and circumstances. So, he wrote in 1924, as the third iteration of the scheme for union was soon to be put to a vote, that he was ‘not concerned to deny that God raised up the Primitive Methodists for a purpose’, but that ‘human wilfulness’ often forces God to ‘adopt not the best but the second or third best course’. The heritage of Protestantism, the Free Church, and Methodism was divinely given in some sense, but he believed the church would have been better off if such divisions had not been necessary. 117 Peake had long been a vocal proponent of Christian reunion, beginning even in his student days.118 He spoke warmly in favour of the Lambeth Appeal at the 1921 Primitive Methodist Conference, not minimising the outstanding issues between Anglicans and Free Churches, but lauding the ‘spirit and temper’ of the document and urging Primitive Methodists to respond in kind rather than rushing to identify the sticking points.119 The following year, speaking at a united meeting during the Wesleyan Conference at Sheffield, he remained positive on the Appeal, but realistic about the prospects of union with the Anglicans, given that they were also simultaneously pursuing unity with Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. And yet he counselled against despair, noting that much progress had been made, and more was possible. Given that the church was a ‘Divine creation’, the body and bride of Christ, and the temple of the Spirit, Christians could be sure they were ‘not abandoned’ to their own ‘dimness of insight, defective wisdom, or perversity of will’.120 Peake, like Chadwick, stressed that unity must be visible as well as spiritual, on the basis of Christ’s prayer in John 17. He also viewed Methodist Union as an achievable step towards the admittedly distant goal of full visible unity for all Christians.121 Although he desired an organic union, Peake had in mind ‘a unity in which the greatest elasticity should not simply be permitted but welcomed’ in all aspects of the church’s life: ‘Every variety of organisation, every shade of belief consistent with loyalty to our central affirmations, every type of worship congenial to our varied temperaments, should find in such a Church its legitimate home.’122 Peake was firm, however, on his Protestant and Free Church principles, never contemplating that the Free Churches should give up liberty from state interference or the right to private judgment. And although Peake was no revivalist, he had retained a focus on

152  Catholicity of the Heart vital Christian experience. Like Chadwick, he viewed the renewal of spiritual life as the greatest need of the Christian church on its journey towards unity, while being careful to account for various types of spiritual experience. Religion is not just morality touched with emotion. It is the most tremendous force we know. When it bursts into the life in all its explosive energy the fountains of the great deep are broken up. Or it may steal into the life as the dawn into the world and, without crisis, brighten to the perfect day…If religion is anything in our lives it ought to be everything; not in the sense that it shuts out all other interests, but that it supplies the underlying harmony to every melody of life. But we search too little among the roots of our religion; we live too much on the shallow crust, too little at the fiery centre.123 A similar foundation of experiential catholicity, therefore, funded the ecumenical vision of Chadwick and Peake, though Chadwick’s theology stuck to traditional and inherited language and thinking, while Peake’s theology embraced modern scholarship and a progressive theological agenda. So, it is not surprising that both Chadwick and Peake discerned the leading of the Spirit in the movement towards Methodist Union, though neither appealed merely to subjective evidence. Chadwick was characteristically more forceful, maintaining that the concurrence of many different impulses towards unity was a clear indication that Methodist Union would succeed because it was ‘voluntary and of the Spirit’.124 In 1922, Echoing the kind of certainty regarding the Spirit’s guidance that has always made opponents of revivalism nervous, Chadwick described how his conviction had gradually taken shape: I discerned in the movement toward Union a direction of the Wind that bloweth where it listeth and a Voice speaking that I knew. Thought deepened conviction, and prayer matured into assurance. Confirmation came through fellowship in the work of the Committee and association with the other Methodist Churches, and now I am as fully assured as any man can be that the movement is of God. Union is in the programme of the Divine Will.125 His conviction was not simply an internal impression, but was confirmed in the way he saw committee members overcome prejudice and recognise that their separated brethren were ‘sane men of sound judgment, cogent in their reasoning, reasonable in their temper, Catholic in their sympathies, evangelical in faith, and Methodist in experience’.126 He believed union reflected ‘the mind of Christ’, which he described as a ‘corporate consciousness that unifies those who together seek to know His mind that they may do His will’, and which was discerned in ‘the signs of the times’ and in the Scriptures, and verified through ‘prayerful and obedient faith’.127 Despite what he reported

Catholicity of the Heart 153 as ‘rebukes’ from fellow Methodists, he continued to publicly state these convictions.128 Peake also claimed that union was the will of God, though he did so with more nuance than the Principal of Cliff College, focusing on external signs of the Spirit’s leading through events in the church and culture. If we are seeking for signs of the Spirit we cannot be indifferent to the strong tendency we discern abroad as well as at home towards the healing of divisions in the body of Christ and the closing up of our ranks in the face of the materialism and the unbelief, the scornful rejection, not simply of the Christian faith, but of the Christian ethic, which grows ever more strident and more audacious…I cannot understand how anyone who is seeking to know the mind of Christ can be indifferent to the patent tokens of His will in these spontaneous movements in His Church.129 Despite this more cautious tone, Peake, like Chadwick, warned that a failure to achieve Methodist Union would bring divine judgement and grave consequences for the larger challenges of Christian reunion that lay ahead.130 Given their obvious theological differences, one might suspect that Chadwick and Peake would differ on the question of doctrinal standards for union, but in fact they were again on the same side of the issue. The Wesleyan Methodists had recently been discussing the matter of doctrinal standards, partly due to the campaign of the Wesley Bible Union to use the standards against those who embraced modern scholarship.131 The Conference adopted a statement in 1919 clarifying that Wesley’s Sermons and Notes were ‘not intended to impose a system of formal or speculative theology on our preachers, but to set up standards of preaching and belief, which should secure loyalty to the fundamental truths of the Gospel of Redemption’. The statement further clarified that this allowed for liberty of opinion on non-essential matters and that the Spirit-guided church—acting via the Conference in the case of Methodism—was competent to interpret the standards.132 The clause on doctrine in the draft scheme of union in 1920 was very simple: ‘The evangelical doctrines for which Methodism has stood from the beginning as held by the three Conferences, and as generally contained in Wesley’s Notes on the New Testament and the first four volumes of his Sermons, subject to the authority of Divine revelation recorded in the Holy Scriptures, shall be the doctrinal basis of the United Church.’133 This was not sufficient for ‘high church’ Wesleyans who desired stronger grounding in the historic faith and worried that the words ‘generally contained in’ would provide too much leeway for more liberal ministers from the non-Wesleyan traditions.134 Chadwick, for his part, saw no threat of doctrinal innovation in the other Methodist traditions. He claimed Methodists had a ‘perfect genius for splitting’, but they had ‘split over everything but doctrine’.135 Commenting on the proposed scheme for union in 1921, he wrote that the three

154  Catholicity of the Heart branches of Methodism were ‘still one in doctrine, identical in experience and not fundamentally different in administration’.136 The doctrinal statement in the scheme would provide a good balance of continuity and freedom, in Chadwick’s view, since it offered a standard that was ‘definite enough for instruction and discipline, and flexible enough for any liberty that loyalty has a right to demand’.137 In February 1920, Peake also wrote irenically in support of the statement, though he would rather Wesley’s Notes and Sermons had not been included, given that he believed Wesley’s exegesis was ‘frequently to be rejected’ and that his ‘whole exposition of the book of Revelation’ was ‘radically unsound’. Peake described himself as ‘a lover of elasticity’, who preferred ‘general statements rather than specific articles’. Yet he thought the qualifiers ‘evangelical doctrines’ and ‘generally contained’, along with the recognition of Conference authority, sufficiently guarded against potential abuse of these standards. The important thing about Wesley’s legacy, for Peake, was preaching which served an evangelical purpose. He further cited the Wesleyan Conference’s above-mentioned 1919 report on doctrine as evidence that the standards would not prove burdensome, specifically noting its emphasis on liberty and Conference authority under the living guidance of the Spirit.138 Two years later, Peake entered the fray when the opposition ‘manifesto’ suggested ‘that the view-point of Wesleyan Methodism’ was ‘essentially different from that of the other Methodist churches in regard to Doctrinal Standards’, among other matters.139 Rattenbury, writing for the opposition, noted that the United Methodists had power to revise their doctrines every ten years. He also singled out Peake personally, noting that some were concerned that a layman’s influence on Primitive Methodist ministers would ‘create serious doctrinal divergences’.140 Peake reminded Rattenbury that he was under discipline both as a local preacher and college tutor, and noted that his teaching was not dissimilar to that of the tutors in Wesleyan Methodist colleges—a point Chadwick also made in his response to the ‘manifesto’.141 Peake also argued that the divergent ‘view-points’ in question existed within Wesleyan Methodism itself, and were not so much a point of difference between them and the other Methodist traditions.142 Several years of union discussions led Chadwick to the same conclusion.143 The committee made minor adjustments to the doctrine clause in the second (1922) and third (1924) iterations of the scheme for union, but realised they needed to add a more substantial compromise to satisfy the Wesleyan Methodist holdouts when the 1924 scheme failed to secure the necessary votes.144 In 1925, Peake was appointed to a doctrine subcommittee chaired by Lidgett, where he played a key role in finalising a formula that won the acceptance of the requisite majority.145 The final statement identified Methodism as part of the Holy Catholic Church, and carefully referenced the ‘fundamental principles’ of the creeds and the Reformation, without simply affirming the creeds themselves. The reference to Wesley’s Sermons and Notes was tightened somewhat, but the language concerning the Bible left

Catholicity of the Heart 155 breathing room between revelation and the text itself. Certainly, it was a compromise, and the wording was rather open to interpretation. But Currie’s dismissal of Peake and Lidgett’s wording as ‘curiously thoughtless’ is misplaced; they crafted a statement that assuaged some of the concerns of the Wesleyan Methodist conservatives without eliminating the ‘elasticity’ Peake desired.146 Though Chadwick was a theological conservative and Peake a theological liberal, neither of them was overly concerned about establishing precise standards of doctrine, and both were comfortable sharing in fellowship and ministry amidst disagreement, provided there was a common foundation of vibrant Christian experience. The second and third major obstacles to union were intertwined: sacraments and pastoral ministry. I have discussed Chadwick’s view of the Lord’s Supper above. Peake, for his part, emphasised the solemnity and reverence with which it should be observed and its importance in scripture and the primitive church, though he believed the scriptural evidence was too slender to make sacraments essential to Christianity. Like Chadwick, he was ready to acknowledge a ‘Real Presence’ at the Lord’s table that was ‘special’, but stated that this was true of ‘every point in the service, not coming at a particular moment of it, nor yet localised in the elements.’ His emphasis on the importance of the Supper only strengthened his conviction that lay administration was essential, given that many Primitive Methodists did not have regular access to ordained ministers. ‘I should prefer the ministrations of a layman to the neglect of the service’, wrote Peake in 1924. He thought class-leaders best suited to this role, though he went on to stress that it remained ‘indispensable’ that the one administering ‘act as the representative of the Church’, that is, with authorisation through a Minister.147 This reflects Peake’s belief that ordained ministry represented a ‘concentration’ of the common priesthood of all, which ‘finds its fittest organ and most intense expression in the activities of those who are wholly dedicated to its service.’ For Peake, this was true high churchmanship, rooted in a high view of the whole church.148 At the 1921 Primitive Methodist Conference, Peake quoted a charge to ordinands that he had recently given, encapsulating his view: You are, therefore, chosen representatives of the Church, possessing no privilege, no authority, which she does not possess, exercising no function which is not within her right, charged with no spiritual gift which is not already hers, entrusted with the communication of no grace which is not in her storehouse of divinely granted resources. You have your ministerial significance only insofar as you are the accredited representatives of the Church, holding her Commission, dispensing her gifts and graces. You are priests, but so is every Christian; and your priesthood is not intrinsically different from that of your lay brethren.149 Chadwick was present at the 1921 Primitive Methodist Conference and commented favourably that Peake’s ‘discussion of the vocation of the

