Our English Heritage

The Georgian Era V: The Evangelical Revival and Social Reform

Introduction

While John Wesley’s work occasionally receives some coverage in secular histories, the contributions of other evangelists in the “Methodist” movement receive barely a notice. Yet the Revival was one of the great movements in C18th England, and further afield: Scotland, Wales, the American colonies were all deeply affected. Likewise, the social effects of the Revival were profound. J.R. Green, author of the C19th classic on English history (and no Methodist sympathiser!) put it this way:

“…a religious revival burst forth…which changed in a few years the whole temper of English society. The Church was restored to life and activity. Religion carried to the hearts of the people a fresh spirit of moral zeal, while it purified our literature and our manners. A new philanthropy reformed our prisons, infused clemency and wisdom into our penal laws, abolished the slave trade, and gave the first impulse to popular education.” (J.R Green, A Short History of the English People, H&R, 1899, pp.736-7)

Nothing has turned up in the intervening years to modify that judgment.

English Society and Church in the Early 1700s

The anti-Puritan reaction in the Restoration period led to widespread and unbridled licentiousness and debauchery. Allied to these were open cruelty, violence, avarice, and robbery, manifest in both the poorer classes and the more affluent. Highwaymen infested the roadsides; indeed, far from being the romantic figures of legend they were normally quite ruthless, and epitomised the dangers of C18th travel. Smuggling and wrecking along the south and west coasts became a major business: wreckers would lure ships to the rocks, murder all the hapless victims, and pillage the goods on board. The only reply of the government to rampant crime was tougher laws and penalties. The result was that there were more than 160 crimes which attracted the death penalty, while hangings were both frequent and treated as gala entertainment, with festivities and merriment around the gallows. Prison sentences were meted out with alacrity, such that prisons became full and overflowing, but they were such miserable places a term there was tantamount to a slow death sentence.

Sports involving animal cruelty were immensely popular, and this form of entertainment was merely another symptom of the brutality of society at large. Then too the gin craze had gripped the nation: in 1689 Parliament prohibited the importation of liquor, so Englishmen brewed their own, quite potent, substitutes. Stills proliferated to such an extent that by 1720 almost every sixth house had become a gin shop. One magistrate commented, “What must become of the infant who is conceived in gin, with the poisonous distillations of which it is nourished both in the womb and at the breast.” Bishop Benson observed, “Gin has made the English people what they never were before – cruel and inhuman.”

By contrast, the upper classes lived in sumptuous luxury with scant regard for the poorer folk at their gates. For instance, the Duchess of Marlborough lived at Blenheim Palace, and inherited a stupendous fortune from her husband, which her own astute business ventures increased enormously. She indeed made some donations to charitable causes, yet in her will she left a mere £300 to be distributed among the poor of Woodstock, which she considered was fulfilling all righteousness. Meanwhile, the poor proliferated in prodigious numbers: poor relief which had availed in the C17th was no longer adequate. Slums therefore proliferated, and with them untold squalor and deprivation.

Deism now produced widespread unbelief in any form of Christianity, as people deserted the Church in droves: a congregation at St Paul’s Cathedral might number a couple of dozen! Among the clergy were the widespread abuses of multiple benefices, and absenteeism. Clergy, concerned to be “moderate”, and who gave lip service to the Church’s doctrines, often forsook their congregations as they served their own pursuits and hobbies. Some spiritually-minded high churchmen deplored the prevailing mood, as in the complaint of Bishop Secker of Oxford:

“Such are the dissoluteness and contempt in the highest part of the world, and the profligacy, intemperance, and fearlessness of committing crimes in the lower part, as must, if the torrent of impiety stop not, become absolutely fatal. Christianity is ridiculed and railed at with very little reserve; and the teachers without any at all.”

Lady Mary Montagu (one-time friend of Sarah Churchill), a witty aristocrat, joked that Parliament was considering a Bill to have the word “not” taken out of the Commandments, and placed in the Creed, so as to be more in keeping with the times.

Above all was a pathological fear of “enthusiasm”, what today we would call ‘emotionalism’ or ‘fanaticism’, a reaction to the upheavals of the previous century. Any sort of zeal, vitality, and concern for souls was disdained and abhorred.

Finally and significantly, there was the egregious blot of the slave trade and institution, a legacy of Elizabethan times, and more particularly from the Peace of Utrecht, 1713 , which concluded the War of the Spanish Succession. Under this treaty the former Spanish monopoly of slave trading was ceded to Britain, and the trade became a lucrative one for her growing empire.

The Revival was to change all this, and turn things around remarkably for the better.

The Revival Leaders

A small number of Anglican clergymen had conversion experiences in the two decades from 1735 to 1755, several in the later 1730s, and in different parts of the country. In order of prominence they were:

George Whitefield: Born 1714, the son of an innkeeper in Gloucestershire, who went through Oxford as a servitor. Converted in 1735 he soon pioneered field preaching. In his time he was the acknowledged founder of the Methodists, but became the object of vicious cartoons and lampooning by Hogarth and others (see more below).