156  Catholicity of the Heart ministry was sympathetic, Scriptural, and convincing’.150 Chadwick also applauded Peake’s appeal to Wesleyan Methodist G. G. Findlay, who had portrayed the sacramental function of ordained ministry as a matter of ‘fitness’ relating to the ‘well-being’ rather than the ‘being’ of the church.151 Chadwick, like Peake, stressed that the restriction of certain pastoral tasks to the ordained ministry as a functional matter necessary for order, and not based on any ontological difference between ordained and lay persons, claiming, ‘in the New Testament there is nothing that is done by a minister that may not be done by a layman’.152 He clearly did not have a ‘high’ view of the pastoral office, when considered in the midst of the breadth of views among Wesleyan Methodists, and he disagreed sharply with those Wesleyans who argued against Methodist Union because they wanted to pursue union with the Church of England—a move which would have required some form of re-ordination of Methodist ministers.153 That was why he rejected the proposals in the Lambeth Appeal, writing in February 1922, ‘no Free Churchman can accept them. I appreciate their spirit, but they yield nothing but courtesies. They admit the spiritual reality of our ministry, but not the validity of our orders.’154 He wrote again in November of the same year, appealing, like Peake, to his version of ‘high’ churchmanship: ‘My ordination is as divine as that of any Pope or Bishop. I am a churchman of the highest order for I am a free churchman and a Methodist.’155 Though the pastoral office may have been ‘the rock that has been the cause of every split’, Chadwick argued that the differences between the Wesleyan Methodists and the other Methodists were merely a matter of distinction in ‘administration’ made by the Wesleyan Methodists, not a fundamental difference in understanding of the Christian ministry, which for all Methodists was the shared responsibility of the church, visibly embodied in a ‘separate and representative’ order of ministry that took on some functions on behalf of the whole.156 Thus, on the basis of this common understanding of ministry, both Chadwick and Peake supported lay administration of the sacrament in cases of necessity.157 This was, of course, a long way from John Wesley’s understanding of the ministry as a ‘succession of pastors and teachers’ to whom the administration of the sacraments was exclusively entrusted, and to whom obedience was owed in all things indifferent.158 Their view of ministry was closer to Bourne than Bunting; it drew on the participatory and empowering understanding of ministry found in earlier revivalists, though now more highly developed and integrated within a stronger doctrine of the church. Has Methodism a Future? Peake did not live to see Methodist Union realised. He died in August 1929, and Chadwick was among those who paid him tribute. He noted that Peake was ‘one of the most fearless and aggressive of the Critical School’ and

Catholicity of the Heart 157 recalled one incident when they had ‘crossed swords’ over ‘the influence of criticism upon Evangelism’. But, he continued, I think I can claim to have read every book he published, as well as many of the lectures and papers that never got into a book, and I am prepared to say that the critic was the least part of the man. He had the discernment of a saint, and rarely touched the Scriptures for exposition without discovering a rare spiritual treasure. So far as I know, he never preached criticism from the pulpit, and every utterance I heard from him was deeply spiritual and quietly but intensely fervent.159 Chadwick and Peake had each, in their own way, preserved Wesley’s catholicity with respect to spirituality; but the tensions in his ecclesiology were resolved in the direction of the believer’s church tradition. Regardless of the differences between them, an underlying ethos of evangelical free church catholicity brought them together. Once it became clear that union would happen, Samuel Chadwick spent his final years calling for revival. In the summer of 1931, he cautioned against any creeping triumphalism, stressing that Methodism’s size was no guarantee of its permanence and that its long-term future depended upon recapturing its original spirit: the religion of the warm heart, centred on the cross of Calvary and the flame of Pentecost, resulting in the passion for evangelisation and spreading scriptural holiness. In short, his relatively traditional Methodist revivalism was still key to his vision. Has Methodism a future? It has certainly a great opportunity. There is a quickening of hope in Methodist union, but pacts may be more deadly than splits. The future depends on the rekindling of the Methodist fires and the recapture of the Methodist passion. There is always hope of Revival in a church born of Revival, and by Revival we shall be saved.160 The last thing Chadwick wrote for Joyful News was a brief comment on Methodist Union, tacked on to the beginning of a 1919 article on ‘The Spirit of Unity’. It was published on 29 September 1932, just after the Uniting Conference, and less than three weeks before his death. Reflecting on the consummation of Methodist Union, he looked forward to the wider union for which he still hoped: ‘The Methodists are one. Glory to God! Yet this is but the earnest of a greater triumph. There are grand possibilities of a larger union of the churches, towards which the Spirit is leading us.’ Showing once again that unity was ultimately a matter of the Spirit, no matter how committed he was to the institutional processes of Methodist Union, Chadwick wrote: ‘The Union sought must be the Unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. It will come. It is coming. It is at hand. For the new movement seeks no unity of ritual, no common basis of dogma, nor any conformity to authority. It is of

158  Catholicity of the Heart God the Spirit, and He will assuredly bring it to pass in his own way, in His own good time.’161 Peake would have heartily affirmed these parting words from Chadwick. Notes 1 Joe Brice, Saved and Sent: The Book of Cliff College and Its Fellowship (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1939), 16. 2 Samuel Chadwick, ‘General Booth’, Joyful News, 29 August 1912, 4. 3 David Bebbington, The Nonconformist Conscience: Chapel and Politics, 1870-1914 (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1982), 157–59. 4 William Strawson, ‘Methodist Theology 1850–1950’, in A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, ed. Rupert E. Davies, A. Raymond George, and Gordon Rupp, vol. 3 (London: Epworth Press, 1983), 229. 5 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Church and the State’, Joyful News, 6 May 1909, 1; See also ‘Caste in the Church’, Joyful News, 18 June 1908, 1; ‘The Gift of the Holy Ghost’, Joyful News, 23 May 1912, 1; ‘The Work of the Church in War-Time’, Joyful News, 8 March 1917, 2. 6 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Supper of the Lord: The Priest and the Ordinance’, Joyful News, 8 July 1920, 1. 7 Samuel Chadwick, The Path of Prayer (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1931); The Way to Pentecost (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1932); The Gospel of the Cross (London: Epworth Press, 1934); The Call to Christian Perfection (London: Epworth, 1936). Earlier, while at Leeds, he published a collection of sermons as Humanity and God (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1904). 8 On Annie Douglas, see David H Howarth, ‘“Joyful News” (1883-1963) Some Reflections’, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 44, no. 1 (1983): 9. 9 Chadwick’s theology has not received much attention, but is discussed in a substantive way in David H Howarth, ‘Samuel Chadwick and Some Aspects of Wesleyan Methodist Evangelism, 1860–1932’ (M.Litt. thesis, University of Lancaster, 1977), chapters 6–8; Ian M. Randall, ‘Southport and Swanwick: Contrasting Movements of Methodist Spirituality in Inter-War England’, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 50, no. 1 (February 1995): 1–14; Ian M. Randall, Evangelical Experiences: A Study in the Spirituality of English Evangelicalism 1918-1939 (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1999), chapter 4; George Bailey, ‘Wesleyan Spirit-Christology: Inspiration from the Theology of Samuel Chadwick’ (Oxford Institute for Methodist Theological Studies, Oxford, 2018), https://oxfordinstitute.org/working-group-papers-at-2018-institute/. Howarth’s final chapter includes discussion of Chadwick’s views on Methodist Union, but no significant evaluation of his ecclesiology. 10 See Martin Wellings, ‘Wesleyan Methodism and Nonconformity’, in Evangelicalism and Dissent in Modern England and Wales, ed. David W. Bebbington and David Ceri Jones (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021), 82–87; John Munsey Turner, Conflict and Reconciliation: Studies in Methodism and Ecumenism in England, 1740–1982 (London: Epworth, 1985), 181–91. 11 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Proposed Scheme for Methodist Union: What Are the Alternatives?’, Joyful News, 17 March 1921, 2. It’s notable that the name of the Joyful News was changed to Joyful News and Methodist Chronicle in January 1917, reflecting the extensive coverage it provided to Connexional matters. 12 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Condition of the Church’, Joyful News, 11 February 1909, 1. See also ‘God’s Call to the Churches’, Joyful News, 14 January 1926, 1. 13 There is no full-scale critical biography of Chadwick. The main biography, written shortly after his death by a close colleague, is Norman G Dunning, Samuel

Catholicity of the Heart 159 Chadwick (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1933). More recent discussions of his life and ministry are Howarth, ‘Samuel Chadwick and Some Aspects of Wesleyan Methodist Evangelism, 1860–1932’; Kenneth F Bowden, Samuel Chadwick and Stacksteads (Bacup, UK: Stacksteads Methodist Church, 1982); David H Howarth, How Great a Flame: Samuel Chadwick 50 Years On (Ilkeston, UK: Moorley’s Bible & Bookshop, 1983); Howard G. Mellor, Cliff: More Than a College (Calver, UK: Cliff College Publishing, 2005), 293–334; Herbert B McGonigle, Samuel Chadwick: Preacher and Evangelist (Ilkeston, UK: Moorley’s Print & Publishing, 2017). In addition, there is a compilation of autobiographical content from Chadwick’s writings: The Testament of Samuel Chadwick: 1860–1932, ed. D. W Lambert (London: Epworth Press, 1957). 14 Bowden, Samuel Chadwick and Stacksteads, 8–9; Samuel Chadwick, ‘How I Became a Missioner’, Methodist Recorder, Winter Number, 1897, 43–47. 15 Cook died in September 1912, not long after Chadwick had been appointed to lead the South Yorkshire Coalfields Mission. Chadwick led the College while also superintending the Mission from Sheffield until he was officially appointed Principal at the 1913 Conference. Samuel Chadwick, ‘My Appointment to Cliff College’, Joyful News, 7 August 1913, 5; McGonigle, Samuel Chadwick, 42. 16 Bailey, ‘Wesleyan Spirit-Christology’, 3. 17 Strawson, ‘Methodist Theology 1850–1950’, 225. 18 Dunning, Samuel Chadwick, 81. 19 Most of these themes will be discussed in detail below. For examples of Chadwick’s view of holiness that echo nineteenth-century holiness movement emphases, see ‘Christian Perfection: A Second Blessing’, Joyful News, 5  November 1908, 1; ‘Christian Perfection: Do the Scriptures Teach a Second Blessing?’, Joyful News, 12 November 1908, 1; ‘The Spirit of Life’, Joyful News, 3 June 1915, 4; ‘The Spirit of Holiness’, Joyful News, 10 June 1915, 4; the two articles from 1908 are included in The Call to Christian Perfection, 68–81. 20 Randall, ‘Southport and Swanwick’. 21 Samuel Chadwick, ‘Why Canada Made a Fuss’, Joyful News, 5 September 1912, 4; ‘Must George Jackson Go?’, Joyful News, 17 July 1913, 4; ‘The Wesleyan Methodist Conference and the Fernley Lecture of 1912’, Joyful News, 31 July 1913, 4. For Jackson’s lecture, see George Jackson, The Preacher and the Modern Mind (London: Charles H. Kelly, 1912). 22 Martin Wellings, ‘Methodist Fundamentalism Before and After the First World War’, in Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in the United Kingdom During the Twentieth Century, ed. David W. Bebbington and David Ceri Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 76–94. 23 On Chadwick’s interest in Roman Catholicism, see Howarth, How Great a Flame, 34–35. Peter Hocken claims that Chadwick set aside one morning a week to intercede for Roman Catholicism. Peter Hocken, Streams of Renewal: The Origins and Early Development of the Charismatic Movement in Great Britain (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1986), 89. 24 The ‘supreme curse of Papacy’ he wrote in 1915, is the claim to temporal sovereignty,’ a tendency that always leads to ‘disaster.’ Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Church and the War’, Joyful News, 18 March 1915, 3. 25 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Reunion of the Churches’, Joyful News, 25 August 1927, 1. See also his telling comment that Catholic devotion to the saints was less of a concern that higher criticism, in ‘Kiyuku’, Joyful News, 8 January 1914, 4. 26 See, for example, Samuel Chadwick, ‘What Conversion Does for Churches’, Joyful News, 14 March 1907, 1; ‘The Democratic Gospel’, Joyful News, 21 March 1912, 4; ‘The Spirit of Truth’, Joyful News, 27 May 1915, 4; ‘The Spirit of Power’, Joyful News, 17 June 1915, 4; ‘The Spirit of Holiness’, 4. 27 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Law of the Spirit’, Joyful News, 22 July 1915, 4.

160  Catholicity of the Heart 28 See the discussion of Dixon above, in Chapter 3. 29 On this point, see Al Truesdale, ‘Reification of the Experience of Entire Sanctification in the American Holiness Movement’, Wesleyan Theological Journal 31, no. 2 (1996): 95–119. 30 Howarth, ‘“Joyful News” (1883-1963) Some Reflections’, 10. 31 See, for example, Chadwick, ‘The Gift of the Holy Ghost’, 1; ‘I Believe in the Holy Ghost’, Joyful News, 29 April 1915, 4. On the traditional WesleyanHoliness aspects of Chadwick’s pneumatology, see Bailey, ‘Wesleyan SpiritChristology’, 4–8. 32 ‘This is the day of Pentecost. He indwells the church which is the body of Christ.’ Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Meaning of Pentecost’, Joyful News, 19 June 1924, 1. 33 Chadwick, ‘The Gift of the Holy Ghost’, 1. 34 See, for example, Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Promise of the Father’, Joyful News, 12 May 1910; ‘What Happened at Pentecost?’, Joyful News, 12 June 1924, 1–2; ‘Belief in the Holy Ghost’, Joyful News, 1 June 1911, 4; ‘The Indwelling Spirit’, Joyful News, 4 June 1914, 4. This emphasis on power also resonated with early Pentecostalism and is perhaps a reason why Chadwick’s writings found an audience among leaders of the mid-century Charismatic movement in Britain, such as Charles Clarke. See Hocken, Streams of Renewal, 89–90. 35 Samuel Chadwick, ‘Is the Spirit of the Lord Straightened?’, Joyful News, 12 June 1919, 1–2; see also ‘The Spirit of Power’, 4. 36 See, for example, Chadwick, ‘The Spirit of Holiness’, 4; ‘The Spirit of Power’, 4; ‘The Fire of the Holy Ghost’, Joyful News, 1 July 1915, 4. 37 Randall, Evangelical Experiences, 77, 81; Strawson, ‘Methodist Theology 1850-1950’, 210; Wellings, ‘Methodist Fundamentalism’, 79–82. 38 The weekly series in the Joyful News began on 29 April and ran until 5 August 1915. Many of the articles in this series were re-printed, sometimes with minor alterations, in later years. 39 Chadwick, ‘The Indwelling Spirit’, 4. 40 See, for example Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Spirit of the Lord God’, Joyful News, 6 May 1915, 4; ‘The Spirit of Life’, 4; ‘The Communion of the Holy Ghost’, Joyful News, 29 July 1915, 4; ‘The Holy Spirit in Modern Thought’, Joyful News, 5 June 1924. 41 Bailey, ‘Wesleyan Spirit-Christology’. 42 One might wonder if he risked blurring the distinctions between Spirit and Son in a 1909 article, which stated that although ‘Jesus always spoke of the Spirit as a separate Person’ it was ‘impossible to distinguish between Christ and the Paraclete.’ Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Holy Spirit and the Church’, Joyful News, 27 May 1909, 1. In his more careful expositions he was clear that confusion of the Persons only arose because Christ lives in the believer through the Person of the Spirit, and stressed that Scripture never confounded the two Persons. Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Spirit of Christ’, Joyful News, 13 May 1915, 4; see also ‘The Ministry of the Spirit’, Joyful News, 27 May 1926, 1. 43 Chadwick, ‘The Indwelling Spirit’, 4; see also ‘The Gift of the Spirit’, Joyful News, 4 June 1908, 1; ‘Belief in the Holy Ghost’, 4; ‘The Spirit of Christ’, 4. See Bailey’s comments on how Chadwick relates to contemporary articulations of Spirit-Christology, with particular reference to kenosis, in ‘Wesleyan SpiritChristology’, 27. 44 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Power of His Resurrection’, Joyful News, 1 April 1915, 3. 45 Chadwick, ‘The Holy Spirit and the Church’, 1; see also ‘The Resources of the Spirit’, Joyful News, 29 January 1925, 1. 46 Chadwick, ‘The Gift of the Spirit’, 1. 47 Chadwick, ‘The Indwelling Spirit’, 4. 48 Samuel Chadwick, ‘Is There an Infallible Guide?’, Joyful News, 30 January 1913, 4. 49 Chadwick, ‘The Spirit of Truth’, 4.

Catholicity of the Heart 161 50 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Vote on Methodist Union’, Joyful News, 30 November 1922. 51 Chadwick, ‘The Power of His Resurrection’, 3; Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Terms of Discipleship’, Joyful News, 4 March 1909, 1. 52 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Church of the Living God’, Joyful News, 23 January 1930. 53 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Infallible Proof’, Joyful News, 15 April 1909, 1. 54 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Church and the Future’, Joyful News, 18 January 1917, 1. 55 Chadwick, ‘The Indwelling Spirit’, 4; see also ‘I Believe in the Holy Ghost’, 4; ‘The Spirit of the Lord God’, 4; ‘Is the Spirit of the Lord Straightened?’, 1. 56 Chadwick, ‘The Indwelling Spirit’, 4. 57 Bailey, ‘Wesleyan Spirit-Christology’, 20. 58 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Church Without the Holy Ghost’, Joyful News, 28 April 1910, 1. While this would seem to place priority on the individual work of the Spirit in conversion, which then builds the church, on more than one occasion Chadwick structured articles on the Spirit by beginning with the gift of the Spirit, followed by discussion of the Spirit in the church, and ending with discussion of the Spirit in believers. See ‘Belief in the Holy Ghost’, 4; ‘The Gift of the Holy Ghost’, 1. 59 Samuel Chadwick, ‘To Whom Does the Church Belong and for What Was It Ordained?’, Joyful News, 18 February 1909, 1; see also Chadwick, ‘The Church Without the Holy Ghost’, 1. 60 Chadwick, ‘God’s Call to the Churches’, 1. Along these lines, Chadwick wrote two articles in January 1930 and another in August 1931 reflecting on the church’s relationship to Israel, stressing continuity between Israel and the church, both distinguished from the world by the ‘Real Presence’ of God. Chadwick, ‘The Church of the Living God’, 1; ‘The Children of the Living God’, Joyful News, 30 January 1930, 1; ‘The Christian Israel’, Joyful News, 27 August 1931. 61 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Church and Its Ministry’, Joyful News, 2 August 1917, 1; see also Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Modern Churchman’, Joyful News, 13 October 1921, 1; Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Church and Authority: The Pope a King Again!’, Joyful News, 21 February 1929, 1. 62 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Servant and His Servant’, Joyful News, 27 March 1913, 4. 63 Chadwick, ‘The Church and the Future’, 1. 64 Chadwick, ‘The Holy Spirit and the Church’, 1. See also ‘The Church Without the Holy Ghost’, 1. 65 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Work of the Church in the World’, Joyful News, 25 March 1909, 1. 66 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Springs of Church Life’, Joyful News, 2 June 1910, 1. 67 Chadwick, ‘To Whom Does the Church Belong and for What Was It Ordained?’; see also ‘The Church and Industrial Problems’, Joyful News, 13 May 1909; Samuel Chadwick, ‘Democracy and the Churches (III)’, Joyful News, 31 January 1918, 1. 68 Samuel Chadwick, ‘Vessels Unto Honour’, Joyful News, 27 October 1927, 1; see also ‘Democracy and the Churches (II)’, Joyful News, 24 January 1918, 1. 69 Chadwick, ‘The Work of the Church in War-Time’, 2. 70 Chadwick, ‘Democracy and the Churches (III)’, 1; see also ‘My Four Points’, Joyful News, 6 December 1917, 2; ‘The Divisions in Christ’s Body’, Joyful News, 18 April 1918, 1; ‘The Church and the Kingdom’, Joyful News, 24 January 1924, 1; ‘The Church and Authority’, 1. 71 Chadwick, ‘The Church and Authority’, 1. 72 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Authority of the Church’, Joyful News, 14 February 1929, 1. 73 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Church and the World’, Joyful News, 9 September 1910, 4; see Walter Hobhouse, The Church and the World in Idea and in History (London: Macmillan and Co., 1911), 15, 273.

162  Catholicity of the Heart 74 Chadwick, ‘The Church of the Living God’, 1. 75 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Foundation of God’, Joyful News, 20 October 1927, 1; ‘Fool-Proof’, Joyful News, 22 October 1908, 1; ‘The Holy Spirit and the Church’, 1. 76 Chadwick, ‘Vessels Unto Honour’, 1. 77 Samuel Chadwick, ‘Concerning the Faith’, Joyful News, 14 February 1907, 1. 78 Bernard G. Holland, Baptism in Early Methodism (London: Epworth Press, 1970), 145–46; Bernard G. Holland, ‘Background to the 1967 Methodist Service for Infant Baptism’, Church Quarterly 2, no. 1 (1969): 43–54. 79 The appeal to universal salvation for infants goes back in Methodist theology as far as Wesley himself, though Wesley did not explicitly employ it as a justification for infant baptism and it received fuller treatment by later Methodist theologians. John Wesley to John Mason, 21 November 1776, in The Letters of John Wesley, ed. John Telford (London: Epworth Press, 1931), VI: 239–40. 80 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Lord’s Supper (I)’, Joyful News, 15 June 1911, 4. 81 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Lord’s Supper (II)’, Joyful News, 10 June 1920, 1. 82 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Supper of the Lord: Its Meaning and Value’, Joyful News, 22 July 1920, 1. 83 Chadwick, ‘The Supper of the Lord: The Priest and the Ordinance’, 1. 84 Chadwick, ‘The Lord’s Supper (II)’, 1; see also Chadwick, ‘The Supper of the Lord: Its Meaning and Value’, 2. 85 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Supper of the Lord’, Joyful News, 3 June 1920, 1. 86 Chadwick, ‘The Lord’s Supper (II)’, 1. 87 Chadwick, ‘The Supper of the Lord: The Priest and the Ordinance’, 1. 88 Chadwick, ‘The Supper of the Lord: Its Meaning and Value’, 1; see also ‘Christ’s Cup and Baptism’, Joyful News, 1 April 1909, 1. 89 Randall, Evangelical Experiences, 81. 90 Chadwick, ‘The Divisions in Christ’s Body’, 1; see also ‘Our Essential Witness’, Joyful News, 13 January 1921, 1–2. 91 Chadwick, ‘The Church and Authority’, 1. 92 Robert Currie, Methodism Divided: A Study in the Sociology of Ecumenicalism (London: Faber, 1968), 258–59. 93 See the brief overview in John Munsey Turner, ‘Methodism in England, 1900– 1932’, in A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, ed. Rupert E Davies, A. Raymond George, and E. Gordon Rupp, vol. 3 (London: Epworth, 1978), 333–40. For more detailed discussion, see John Kent, The Age of Disunity (London: Epworth Press, 1966), chapter 1; Currie, Methodism Divided, chapter 8. For the motion, see Minutes of Several Conversations at the One Hundred and Seventieth Yearly Conference of the People Called Methodists (London: Wesleyan Conference Office, 1913), 97–98, 356. 94 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Other Side of Methodist Union’, Joyful News, 23 February 1922, 2; see also ‘The Present Position of Methodist Union’, Joyful News, 30 June 1921, 2. 95 Samuel Chadwick, ‘Reunion and Unity’, Joyful News, 16 April 1914, 5; Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Reunion of British Methodism (I)’, Joyful News, 14 March 1918, 2; see also ‘The Reunion of British Methodism (II)’, Joyful News, 15 January 1920, 1. 96 Samuel Chadwick, The World Crisis and the Age; Being the Presidential Address of the Rev. S. Chadwick (London: Joyful News and Methodist Chronicle, 1918), 12. 97 Minutes of the Methodist Union Committee, Wesleyan Methodist Church, 1918–19 (MS vol), Methodist Archives and Research Centre, John Rylands Research Institute and Library, 1977/585. Many of the minutes in the minute book seem to be written in Chadwick’s own hand.

Catholicity of the Heart 163 98 A. Kodak, ‘The Methodist Union Committee: Personalities Who Count’, The Primitive Methodist Leader, 28 October 1920, 614. 99 While Chadwick was continually appointed to the union committee until 1927, his attendance became increasingly infrequent after 1921. The last meeting he attended was in April 1925. Minutes of the Methodist Union Committee, Wesleyan Methodist Church, 1918–1927, MS vols 1–4, Methodist Archives and Research Centre, John Rylands Research Institute and Library, 1977/585. For examples of Chadwick’s advocacy for union, see his detailed five-part exposition of the first proposed scheme of union, Joyful News, 17 February, 24 February, 3 March, 10 March, and 17 March 1921. 100 The principal biography of Peake is John T. Wilkinson, Arthur Samuel Peake: A Biography (London: Epworth Press, 1971). See also the memoir written by his son not long after his death: Leslie Sillman Peake, Arthur Samuel Peake: A Memoir (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1930). 101 Kent notes that none of the four Wesleyan Colleges had laymen on their teaching staff. Kent, The Age of Disunity, 10. J. Ernest Rattenbury later named this as a cause for concern among some Wesleyan Methodists. 102 George Jackson, ‘Professor Peake: An Appreciation’, Manchester Guardian, 20 August 1929, 7; see also Wellings, ‘Methodist Fundamentalism’, 91–92. 103 This was actually the second such manifesto, the first having been published in February 1920. See ‘Manifesto on Methodist Union’, The United Methodist, 12 February 1920; ‘A Ministerial Manifesto’, The Methodist Times, 27 April 1922. Both manifestos claimed several hundred signatories. For the full exchange, see A. S. Peake, ‘Methodist Union Opposition: Indictment of the Manifesto’, The Primitive Methodist Leader, 8 June 1922; J. Ernest Rattenbury, ‘Reply to A. S. Peake’, The Methodist Recorder, 8 June 1922; A. S. Peake, ‘Letter to the Editor’, The Methodist Recorder, 15 June 1922; J. Ernest Rattenbury, ‘Letter to the Editor’, The Methodist Recorder, 15 June 1922; A. S. Peake, ‘Letter to the Editor’, The Methodist Recorder, 22 June 1922. 104 John Scott Lidgett, ‘In Memoriam: Arthur Samuel Peake’, Holborn Review 21 (1930): 38. See also John T. Wilkinson, ‘Ecumenical Churchman’, in Arthur Samuel Peake: Essays in Commemoration and Selections from His Writings, ed. John T. Wilkinson (London: Epworth Press, 1958), 48–49. 105 Samuel Chadwick, ‘Proposals Towards Re-Union’, Joyful News, 12 July 1917, 1; see also ‘Reunion and Unity’, 5; ‘The Union of the Churches (I)’, Joyful News, 3 February 1921, 2. 106 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Unity of the Faith’, Joyful News, 8 September 1927, 1. 107 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The United Methodist Church’, Joyful News, 26 September 1907, 1; see also ‘Reunion and Unity’, 5; Chadwick, ‘The Reunion of British Methodism (I)’, 2. 108 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Quarterly Meetings and Methodist Union’, Joyful News, 16 November 1922, 4. 109 Samuel Chadwick, ‘Unity of the Spirit’, Joyful News, 2 May 1918, 1; see also ‘The Practical Difficulties of Methodist Union’, Joyful News, 6 April 1922, 2; Munsey Turner, ‘Methodism in England, 1900-1932’, 334. Munsey Turner, in noting the surprising support for full union among Methodists, cites Lidgett and Peake as examples. Chadwick’s support is even more surprising. 110 Samuel Chadwick, ‘That They May All Be One’, Joyful News, 10 October 1918. 111 Chadwick, ‘The Divisions in Christ’s Body’, 1. 112 Chadwick, ‘Proposals Towards Re-Union’, 1. 113 Chadwick, ‘The Divisions in Christ’s Body’, 1; see also ‘Reality, Reunion, Reconstruction’, Joyful News, 26 July 1917, 2; ‘The Practical Difficulties of Methodist Union’, 2.

164  Catholicity of the Heart 114 Chadwick, ‘The Union of the Churches (I)’, 1; see also ‘Unity of the Spirit’, 1; ‘That They May All Be One’, 2; ‘The Spirit of Unity (I)’, Joyful News, 3 April 1919, 1. 115 Chadwick, ‘The Proposed Scheme for Methodist Union: What Are the Alternatives?’, 2. See also ‘The Union of the Churches (I)’, 2. 116 See Chadwick’s reflections on the Edinburgh Conference in ‘The Challenge of the War to the Churches’, Joyful News, 21 October 1915, 4. 117 A. S. Peake, ‘Methodist Union: Reasons for Accepting the Scheme’, The Primitive Methodist Leader: Methodist Union Supplement, 20 November 1924, i. 118 See the letter he wrote to his cousin Annetta while at Oxford: ‘I never can be satisfied till we have gained an organic unity’; quoted in Peake, Arthur Samuel Peake: A Memoir, 159–60. See also ‘Letter to the Editor’, The Primitive Methodist Leader, 3 August 1905, 141. 119 ‘Annual Conference at Sheffield: Report of Proceedings’, The Primitive Methodist Leader, 30 June 1921, 411–12. 120 A. S. Peake, ‘The Reunion of Christendom’, The Primitive Methodist Leader, 3 August 1922, 489–90. 121 A. S. Peake, ‘Methodist Union: Why Remain Separate?’, The Primitive Methodist Leader, 29 April 1920, 273. 122 A. S. Peake, ‘The Reunion of the Christian Churches’, in Arthur Samuel Peake, 1865-1929: Essays in Commemoration and Selections from His Writings, ed. John T. Wilkinson (London: Epworth Press, 1958), 147. This was Peake’s Presidential Address at the 1928 Assembly of the National Free Church Council. 123 Peake, 156–57. 124 Chadwick, ‘The Reunion of British Methodism (II)’, 1. 125 Chadwick, ‘The Other Side of Methodist Union’; see also Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Pastoral Session and Methodist Union’, Joyful News, 21 August 1924, 4. 126 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Reunion of British Methodism (III)’, Joyful News, 6 May 1920, 4. 127 Chadwick, ‘The Quarterly Meetings and Methodist Union’, 4; see also ‘The Vote on Methodist Union’, 4. 128 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Vote of the Synods on Methodist Union’, Joyful News, 28 April 1927, 4. 129 Peake, ‘Methodist Union: Reasons for Accepting the Scheme’, 1. 130 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Wider Outlook of Methodist Union’, Joyful News, 8 July 1926, 1; ‘A Momentous Conference’, Joyful News, 14 July 1927, 1; Peake, ‘Methodist Union: Reasons for Accepting the Scheme’, 1. 131 Wellings, ‘Methodist Fundamentalism’, 89–90. 132 Report on Unity of Doctrine, Conference Agenda, Pastoral Session of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference 1919, Newcastle-on-Tyne, p. 103–104. 133 Report of the United Committee of the Representatives of the Wesleyan Methodist, Primitive Methodist, and United Methodist Churches, 1920. 134 Kent, The Age of Disunity, 22–23. 135 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Proposed Scheme for Methodist Union: The Branches of British Methodism’, Joyful News, 17 February 1921, 2. In 1925, after four more years of wrangling, he would ratchet up the language: ‘Methodism has an evil genius for splitting.’ ‘The Next Step’, Joyful News, 5 February 1925, 1. See also Chadwick, The World Crisis and the Age, 13. 136 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Proposed Scheme for Methodist Union: The Conference and Synods’, Joyful News, 24 February 1921, 2. 137 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Proposed Scheme for Methodist Union: Membership; Doctrine; Sacraments’, Joyful News, 10 March 1921, 2. 138 A. S. Peake, ‘Methodist Union: The Doctrinal Statement’, The Primitive Methodist Leader, 19 February 1920, 121.

Catholicity of the Heart 165 39 ‘A Ministerial Manifesto’, 12. 1 140 Rattenbury, ‘Reply to A. S. Peake’, 6. 141 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Manifesto Against Methodist Union’, Joyful News, 8 July 1922, 2; see also Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Theology of the Primitive Methodists’, Joyful News, 24 February 1925, 4. 142 Peake, ‘Letter to the Editor’, Methodist Recorder, 22 June 1922, 15. 143 See Chadwick, ‘The Vote of the Synods on Methodist Union’, 4. 144 For a summary of the four schemes and the voting process between 1920-1926, see Kent, The Age of Disunity, 26–36; Currie, Methodism Divided, 253–89. 145 Minutes of the Meetings of the Doctrinal Subcommittee, 19 November 1925, 16 December 1925, 29 January 1926, 3 February 1926, in Minutes of the Methodist Union Committee, 1925-26 (MS vol), Methodist Archives and Research Centre, John Rylands Research Institute and Library, 1977/585. The doctrinal subcommittee was subdivided into two further sub-committees on 19 November, with Peake and Lidgett on the committee tasked with revising the doctrine clause, while Rattenbury was placed on a separate committee focused on sacraments. These two committees met in December and January and approved one another’s revisions in February. At the meeting of the doctrine group on 16 December, a draft was presented, but then Peake and Lidgett alone were tasked with revising it into its final form, which they presented on 29 January. 146 Currie, Methodism Divided, 278. 147 A. S. Peake, ‘Methodist Union and the Sacraments’, The Primitive Methodist Leader, 10 April 1924, 233–34. 148 Peake, ‘Methodist Union Opposition: Indictment of the Manifesto’, 355–56. Also in The Methodist Recorder, 8 June 1922, 5–6. 149 ‘Methodist Union: The Ministerial Office Defined’, The Primitive Methodist Leader, 7 July 1921, 425. 150 Chadwick, ‘The Present Position of Methodist Union’, 2. 151 George G. Findlay, The Church of Christ as Set Forth in the New Testament: Being Two Lectures Addressed to Methodists of Leeds (London: Charles H. Kelly, 1893), 34–36. 152 Chadwick, ‘The Proposed Scheme for Methodist Union: Membership; Doctrine; Sacraments’, 2; see also ‘Seven Hundred Wesleyan Ministers and the Five Points’, Joyful News, 12 February 1920, 4. 153 G. K. A. Bell, ed., ‘An Appeal to All Christian People, from the Bishops Assembled in the Lambeth Conference of 1920’, in Documents on Christian Unity, 1920-4 (London: Oxford University Press, 1924), 4–5. 154 Chadwick, ‘The Other Side of Methodist Union’, 2. Note, however, his favourable comments on the Archbishop of York’s address to the 1921 Conference, in ‘The Union of the Churches (II)’, Joyful News, 21 July 1921, 1–2. The Lambeth Appeal proposed a goal of mutually recognised ministries, in an asymmetrical fashion: the Anglicans would accept ‘a form of commission or recognition’ from other church authorities and would be willing to provide ‘a commission through episcopal ordination’ for those who did not have it. In their official responses to the Lambeth Appeal, both the Wesleyan Methodists and the Primitive Methodists made clear that they could not accept reordination. See G. K. A. Bell, ed., Documents on Christian Unity, 1920-4 (London: Oxford University Press, 1924), 4–5, 107, 113. 155 Chadwick, ‘The Quarterly Meetings and Methodist Union’, 4. 156 Chadwick, ‘That They May All Be One’, 2; Chadwick, ‘The Present Position of Methodist Union’, 2; see also ‘The Pastoral Session of Conference’, Joyful News, 28 July 1921, 2. 157 Chadwick, ‘The Vote on Methodist Union’, 4. 158 Kent, The Age of Disunity, 27.

166  Catholicity of the Heart 159 Samuel Chadwick, ‘Professor Peake’, Joyful News, 29 August 1929, 4. See also his comment in 1925: ‘I often wish he had never learned German. There is no more ardent and devout believer in Jesus Christ, and the charge he gave at the ordination of his son was one of the most spiritual and impressive utterances I have ever read.’ Chadwick, ‘The Theology of the Primitive Methodists’, 4. 160 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Future of Methodism’, Joyful News, 12 July 1931, 1. See also Samuel Chadwick, ‘Preparing for Methodist Union’, Joyful News, 11 October 1928, 1. 161 Samuel Chadwick, ‘The Spirit of Unity (II)’, Joyful News, 29 September 1932, 4. Another piece by Chadwick, ‘The Pentecostal Life’, published on 4 October, was a republication with no new content.

Bibliography Bailey, George. ‘Wesleyan Spirit-Christology: Inspiration from the Theology of Samuel Chadwick’. Oxford, 2018. https://oxford-institute.org/working-grouppapers-at-2018-institute/. Bebbington, David. The Nonconformist Conscience: Chapel and Politics, 1870–1914. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1982. Bell, G. K. A., ed. ‘An Appeal to All Christian People, from the Bishops Assembled in the Lambeth Conference of 1920’. In Documents on Christian Unity, 1920–4, 1–5. London: Oxford University Press, 1924. ———, Bell, G. K. A. (Ed.). Documents on Christian Unity, 1920–4. London: Oxford University Press, 1924. Bowden, Kenneth F. Samuel Chadwick and Stacksteads. Bacup: Stacksteads Methodist Church, 1982. Brice, Joe. Saved and Sent: The Book of Cliff College and Its Fellowship. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1939. Chadwick, Samuel. ‘A Momentous Conference’. Joyful News, 14 July 1927. ———. ‘Belief in the Holy Ghost’. Joyful News, 1 June 1911. ———. ‘Caste in the Church’. Joyful News, 18 June 1908. ———. ‘Christian Perfection: A Second Blessing’. Joyful News, 5 November 1908. ———. ‘Christian Perfection: Do the Scriptures Teach a Second Blessing?’ Joyful News, 12 November 1908. ———. ‘Christ’s Cup and Baptism’. Joyful News, 1 April 1909. ———. ‘Concerning the Faith’. Joyful News, 14 February 1907. ———. ‘Democracy and the Churches (II)’. Joyful News, 24 January 1918. ———. ‘Democracy and the Churches (III)’. Joyful News, 31 January 1918. ———. ‘Fool-Proof’. Joyful News, 22 October 1908. ———. ‘General Booth’. Joyful News, 29 August 1912. ———. ‘God’s Call to the Churches’. Joyful News, 14 January 1926. ———. ‘How I Became a Missioner’. Methodist Recorder, Winter Number, 1897. ———. Humanity and God. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1904. ———. ‘I Believe in the Holy Ghost’. Joyful News, 29 April 1915. ———. ‘Is the Spirit of the Lord Straightened?’ Joyful News, 12 June 1919. ———. ‘Is There an Infallible Guide?’ Joyful News, 30 January 1913. ———. ‘Kiyuku’. Joyful News, 8 January 1914. ———. ‘Must George Jackson Go?’ Joyful News, 17 July 1913. ———. ‘My Appointment to Cliff College’. Joyful News, 7 August 1913.

Catholicity of the Heart 167 ———. ‘My Four Points’. Joyful News, 6 December 1917. ———. ‘Our Essential Witness’. Joyful News, 13 January 1921. ———. ‘Preparing for Methodist Union’. Joyful News, 11 October 1928. ———. ‘Professor Peake’. Joyful News, 29 August 1929. ———. ‘Proposals Towards Re-Union’. Joyful News, 12 July 1917. ———. ‘Reality, Reunion, Reconstruction’. Joyful News, 26 July 1917. ———. ‘Reunion and Unity’. Joyful News, 16 April 1914. ———. ‘Seven Hundred Wesleyan Ministers and the Five Points’. Joyful News, 12 February 1920. ———. ‘That They May All Be One’. Joyful News, 10 October 1918. ———. ‘The Authority of the Church’. Joyful News, 14 February 1929. ———. The Call to Christian Perfection. London: Epworth, 1936. ———. ‘The Challenge of the War to the Churches’. Joyful News, 21 October 1915. ———. ‘The Children of the Living God’. Joyful News, 30 January 1930. ———. ‘The Christian Israel’. Joyful News, 27 August 1931. ———. ‘The Church and Authority: The Pope a King Again!’ Joyful News, 21 February 1929. ———. ‘The Church and Industrial Problems’. Joyful News, 13 May 1909. ———. ‘The Church and Its Ministry’. Joyful News, 2 August 1917. ———. ‘The Church and the Future’. Joyful News, 18 January 1917. ———. ‘The Church and the Kingdom’. Joyful News, 24 January 1924. ———. ‘The Church and the State’. Joyful News, 6 May 1909. ———. ‘The Church and the War’. Joyful News, 18 March 1915. ———. ‘The Church and the World’. Joyful News, 9 September 1910. ———. ‘The Church of the Living God’. Joyful News, 23 January 1930. ———. ‘The Church Without the Holy Ghost’. Joyful News, 28 April 1910. ———. ‘The Communion of the Holy Ghost’. Joyful News, 29 July 1915. ———. ‘The Condition of the Church’. Joyful News, 11 February 1909. ———. ‘The Democratic Gospel’. Joyful News, 21 March 1912. ———. ‘The Divisions in Christ’s Body’. Joyful News, 18 April 1918. ———. ‘The Fire of the Holy Ghost’. Joyful News, 1 July 1915. ———. ‘The Foundation of God’. Joyful News, 20 October 1927. ———. ‘The Future of Methodism’. Joyful News, 12 July 1931. ———. ‘The Gift of the Holy Ghost’. Joyful News, 23 May 1912. ———. ‘The Gift of the Spirit’. Joyful News, 4 June 1908. ———. The Gospel of the Cross. London: Epworth Press, 1934. ———. ‘The Holy Spirit and the Church’. Joyful News, 27 May 1909. ———. ‘The Holy Spirit in Modern Thought’. Joyful News, 5 June 1924. ———. ‘The Indwelling Spirit’. Joyful News, 4 June 1914. ———. ‘The Infallible Proof’. Joyful News, 15 April 1909. ———. ‘The Law of the Spirit’. Joyful News, 22 July 1915. ———. ‘The Lord’s Supper (I)’. Joyful News, 15 June 1911. ———. ‘The Lord’s Supper (II)’. Joyful News, 10 June 1920. ———. ‘The Manifesto Against Methodist Union’. Joyful News, 8 July 1922. ———. ‘The Meaning of Pentecost’. Joyful News, 19 June 1924. ———. ‘The Ministry of the Spirit’. Joyful News, 27 May 1926. ———. ‘The Modern Churchman’. Joyful News, 13 October 1921. ———. ‘The Next Step’. Joyful News, 5 February 1925. ———. ‘The Other Side of Methodist Union’. Joyful News, 23 February 1922.

168  Catholicity of the Heart ———. ‘The Pastoral Session and Methodist Union’. Joyful News, 21 August 1924. ———. ‘The Pastoral Session of Conference’. Joyful News, 28 July 1921. ———. The Path of Prayer. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1931. ———. ‘The Power of His Resurrection’. Joyful News, 1 April 1915. ———. ‘The Practical Difficulties of Methodist Union’. Joyful News, 6 April 1922. ———. ‘The Present Position of Methodist Union’. Joyful News, 30 June 1921. ———. ‘The Promise of the Father’. Joyful News, 12 May 1910. ———. ‘The Proposed Scheme for Methodist Union: Membership; Doctrine; Sacraments’. Joyful News, 10 March 1921. ———. ‘The Proposed Scheme for Methodist Union: The Branches of British Methodism’. Joyful News, 17 February 1921. ———. ‘The Proposed Scheme for Methodist Union: The Conference and Synods’. Joyful News, 24 February 1921. ———. ‘The Proposed Scheme for Methodist Union: What Are the Alternatives?’ Joyful News, 17 March 1921. ———. ‘The Quarterly Meetings and Methodist Union’. Joyful News, 16 November 1922. ———. ‘The Resources of the Spirit’. Joyful News, 29 January 1925. ———. ‘The Reunion of British Methodism (I)’. Joyful News, 14 March 1918. ———. ‘The Reunion of British Methodism (II)’. Joyful News, 15 January 1920. ———. ‘The Reunion of British Methodism (III)’. Joyful News, 6 May 1920. ———. ‘The Reunion of the Churches’. Joyful News, 25 August 1927. ———. ‘The Servant and His Servant’. Joyful News, 27 March 1913. ———. ‘The Spirit of Christ’. Joyful News, 13 May 1915. ———. ‘The Spirit of Holiness’. Joyful News, 10 June 1915. ———. ‘The Spirit of Life’. Joyful News, 3 June 1915. ———. ‘The Spirit of Power’. Joyful News, 17 June 1915. ———. ‘The Spirit of the Lord God’. Joyful News, 6 May 1915. ———. ‘The Spirit of Truth’. Joyful News, 27 May 1915. ———. ‘The Spirit of Unity (I)’. Joyful News, 3 April 1919. ———. ‘The Spirit of Unity (II)’. Joyful News, 29 September 1932. ———. ‘The Springs of Church Life’. Joyful News, 2 June 1910. ———. ‘The Supper of the Lord’. Joyful News, 3 June 1920. ———. ‘The Supper of the Lord: Its Meaning and Value’. Joyful News, 22 July 1920. ———. ‘The Supper of the Lord: The Priest and the Ordinance’. Joyful News, 8 July 1920. ———. ‘The Terms of Discipleship’. Joyful News, 4 March 1909. ———. The Testament of Samuel Chadwick: 1860-1932. Edited by D. W. Lambert. London: Epworth Press, 1957. ———. ‘The Theology of the Primitive Methodists’. Joyful News, 24 February 1925. ———. ‘The Union of the Churches (I)’. Joyful News, 3 February 1921. ———. ‘The Union of the Churches (II)’. Joyful News, 21 July 1921. ———. ‘The United Methodist Church’. Joyful News, 26 September 1907. ———. ‘The Unity of the Faith’. Joyful News, 8 September 1927. ———. ‘The Vote of the Synods on Methodist Union’. Joyful News, 28 April 1927. ———. ‘The Vote on Methodist Union’. Joyful News, 30 November 1922. ———. The Way to Pentecost. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1932. ———. ‘The Wesleyan Methodist Conference and the Fernley Lecture of 1912’. Joyful News, 31 July 1913.

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Catholicity of the Heart 169 ———. ‘The Wider Outlook of Methodist Union’. Joyful News, 8 July 1926. ———. ‘The Work of the Church in the World’. Joyful News, 25 March 1909. ———. ‘The Work of the Church in War-Time’. Joyful News, 8 March 1917. ———. The World Crisis and the Age; Being the Presidential Address of the Rev. S. Chadwick. London: Joyful News and Methodist Chronicle, 1918. ———. ‘To Whom Does the Church Belong and for What Was It Ordained?’ Joyful News, 18 February 1909. ———. ‘Unity of the Spirit’. Joyful News, 2 May 1918. ———. ‘Vessels Unto Honour’. Joyful News, 27 October 1927. ———. ‘What Conversion Does for Churches’. Joyful News, 14 March 1907. ———. ‘What Happened at Pentecost?’ Joyful News, 12 June 1924. ———. ‘Why Canada Made a Fuss’. Joyful News, 5 September 1912. Currie, Robert. Methodism Divided: A Study in the Sociology of Ecumenicalism. London: Faber, 1968. Dunning, Norman G. Samuel Chadwick. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1933. Findlay, George G. The Church of Christ as Set Forth in the New Testament: Being Two Lectures Addressed to Methodists of Leeds. London: Charles H. Kelly, 1893. Hobhouse, Walter. The Church and the World in Idea and in History. London: Macmillan and Co, 1911. Hocken, Peter. Streams of Renewal: The Origins and Early Development of the Charismatic Movement in Great Britain. Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1986. Holland, Bernard G. ‘Background to the 1967 Methodist Service for Infant Baptism’. Church Quarterly 2, no. 1 (1969): 43–54. ———. Baptism in Early Methodism. London: Epworth Press, 1970. Howarth, David H. How Great a Flame: Samuel Chadwick 50 Years On. Ilkeston: Moorley’s Bible & Bookshop, 1983. ———. ‘“Joyful News” (1883–1963) Some Reflections’. Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 44, no. 1 (1983): 2–15. ———. ‘Samuel Chadwick and Some Aspects of Wesleyan Methodist Evangelism, 1860–1932’. M.Litt. thesis, University of Lancaster, 1977. Jackson, George. ‘Professor Peake: An Appreciation’. Manchester Guardian, 20 August 1929. ———. The Preacher and the Modern Mind. London: Charles H. Kelly, 1912. Kent, John. The Age of Disunity. London: Epworth Press, 1966. Kodak, A. ‘The Methodist Union Committee: Personalities Who Count’. The Primitive Methodist Leader, 28 October 1920. Lidgett, John Scott. ‘In Memoriam: Arthur Samuel Peake’ Holborn Review 21 (1930): 36–39. McGonigle, Herbert B. Samuel Chadwick: Preacher and Evangelist. Ilkeston: Moorley’s Print & Publishing, 2017. Mellor, Howard G. Cliff: More Than a College. Calver: Cliff College Publishing, 2005. Minutes of Several Conversations at the One Hundred and Seventieth Yearly Conference of the People Called Methodists. London: Wesleyan Conference Office, 1913. Munsey Turner, John. Conflict and Reconciliation: Studies in Methodism and Ecumenism in England, 1740–1982. London: Epworth, 1985. ———. ‘Methodism in England, 1900–1932’. In A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, edited by Davies, Rupert E, A. Raymond George, and E. Gordon Rupp, 3:309–61. London: Epworth, 1978.

170  Catholicity of the Heart Peake, A. S. ‘Letter to the Editor’. The Primitive Methodist Leader, 3 August 1905. ———. ‘Letter to the Editor’. The Methodist Recorder, 15 June 1922. ———. ‘Letter to the Editor’. The Methodist Recorder, 22 June 1922. ———. ‘Methodist Union and the Sacraments’. The Primitive Methodist Leader, 10 April 1924. ———. ‘Methodist Union Opposition: Indictment of the Manifesto’. The Primitive Methodist Leader, 8 June 1922. ———. ‘Methodist Union: Reasons for Accepting the Scheme’. The Primitive Methodist Leader: Methodist Union Supplement, 20 November 1924. ———. ‘Methodist Union: The Doctrinal Statement’. The Primitive Methodist Leader, 19 February 1920. ———. ‘Methodist Union: Why Remain Separate?’ The Primitive Methodist Leader, 29 April 1920. ———. ‘The Reunion of Christendom’. The Primitive Methodist Leader, 3 August 1922. ———. ‘The Reunion of the Christian Churches’. In Arthur Samuel Peake, 1865– 1929: Essays in Commemoration and Selections from His Writings, edited by John T. Wilkinson, 143–59. London: Epworth Press, 1958. Peake, Leslie Sillman. Arthur Samuel Peake: A Memoir. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1930. Randall, Ian M. Evangelical Experiences: A Study in the Spirituality of English Evangelicalism 1918-1939. Carlisle: Paternoster, 1999. ———. ‘Southport and Swanwick: Contrasting Movements of Methodist Spirituality in Inter-War England’. Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 50, no. 1 (February 1995): 1–14. Rattenbury, J. Ernest. ‘Letter to the Editor’. The Methodist Recorder, 15 June 1922. ———. ‘Reply to A. S. Peake’. The Methodist Recorder, 8 June 1922. Strawson, William. ‘Methodist Theology 1850-1950’. In A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, edited by Rupert E. Davies, A. Raymond George, and Gordon Rupp, 3:182–231. London: Epworth Press, 1983. Methodist Times. ‘A Ministerial Manifesto’. 27 April 1922. Primitive Methodist Leader. ‘Annual Conference at Sheffield: Report of Proceedings’. 30 June 1921. Primitive Methodist Leader. ‘Methodist Union: The Ministerial Office Defined’. 7 July 1921. United Methodist. ‘Manifesto on Methodist Union’. 12 February 1920. Truesdale, Al. ‘Reification of the Experience of Entire Sanctification in the American Holiness Movement’. Wesleyan Theological Journal 31, no. 2 (1996): 95–119. Wellings, Martin. ‘Methodist Fundamentalism Before and After the First World War’. In Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in the United Kingdom During the Twentieth Century, edited by David W. Bebbington and David Ceri Jones, 76–94. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. ———. ‘Wesleyan Methodism and Nonconformity’. In Evangelicalism and Dissent in Modern England and Wales, edited by David W. Bebbington and David Ceri Jones, 65–88. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021. Wilkinson, John T. Arthur Samuel Peake: A Biography. London: Epworth Press, 1971. ———. ‘Ecumenical Churchman’. In Arthur Samuel Peake: Essays in Commemoration and Selections from His Writings, edited by John T. Wilkinson, 42–52. London: Epworth Press, 1958.

7

Conclusion Revivalism’s Mixed Legacy

Revivalism was a significant factor in the divided history of British Methodism. While early Methodism was born in a revival of its own, a new kind of revivalism took shape in the nineteenth century, influenced by developments in America. This revivalism was more radical in its stress upon extraordinary means of grace and extraordinary manifestations of the Spirit. It placed greater stress on the Spirit’s immediate availability and potentially instantaneous work of sanctification. It was unconcerned with liturgical and social respectability. And, as we have seen, it was largely unconcerned with the church, particularly its structures of leadership, which were neglected at best, and openly scorned at worst. Revivalism was integrally involved in the birth of several new expressions of Methodism. These new expressions typically developed gradually and organically, without a definite flashpoint conflict. The uncertainty regarding the official founding of the Primitive Methodist Connexion illustrates this point: was it 1807 when the first camp meeting was held, or 1811, when Hugh Bourne’s network and William Clowes’s network came together and took the name, Primitive Methodist Connexion?1 The Wesleyan Reformers were different; their founding was not directly related to revivalism (despite Caughey’s role), but rather to a clash over church polity, ignited by the expulsions of Everett, Dunn, and Griffith from the Wesleyan Methodist Conference in 1849. Salvationists have always been certain about the date of their denomination’s founding. However, the organisation William Booth began in the summer of 1865 was not actually the Salvation Army, but a loosely organised home mission that would gradually develop into the Salvation Army over 13 years, and continue to solidify its identity as a standalone denomination into the mid-1880s. The reasons for these divisions, at whatever pace they took place, were complicated. Social, cultural, regional, and political issues all played a role, as well as debates about practical matters of church governance and practice. On the surface, the revivalist divisions were not about theology—that is, they were not sparked by a theological controversy or debate. However, beneath the surface, varying theological emphases, particularly in relation to the work of the Spirit, contributed to the misunderstandings and disagreements that led to Methodist division. The revivalists DOI: 10.4324/9781003224327-7

172 Conclusion were open to new movements of the Spirit through camp meetings, protracted services, altar calls, and more. They were also radically open to the Spirit’s personal guidance. But they did not sufficiently balance these aspects of the Spirit’s work with more other, more ordinary, historic, and corporate means of grace: the sacraments, Conference, and the office of oversight. The pneumatology of revivalism emphasised the personal over the corporate, producing an imbalance that privileged individual discernment of the Spirit’s leading to an unhealthy degree. This imbalance fostered bold claims regarding God’s leading in relation to revivalist methods and minimised the role that the broader Christian community could play in providing a check on individual discernment. Ultimately, revivalism’s one-sided pneumatology undermined the need for historical and institutional continuity among the people of God, which exacerbated the schismatic tendencies of revivalist spirituality and contributed to British Methodism’s fracture. This weakness in revivalist theology, to some extent, had its roots in John Wesley’s own ecclesiology. While he certainly had a more well-rounded and balanced theology of the church than later revivalists, his account of the Church of England was ambiguous, and conspicuously avoided positive theological accounts of its structures, including the office of Bishop. He described the structures of Methodism—society, class, and band meetings—as means of grace, but not the Anglican parish structures, of which he took a dim view. He supported episcopal government as scriptural, but in a functional sense; and in the end, he viewed his own functional oversight of the Methodist Societies as giving him the authority of a ‘scriptural episcopos’. His grounding of pastoral authority in voluntary association undercut the authority of both parish priests and bishops. He certainly viewed the Anglican liturgy and doctrine as sound and defended the sacraments of the church against frequent criticism in light of the Church’s failings. But he was content to celebrate the Anglican liturgy without the concrete fellowship of the Church of England as expressed in the regular diocesan structure of the church. He urged his people to attend the parish church for worship and sacraments. But eventually he viewed a service of Holy Communion led by a Priest using the Prayer Book at a Methodist Chapel with only Methodists present as an acceptable expression of unity with the Church of England. Though he claimed he was not leading a separation and had no intention of separating, he operated without regard for the Church’s authorities, as he had done throughout the revival. Perhaps most importantly of all, he made personal conscience the ultimate authority in matters of separation, and ascribed the conscience to the work of the Holy Spirit, thus paving the way for future revivalists to likewise follow their conscience in forming new church bodies. His theology of the means of grace guarded against an overly subjectivist interpretation of the Spirit’s work and could have helped provide some checks on appeals to Spirit-led individual conscience. But Wesley’s example as one who was prepared to defy all human authorities on the basis of a certain divine calling was more compelling than his balanced approach to spiritual practices.

Conclusion 173 This pattern repeated itself in the examples noted above. Hugh Bourne led a local revival on his own initiative and even built a chapel with his own funds. When the Conference outlawed camp meetings, he carried on, like Wesley, believing he was led by God to conduct them. When he was expelled, he continued in ministry, much as he had done before. James Caughey was an ordained elder from America, but ministered in England and Ireland by invitation from local leaders—often laypeople, rather than Ministers. He had no authorisation from the Wesleyan Methodist Conference, nor did he seek any such official sanction. He eventually left when formally asked to do so, but his bewilderment at others associating him with the Reformers illustrates his theological naivety regarding the church. And William Booth, of course, left connexional ministry four years before founding the Salvation Army because he wanted the kind of freedom he saw in Caughey’s ministry. He too would claim he had no intention of creating a new church or causing controversy. The fact that he believed he could lead a worldwide mission without any connection to existing denominations while avoiding the inevitable institutionalisation that would follow demonstrates the irrelevance of the church to his theology. His Army was fulfilling the calling of the church—what need had they to be ‘a church’, or to entangle themselves with the life of any existing church? Of course, the revivalists had their strengths, and the Wesleyan Methodists had their own theological weaknesses, particularly in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. The dominant Wesleyan Methodist perspective overemphasised clerical authority via its fixation on the pastoral office. Theirs was a more church-centred view of the Spirit’s leading, but it risked undermining the breadth of the Spirit’s work among the whole people of God. Eventually, by the 1870s, Wesleyan Methodist reflection on pastoral authority broadened to include larger ecclesiological questions, and a more measured perspective developed, embodied in the inclusion of laypeople in the Conference in 1878. This was no doubt partly the result of the chastening effect of the trauma of 1849. But, in including the laity, the Wesleyans were catching up to the revivalists, who had been doing so for decades. This reminds us that the revivalists, though often unsophisticated, were far ahead of the Wesleyan Methodists on some issues. Lay involvement, as I have argued above, was not simply a cultural or practical matter; it was rooted in their more participatory view of the Holy Spirit’s work throughout the whole people of God. Likewise, revivalists embraced the public ministry of women at a time when the Wesleyans were curtailing women’s involvement. Though the struggle for women’s full inclusion in ministry would stretch well into the twentieth century and the revivalist denominations have a mixed record in this regard, it is no coincidence that the leading Methodist advocates for women in ministry were revivalists.2 In Samuel Chadwick, we find an example of a different kind of revivalism, with a definite grounding in catholic Free Churchmanship. Chadwick preserved much from holiness revivalist spirituality, but its excesses were

174 Conclusion chastened by a robust ecclesiology and an appreciation for the varied means of the Spirit’s work in individuals and in the church as an institution. He benefited, of course, from his education at Didsbury College at the hands of William Burt Pope, and from the maturing of ecclesiological reflection that had occurred within Wesleyan Methodism by the late nineteenth century. Samuel Chadwick was exemplary of what a catholic revivalism could be. His stalwart focus on the gospel of personal salvation did not lead to neglect of the pressing social issues that were taking up so much attention among British Methodists in the early twentieth century. His evangelistic zeal and thirst for revival did not lead to a disdain for the institutional life of the Wesleyan Methodist Church. Indeed, he was a model here as well, in his churchmanship and the spirit in which he engaged in connectional life. All of this was underwritten by his understanding of the Spirit’s work through the means of grace and the church. His revivalist spirituality tempered by evangelical-catholic churchmanship enabled him to be, at the same time, the leading Methodist revivalist of his generation and a leading advocate of Methodist Union. One of the most important implications of the conflicted history of British Methodist revivalism discussed above is that Methodist ecclesiology must fully account for corporate ecclesial practices as means of grace. Wesley’s view of the means of grace tended in this direction and had the potential to guard against an overly individualist understanding of the Spirit’s work. Its weakness was that he did not apply it to the Anglican ecclesial structures of his day. The nineteenth-century revivalists Bourne, Caughey, and Booth continued Wesley’s trajectory, but they applied it to their own Methodist institutions. They exalted extraordinary means of grace and the immediate work of the Spirit at the expense of the Spirit’s work through corporate means, especially the workings of Conference. Chadwick’s theology was less sophisticated than Wesley’s and Chadwick himself was certainly a less capable thinker than Wesley. But, all things considered, Chadwick’s theology of the Church was more well-rounded than Wesley’s, no doubt because Methodism by the early twentieth century had come to embrace a free church identity, enabling a more coherent approach to such matters. Revivalism’s distortions and deficiencies thus reveal the need to think carefully about how the Spirit works through corporate means as well as through particular persons, in order to invest the church with appropriate but carefully limited authority. The revivalists were right to emphasise the Spirit’s empowerment of all. But this empowerment means that each believer must relativise their own discernment of the Spirit in relation to the discernment of others. This can be best done through various corporate means of grace. Such corporate spiritual practices for discernment were built into early Methodism through the regular fellowship and mutual encouragement of its small group structures. Corporate discernment was, ideally, also embodied in the Conference as the leadership organ of the movement as a whole. The actual workings of the Conference, of course, did not always reflect this ideal, even in early Methodism, never mind during the vicious debates of the

Conclusion 175 1840s. Nevertheless, despite the inevitable frailty of all ecclesial institutions, the principle of a corporate means of grace for discerning the Spirit’s leading is essential. This leads to the thorniest issue arising from this study: oversight as a means of grace. Time and again, revivalists clashed with those exercising oversight and staked their position on a personal calling from God. The temptation in such situations, particularly when one is part of a dramatic revival movement, is to see established structures as dry and lifeless. And of course, there is a natural temptation for those in established positions of authority to be threatened by charismatic and entrepreneurial leaders. So, the challenge comes from both sides: how can personal discernment be subject to appropriate Spirit-led oversight, and how can oversight be open to challenging moves of the Spirit that come from unexpected places? Late twentieth-century ecumenical dialogue on oversight offers some helpful direction, in the consensus view that oversight (whatever form it make take) should be exercised in a way that is personal, collegial, and communal.3 That is, though particular persons are called to exercise oversight, they always do so in concert with other overseers and as members, themselves, of the community. Further, it is helpful to think of oversight primarily as a charism (gift of the Spirit) among other charisms; that is, as a gift that enables the discernment and coordination of other gifts, not as an office of external authority over and above the rest of the church.4 Of course, no theological explanation of oversight in the church will guarantee its proper functioning. But the likelihood of schism certainly increases when there is no accounting for the work of the Spirit through the office of oversight, as seen in the examples of Bourne, Caughey, and Booth. The work of the Spirit is personal and immediate, but also corporate and gradual; the Spirit works innovatively, but also institutionally. Christian leaders must be open to spontaneity and change but must also resist the temptation to discard the received wisdom and practices of the Christian past, which that same Spirit has used time and again. And, frail though they may be, the very institutions of the church must be accounted for in the theology of the means of grace, if personal discernment of the Spirit’s voice is to find a way to be tested against the discernment of the Spirit in Christian community. Ecclesial institutions such as the Methodist Conference should not be viewed as infallible. Like all means of grace, they can and will sometimes fail to achieve their ends if not properly used. Wesley’s advice regarding the means of grace, in general, remains pertinent to any consideration of ecclesial structures as means of grace. He urged that Christians seek God in the means of grace—not trusting in the means themselves but viewing them as instruments through which God can be encountered. And further, they should seek God in the means of grace—not presuming that any person can, without the aid of Christian community, discern the voice of the Spirit.5 A sound ecclesiology would not necessarily have resolved the many conflicts of nineteenth-century Methodism, of course. Again, church division is

176 Conclusion complicated and multifaceted, and theology is only one facet of any schism. Good theology will not prevent division, but poor theology can certainly contribute to it. A well-rounded theology of the Spirit, the means of grace, and the church can provide theological and practical resources for avoiding sectarian divisiveness. If institutions such as the Conference (or the episcopacy, in Wesley’s case!) are not understood as means of grace and therefore instruments of the Spirit’s work (despite their failings), there will be no lasting unity in any ecclesial body. Notes 1 Julia Stewart Werner, The Primitive Methodist Connexion: Its Background and Early History (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 74–75. 2 For an overview of this issue including primary texts with commentary, see Paul W. Chilcote, ed., The Methodist Defense of Women in Ministry: A Documentary History (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2017). 3 World Council of Churches, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, Faith and Order Paper No. 111 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982), Ministry, §26; World Council of Churches, The Nature and Mission of the Church: A Stage on the Way to a Common Statement, Faith and Order Paper 198 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2005), §§90–98. 4 See the further discussion in James E. Pedlar, Division, Diversity, and Unity: A Theology of Ecclesial Charisms (New York: Peter Lang, 2015), 67–68. 5 Wesley, Sermon 16, ‘The Means of Grace’, §V.4, in Sermons I [vol. I of The Works of John Wesley], ed. Albert C. Outler (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984), 396–97; ‘Cautions and Directions Concerning the Greatest Professors in the Methodist Societies,’ §II.A, in Doctrinal and Controversial Treatises II [vol. XIII of The Works of John Wesley], ed. Paul Wesley Chilcote and Kenneth J. Collins (Nashville: Abingdon, 2013), 84.

Bibliography Chilcote, Paul W., ed. The Methodist Defense of Women in Ministry: A Documentary History. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2017. Pedlar, James E. Division, Diversity, and Unity: A Theology of Ecclesial Charisms. New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2015. Railton, George Scott. Heathen England. 3rd ed. London: S. W. Patridge & Co, 1879. Werner, Julia Stewart. The Primitive Methodist Connexion: Its Background and Early History. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984. World Council of Churches. Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry. Faith and Order Paper No. 111. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982. ———. The Nature and Mission of the Church: A Stage on the Way to a Common Statement. Faith and Order Paper 198. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2005.

Index

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” refer to notes. affection(s) 22–23, 78 agency: divine 82–83; human, 110–11, 142, 145 altar calls 113, 172 Anabaptists 1, 27, 33n3 Anglicanism see Church of England Anglo-Catholicism 109, 120, 147; see also Oxford Movement Arminian Methodist Connexion 2 Arthur, William 112, 141 Articles of faith 11, 13–16, 20, 21, 28, 108, 109, 154; see also doctrine Atherton, William 77, 96 Augustine 27 Authority (church) 6, 27, 50, 63, 88, 116, 125, 146, 148, 157, 174–75; Booth’s 115; Conference 4, 6, 54, 77, 79, 93, 95, 154; episcopal 31–32, 172, 175; pastoral 24–25, 31–32, 45–47, 58–60, 75–76, 78, 83, 88, 155, 172–73; scriptural 153; Wesley’s 24–25, 32, 172 Baggaly, William 108 Bailey, George 140, 142, 144 Baker, Frank 11, 12, 18, 21, 31–32 Band-Room Methodists 1 baptism 13, 20, 26, 146–47 baptism of the Spirit 52, 90, 112, 122–23 Barclay, Robert 53 Bayly, Matthias 50 Bebbington, David 121–22 Beecham, John 88 believer’s church 5, 17, 26, 157 Benson, Edward 114

Beresford, John 44, 54 Berry, Charles 123 Bible Christians 2, 62, 106, 150 biblical criticism 140, 149, 157 bishop(s) 20, 24–25, 31–33, 62, 77, 93, 95, 109, 114, 149, 156, 172; see also oversight Bishop, Mary 28 Blankenship, Paul 28 Booth, Catherine Mumford 6, 76, 104–7, 110–12 Booth, Willliam: authority of 114–15; biblicism 111; biography 105–7; and Caughey 76, 104–5; and the Church of England 114–15; ecclesiology 6–7, 107–8, 111, 113, 115–16, 119–20, 124–25; Holiness Movement influence 112–13; independence 6, 105–6, 109, 113–15; and the Methodist New Connexion 105, 108, 110; Methodist roots 105–6, 108; postmillennialism 111–12; on sacraments 115–16, 124; on social salvation 116–18, 123, 138–39; and the Spirit 112–13; and theology 4, 108; theology of redemption 106, 117–18; see also Darkest England scheme Book of Common Prayer 11, 20, 22 Bourne, Hugh: biography 42–45; call to preach 43–44, 62–63; conversion 43; Dow’s influence 54–55; ecclesiology 5, 55–57; expulsion 42, 44, 47; and extraordinary means of grace, 56–57, 146, 174; Fletcher’s influence 50–53;

178 Index independence 44–45, 47, 106, 173; influences 42–45, 50–55, 58–59; on prayer 56–57, 61; on preaching 56, 61, 74; Quaker influence 42, 43, 53–54, 59–62; on schism 2, 47–50, 63; on the Spirit 5, 50–55, 57–60, 62, 75, 84, 112, 143, 175; as theologian 3, 45, 46; on women preachers 42, 57–62 Bourne, James 43 Bosanquet, Mary 5, 58–59 Bowmer, John 31, 45, 65n24 Broadhurst, John 45, 65n24 Bunting, Jabez 2, 46–47, 57, 76, 78–80, 85, 87–89, 94, 96, 156 Burdon, Adrian 24 Butler, Joseph 21–22 calling: extraordinary 24, 26, 31, 62, 76–77, 79, 81, 113, 172, 175; inward / outward 32, 39n129, 55 Calvinism, Calvinists 13, 29, 105, 124 camp meetings 42–45, 47, 49–50, 52, 56, 106, 171–73 Camp Meeting Methodists 45 Carlile, Wilson 138 Carter, William 87 Carwardine, Richard 76, 81–84, 94–96 ‘catholic spirit’ 16, 25–26, 47, 141, 148 catholicity 4, 7, 12–16, 18, 25–26, 47, 94–95, 119, 123–25, 140–41, 146, 148, 150, 152, 157, 173–74 Caughey, James: biography 76–79; and Booth 104–6; and Conference 75–79, 81, 84, 87–89, 95; on divine authority / guidance 79–81, 88; extraordinary means 6, 85–87; instantaneous work of the Spirit 6, 82–84; on preaching 84–86; on salvation 82–84; self-superintendency 6, 88, 183; ‘special calling’ 76; revival methods 80–81, 84–87 Centralisation 74, 77, 79, 89, 94 Chadwick, Samuel: on baptism 146–47; biography 140; on Booth 138–39; catholic emphases 7, 140–41, 148, 150, 152, 157; churchmanship 7, 139, 141, 150, 156, 173–74; on church authority 146, 148, 157; on church and state 138; Christology 142, 144, 148; on conversion 141, 143–44; dispensationalism 140–41;

and divine guidance 143, 152, 154; on divisions in the church 149–51; on doctrinal standards 153–54; ecclesiology 144–48; Holiness revivalism 138–43, 148, 151, 156–57; on the Lord’s Supper 147; and Methodist Union 7, 141, 148–57; on ordination 145, 147, 156; pneumatology 141–44; and Roman Catholicism 141, 147, 150; on sacraments 139, 141, 144, 146–47, 156; on schism 150; on social reform 138–40, 143; Spirit-Christology 142–43; on unity 141, 150–52, 157 Champness, Thomas 138 Chapman, David 1 charismatic leadership 46, 55, 60, 175 Chilcote, Paul W. 69n104 Christian perfection see perfection, Christian Christology 67n61, 121, 142, 144, 148 church: definition of 1, 5, 11–20, 110, 124; invisible 15, 109–10, 124; local 14, 17–18, 20, 109; marks of 1, 11–14, 16; membership 13, 17, 107–8, 114, 143; a ‘mixed body’ 5, 18, 27; particular 11, 13–17, 20, 22, 26, 146; national 13–14, 17, 120; unity 13, 94–95, 109, 113, 139, 141, 150–52, 157–58; universal 11, 13–16, 18, 20, 107, 115, 125; visible 5, 12, 14–16, 18–20, 22, 27, 30, 33, 109, 123–24, 146, 150–51 Church of England 43, 48, 56, 105; Methodism’s relationship to 1, 11–12, 19–23, 28, 30, 88, 123, 148, 150; Salvation Army negotiations 106, 114–16; separation from 21–23, 28, 30, 150; Wesley’s definition of 5, 11, 14–15, 19–20, 27, 30, 32–33, 172 circuit 44, 47–52, 61, 74, 75, 78, 85–86, 88, 94, 105–6, 118, 140 Clarke, Adam, 57–58, 83 class (social) 3, 8n7, 43, 120–21 class leader(s) 43, 50, 56, 60, 74, 155 class meeting 19, 44, 48, 51, 53, 58, 87, 172 clericalism, clericalisation 46, 56, 119, 173 Cliff College 7, 138, 140–42, 153

Index  179 Clifton, Shaw 132n114 Clowes, William 43, 45–46, 55, 171 Colyer, Elmer 15–16, 18, 23 communion see Lord’s Supper Conference 14, 19–22, 26, 30–32, 76–77; authority of 4, 6, 26, 47, 78, 81, 84, 87–89, 93–95, 105, 113, 154, 172, 174–76; Methodist New Connexion 106; Primitive Methodist 45, 54, 75, 151, 155; Uniting 157; Wesleyan Methodist 2, 6, 44, 49, 56–57, 74–78, 81, 84–85; 87–89, 105, 109, 120, 139–40, 149, 151, 153–54, 171, 173 Congregationalists 17, 25, 109, 123 conscience 5, 18, 21, 23–27, 29, 31–32, 48–49, 82, 113, 121, 172 conversion 43, 47, 49, 50–51, 53, 62, 74, 76–77, 80, 82–83, 87, 90, 92, 141, 143 conviction (of sin) 54, 82 Cook, Thomas 138 Cooke, William 110, 125 Coutts, Frederick 117 Crawfoot, James 44–45, 50, 55, 61–62 Currie, Robert 2, 106, 155 Danker, Ryan 22, 33n3, 39n129 Darkest England scheme 7, 117–18, 123, 139 Davidson, Randall 114 Dayton, Donald 4–5, 67n61 death, threats of 80–82 delusion 81, 111 democracy 119 denomination(s) 2–3, 20, 24, 49, 105–10, 113–16, 149–50, 171, 173 Disbury College 140, 174 discipline (church) 13, 16–18, 24, 26, 32, 46–47, 58, 76–77, 81, 83, 87–88, 94, 111, 145–48, 154 dispensation, dispensationalism 23, 51–53, 58, 89, 112, 140–41 Dissent, Dissenter 11, 14, 17, 21, 22, 30, 33n3, 43, 150; see also Nonconformists, nonconformity divine agency see under agency divine guidance see Spirit, guidance division (church) 1–8, 22, 25, 27, 47–48, 75, 79, 84, 94–95, 106–7, 148–51, 153, 171, 175–76; see also schism; separation

diversity (in the church) 24–26, 108, 150 Dixon, James 6, 74–75, 79, 83, 89–95 Dixon, Richard Watson 74, 90 doctrine 13–14, 16, 25, 29, 48, 83, 110, 114; Anglican 20–22, 32, 172; and separation 21; standards of 26, 93, 108, 153–55, 165n145 Dolan, John 53, 65n24, 69n121 Donatists 27 Douglas, Annie 139 Dow, Lorenzo 5, 43–45, 47, 50, 54–55, 60, 77–78 Dreams 53, 55, 80 Dunn, Samuel 96, 105, 171 Dunnell, Mary 44–45, 55 Eason, Andrew 115–16, 129n71 Eastern Orthodoxy 151 ecclesial identity / status 13–14, 17, 110, 114–15, 125 ecclesiality, ecclesial status 5, 12, 15–17, 26 ecclesiology see under Booth, William; Bourne, Hugh; Chadwick, Samuel; Wesley, John ecumenical movement 3, 123, 139, 141, 149, 151 ecumenical theology 1, 16, 175 enthusiasm (religious) 46, 91 entire sanctification see under sanctification Entwistle, Joseph 92 episcopacy see bishop(s) eschatology 61–62, 110–13 Eucharist see Lord’s Supper Evangelical Alliance 109 Evangelical Anglicans 22, 27 evangelical catholicity 94, 123, 125, 148, 174 evangelical doctrine / faith 94–95, 108, 113, 118, 138, 152–54 evangelicalism 26, 107, 108–9, 111 evangelism 2, 31, 56, 61, 93–94, 113, 116, 118–19, 124, 151, 157 evangelist(s) 4, 24, 26, 43, 55, 58, 94, 105, 109, 118, 138–41; independent 6, 54, 106; see also self-superintendency Everett, James 96, 105, 171 experience, experiential (religious) 7, 25, 44, 51, 53–54, 63, 79–81, 89, 93, 106–8, 112, 125, 140–43, 148, 152, 154–55

180 Index Fell, Margaret 6, 59–62 Field, David 15, 24, 36n76 Findlay, G. G. 156 Finney, Charles 86, 104, 111 Fletcher, John 5, 43, 50–54, 59, 67n61, 83, 112, 141 Fletcher, Mary see Bosanquet, Mary ‘Fly Sheets’ 2, 6, 78, 86, 105 ‘Forward Movement’ 118, 123 Fox, George 70n129, 138 Francis of Assisi 138 free church 7, 15, 123–24, 139, 146, 148–51, 156–57, 173–74 functional view of church / ministry 6, 18, 31–33, 39n129, 113, 125, 145, 156, 172 Fundamentalism 140, 149 Gibson, Edmund 31 gifts (spiritual) 32, 60, 62, 92–93, 155, 175 Green, Roger 107, 110–11, 113, 115–18 Gregory, Benjamin 80–81, 109–10 Griffith, William 105, 171 guidance, divine see Spirit, guidance Hall, John 105 Hannah, John 87 Hartley College 149 Hatcher, Stephen 57 heart-religion 12, 14, 16, 22, 25–26, 29–30, 48, 51, 53, 113, 121, 125, 141 Herod, George 55 Herring, Thomas 31 ‘high’ church 28, 124, 155–56 ‘high’ Wesleyans 57, 75–77, 79, 81, 87–88, 95–96, 147–48, 153, 156 Hill, Harold 114, 116 Hobhouse, Walter 146 holiness: of the church 17, 29; personal 1, 83, 90, 72, 108, 112, 121, 139 Holiness Movement 7, 82, 106, 112–13, 118, 138–41, 148 holiness revivalism 2, 138–42, 173 Holy Spirit see Spirit home missions 109–10, 114, 120, 140, 171 Homilies (Anglican standards) 19–21 Horne, Melville 51 Howarth, David 141 Hughes, Dorothea Price 123–24 Hughes, Hugh Price 7, 116, 118–25, 138

Hughes, Katherine Price 121 Huxley, T. H. 117 Ignatius Loyola 138 impressions, divine 6, 42–43, 53–55, 60, 62, 76–77, 79, 81, 91, 152 Independent Methodists 42, 44, 50, 54, 57, 60 independent evangelists see under evangelist(s) infallibility 143, 146, 175 instantaneous work see under Spirit institutions (church) 4, 12–14, 17, 27, 29, 33, 49, 78, 94, 107, 110–11, 113–14, 116, 125, 139, 144–45, 151, 174–76: see also structures (church) itinerant ministry 44, 46, 59–60, 74, 76, 81, 88, 92, 94, 105–6 Jackson, George 140, 149 Jarrett, Rebecca 117, 130n87 Joyful News Mission 138 justification 82–83, 107 Kendall, H. B. 61 Kent, John 3, 61, 76 keys of the Kingdom 116, 145 kingdom of God 7, 13, 82, 110–11, 113, 115, 119, 122–23, 145 ‘Kirkgate Screamers’ 1 Knight, Henry 19 lay administration (of the sacrament) 16, 147, 155–56 lay ministers 2, 87 lay preachers 16, 21–22; see also local preachers Lambeth Appeal 148–49, 151, 156 ‘Leeds Organ case’ 2 Lenton, John 57 Lidgett, John Scott 150, 154–55, 165n145 Lightfoot, J. B. 114 liturgy 19–20, 22, 32, 172 local preachers 43–44, 59–61, 88, 105, 140, 149, 154; see also lay preachers London City Mission 109 Lord’s Supper 12, 19–21, 28–29, 46, 56–57, 147, 155, 172; see also lay administration love feast 43, 53, 57

Index  181 ‘low’ Methodism 75, 95 Lunn, Henry 123 Maddox, Randy 4 ‘Magic Methodists’ 44, 50, 55, 61 manifestation (spiritual) 43, 50–53, 60, 141, 143; extraordinary 80–81, 171 Manning, Henry Edward 125 Mason, Henry 117 McLean, John 85 means of grace 3, 5, 7, 11, 16, 19, 27–28, 33, 79, 95, 110, 113, 124, 139, 147, 172–76; ordinary vs. extraordinary 5–6, 56, 78, 85–86, 90, 171–72 Mearns, Andrew 118 membership (church) see under church Methodism: ecclesial status 8, 14, 21–22, 30; separation from the Church of England 1, 5, 11–13, 17, 20–27, 29, 30, 33, 125, 150, 172 Methodist New Connexion 1–2, 6, 43, 50, 105–6, 108, 110, 113 Methodist Union 3–4, 7, 61, 139, 141, 144, 148–57, 174 Miller, William Edward 6, 74–75, 89–92, 96 millennium 110–13, 119 ministry: extraordinary vs. ordinary 6, 57, 59–61, 78, 86; functional view of 31–33, 156, 172; unauthorised 22, 105; see also ordination Minutes of Conference 14, 25, 29, 62, 78, 108 miracles 80, 111 missionary agencies 3, 7, 61, 74, 94, 107, 109, 114, 116; see also home missions Monk, Robert 25 Morgan, R. C. 109 Murdoch, Norman 115, 117 National Council of the Evangelical Free Churches 123–24, 140, 149 Nelson, Robert 28 Newton, Robert 85, 87, 96 nominal Christianity 17, 28 Nonconformists, noconformity 109, 119–21, 123–25, 150; see also Dissent, Dissenter non-sectarianism 6, 107–8, 110, 113

O’Bryan, William 2–3, 62, 148 Oh, Gwang Seok 14 Oldstone-Moore, Christopher 118 opinion (religious) 15–16, 25–26, 47–48, 78, 89, 153 ordained ministry see ordination order, church 24, 27, 31, 78, 87, 93, 95, 145–46, 156; see also polity order, religious 116, 138 orders of ministry 14, 22, 32, 62, 156 ordinances 17–19, 29, 46, 89, 91, 144; see also sacraments ordination 11–12, 24, 30–32, 55, 61–62, 76, 89, 105, 147, 156 orthodoxy 16, 48, 108, 140 Outler, Albert 4–5, 11, 28 oversight, ministry of 8, 31–33, 43, 45, 50, 62, 88, 93–94, 105, 113, 172, 175 Owen, John 17, 22, 25–26 Oxford Movement 74, 94; see also Anglo-Catholicism Palmer, Pheobe 83, 112 parish 3, 12, 19, 24, 27, 29, 31–33, 172 Parkhurst, John 57–58 pastors 4, 12, 24–25, 31, 59, 78, 88, 92, 156 pastoral office 45, 57, 59–60, 76–77, 79, 88, 109, 148, 156, 173 Peake, Arthur Samuel 7, 148–58; Pearse, Mark Guy 120–21 Pentecost 52–53, 80, 112, 122, 139–43, 145, 157 perfection, Christian 28–29, 51, 82, 92, 140, 142; see also sanctification, entire Phillips, Peter and Hannah 42, 44, 54 politics 3, 7, 21, 75, 77, 89, 119–22, 138, 141, 171 polity 2, 11, 16–17, 19, 23, 25–27, 30–32, 45, 60, 75, 78, 93, 106, 171 Pope, William Burt 140, 174 postmillennialism 6, 110–11, 113 poverty 116–18, 122 practical divinity 4 pragmatism 16, 60, 81, 84, 110, 113 prayer: public 19–21, 146, 172; personal 43, 80, 84, 112, 139, 152 prayer meetings 42, 45, 50, 56, 61, 85, 111

182 Index preachers; 24, 26, 28, 30–31, 45, 47–48, 55–56, 59–62, 85, 93–94, 108, 147, 153; see also lay preachers, women preachers presbyter 32 priests, priesthood 12, 29, 30, 33, 60, 141, 145–47, 155, 172 primitive Christianity / church 19, 58–59, 89, 155 Primitive Methodists 1–2, 5, 7, 45–46, 48–49, 54–57, 60, 75, 106, 108, 148–49, 151, 154–55, 171 progressive Methodism 118–19, 138, 142, 152 prophet(s) 12, 30, 53, 57, 60, 138, 142 Protestant Methodist Connexion 2 Providence 48, 81, 120, 143, 146 Quaker Methodists 5, 42, 44, 50, 53–54 Quakers 6, 43, 48, 53–54, 57, 59–60 Rabbits, Edward 105 Railton, George Scott 129n63 Rainey, David 33n3 Randall, Ian 142, 148 Ratcliffe, Reginald 109 Rattenbury, J. Ernest 150, 154 Read, John 109, 112 regeneration 118, 121–22, 143–44, 147 respectability 80, 171 revelation 51–53, 104, 143–46, 153, 155 revivalism 2, 43, 74, 77–78, 84, 86, 89, 92, 94, 110, 138, 140–44, 148, 157; and division 6–7, 45, 96, 107, 171–74; ‘new measures’ 104, 111; and social reform 7, 118, 121–22, 140; theology of 4–5 Rigg, John H. 110 Rightmire, David 113 Robinson, Earl 125 Roman Catholicism 1, 16, 74, 109–10, 120, 124, 141, 147, 150–51 sacraments 1, 5–7, 11–17, 20, 27–33, 53, 57, 61, 106, 110, 114–16, 119–20, 124, 139, 141, 144, 146–48, 155–56, 172 sacerdotalism 119, 146–47 Salvation Army: ecclesial status 107, 109–16, 119–20, 125; negotiations with the Church of England 114–15; nonsacramentalism 106, 114–16; Social Reform

Wing 106, 116–17, 119–20, 124; structure 113–15; terminology 106, 111; see also non-sectarianism sanctification 29, 44, 82–83, 90, 125, 171; entire 6, 43, 77, 82–83, 90, 112; see also perfection, Christian Sandeman, Robert 51 schism 1–8, 12–13, 21–23, 25–27, 30, 32, 44–49, 75, 78–79, 124, 150, 172, 175–76; see also division; separation Schleiermacher, Friedrich 110 sectarian 6, 8, 107–8, 110, 113, 123, 148, 176 self-superintendency 6, 54, 88; see also independent ministry separation (church); 1, 5, 11–13, 17, 20–30, 33, 45–47, 63, 95, 106, 109, 124–25, 150, 172; see also division; schism Shaftesbury, Lord 118 Shubotham, Daniel 43 sin 17, 22–23, 54, 63, 80, 82–84, 86, 90, 112–13, 117–19, 143, 147 Sisterhood of the People 121 slavery 2, 121 Smalbroke, Richard 31 ‘Smith, John’ 24 social reform 7, 116–23, 140 social salvation / redemption 7, 110, 116–18, 122; see also Darkest England scheme socialism, Christian 118, 120 Southport Convention 140, 142 sovereignty, divine 91, 104, 146 ‘special services’ 75, 78, 83, 87 Spirit: and conversion 51, 53, 80, 82, 87, 90, 141, 143; corporate work 3, 5, 7, 84, 88, 145, 152, 172, 174–75; in creation 60, 142; gradual work 82–84, 90, 175; guidance / leading 19, 27, 62, 79–80, 88, 91, 143, 152, 154, 172; instantaneous work 6, 53, 82–83, 90, 112–13, 142, 171; personal work 3, 5, 7, 27, 79, 88, 113, 118, 121–22, 125, 140, 142, 144, 172–75; personhood 142; power 60, 83–84, 89, 91, 95, 113, 121, 141, 144–45; see also conviction; impressions; Spirit-baptism

Index  183

voluntary association 15, 25–26, 31–32, 172

Warren, Samuel 89 Watson, Richard 74, 83 Waugh, Thomas 77, 79 Weaver, Richard 109 Wesley, Charles 20, 30, 34n12, 38n110, 39n131 Wesley, John: his Anglicanism 5, 12, 14–15, 19–20, 21, 24, 27–32, 33n3, 88; ‘catholic spirit’ 16, 25–26, 47–48, 108, 141, 147; on conscience 23–27, 31–32, 113; ecclesiology 12–21, 172, 174; sacramentology 27–30; on schism 12–13, 21–23, 26–27, 30, 32; spiritual sensation 27, 51–52; theology of ministry 30–33; 58–59, 67, 147; see also bishop(s); means of grace; ordination; unity Wesley Bible Union 140, 153 Wesleyan Association 2 Wesleyan Methodist Conference see under Conference Wesleyan Methodist Association 2 Wesleyan Reform Union 2, 75, 105–6, 171 West London Mission 120–21, 123 Westcott, B. F. 114 Wilkinson, George 114 Wilkinson, John 3, 53 Wise, Daniel 76, 81, 85, 104 Wolley, Tim 50, 54–55 women preachers 5–6, 42, 44, 47, 55, 57–62, 68n96, 69n110, 114–15, 173 Wood, Joseph 33n3, 34n18 Wood, Laurence 52 worship (public) 12, 15–16, 19–22, 25–26, 29, 56, 80, 146, 151, 172

Walker, Samuel 22, 24 Walsh, John 12

zeal 18, 20, 29, 52, 86, 92, 94, 110, 117, 138, 174

Spirit-baptism 52, 112, 122–23 Spirit-centred theology 5–7, 47, 50–55, 62–63, 67n61, 75, 82, 88, 113, 141, 144 spiritual sensation; 27, 51–52 Standing, Roger 122 Stead, W. T. 117, 119 Steele, James 44, 52 Steward, William 77 Stillingfleet, Edward 25, 39n125 Strawson, William 118, 138 Streiff, Patrick 51 structures (church) 3–7, 17, 24, 63, 79, 94, 145, 172, 175; of the Church of England 11, 19, 24–26, 32, 171–72, 174; of Methodism 19, 48–50, 83, 172, 174; see also institutions Summers, Thomas 81 supernatural 26, 51, 55, 81, 143–46 Taft, Zechariah 5, 47, 57–59 Tennant, Bob 21–22 Tent Methodists 2 Theological Institution 2, 78, 89 Thirty-Nine Articles 11, 13, 28 Thomas, David 109 Tomlinson, John 27, 55 travelling preachers see itinerants Trinity 15–16, 47, 50, 142 Turner, John Munsey 57 United Methodist Church (1907–1932) 109, 148, 154 United Methodist Free Churches 2, 75, 108, 150 unity (church) 13, 20, 22, 28–29, 32, 94–95, 125, 139, 149–52, 157, 172, 176; spiritual/invisible 6, 109, 113, 141; visible 109, 150–51