John and Charles Wesley: From the large family of Rev. Samuel and Susannah Wesley. John as a boy was rescued from a rectory fire in 1709, which he believed was Divine preservation for a special work. The two were famous for their evangelical experience in a Moravian meeting at Aldersgate, May, 1738, and their subsequent evangelistic labours (more below).

William Grimshaw of Haworth (a vicarage later made famous by the Bronte sisters): laboured there from 1742 until his death in 1763. Known as “the apostle of the north”, he was both a powerful preacher and generous to the poor, and reached thousands over that 20 year period. When objectors arraigned him before the bishop he was vindicated time and again; on one occasion the bishop was forced to concede, “I would that every man in my diocese was like this good man!”

William Romaine of London: From his ordination in 1738 he served in various parishes around London, notably St. George’s, Hanover Square; and St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, which he occupied until his death in 1795. An outstanding Biblical scholar, he also held briefly the Professorship of Astronomy at Gresham College. However, everywhere he was a forthright preacher of the Gospel who brought many to conversion.

Daniel Rowlands of Llangeitho, “the apostle of Wales”: a good classical scholar, who came to conversion about 1738, and thereafter preached so powerfully that people came in droves from up to 60 miles to hear him. When the bishop revoked his licence in 1763 Rowlands continued to preach in a newly-built chapel nearby. On Sundays his chapel would be packed with a congregation of 2000, often more. Many Welsh say to this day that he was a greater preacher even than Whitefield, since he had more matter and scholarship.

John Berridge of Everton: went to Cambridge University in 1734, and after taking his M.A. in 1739 he became a Fellow of Clare College. He came to conversion in 1755 when he moved to Everton in Bedfordshire, and then became an evangelist who attracted large crowds: in one year as many as 4000 were converted! Itinerating outside his parish brought opposition, from both the bishop and sections of the populace, but Berridge stood firm: he continued his labours there until his death.

Henry Venn of Huddersfield: came from a long line of Anglican clerical namesakes going back to the Reformation, but from childhood disliked Nonconformists. A Cambridge scholar of repute, but ignorant of Gospel vitality, he was ordained in 1747, and in 1759 became vicar of Huddersfield in Yorkshire, continuing there until 1771. Here he reached the working masses of the Industrial Revolution, but with advancing ill health he took the quieter parish at Yelling. He finally passed away in 1797.

James Hervey of Weston Favell: a graduate of Lincoln College, Oxford, where he came under the influence of the Holy Club, the progenitor of Methodism, and John Wesley in particular. Although ordained in 1736 he did not come to conversion until 1741, in particular through the counselling of Whitefield. From that time until his death (1758), while he preached fervently, he made his mark more as a writer.

Samuel Walker of Truro: a descendant of Bishop Hall of Jacobean times, he graduated from Exeter College c. 1735. Ordained in 1737, Walker travelled on the Continent for two years, but eventually settled at Truro in 1746, and there came to conversion. Over the next 15 years his preaching transformed the entire community.

John Fletcher of Madeley: This saintly leader's real name was Jean Flechère, of French Protestant extraction, who studied in Switzerland and excelled at Biblical languages. After a time in Lisbon in pursuit of a military career, he arrived in England about 1750. Ordained in 1757, he was appointed to Madeley in Shropshire in 1760. There he ministered in the main until his death.

Augustus Toplady: brought up by a widowed mother, he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. Converted in 1756 he took ordination in 1762, and served In Devonshire parish before removing to London. He became famous for his hymns, esp. “Rock of Ages”, and writings, but his sermons were powerful, although few remain.

This handful of men between them summoned an entire nation to repentance, and pointed them, from the lowest to the highest, to the Christ of the Cross and the Judgment Throne.

Whitefield and the Wesleys

In the above list the most prominent were, of course, the first three, because of their far-ranging itinerant ministries:

George Whitefield: after his ordination at Gloucester began preaching in various pulpits in that diocese, but since many were scandalised at his message he was thrust out and began field preaching: at Moorfields in London, and Kingswood Common near Bristol, and thence all across the country, preaching to upwards of 20,000 at a time. He also preached extensively in Wales, and with Daniel Rowlands, Howell Harris, and certain others co-founded in 1743 the Calvinistic Methodist Church of Wales. He also made seven trips to America, where he was the first to preach to the Negro slaves, treating them as fully human, a move which gave rise to the “Negro spiritual” genre. He finally died on his last trip there at Newburyport, Mass. in Sept. 1770. Estimates are that from 1735 to 1770 he preached over 18,000 sermons – anywhere as invitations and opportunities came. In America the famous Benjamin Franklin published many of those sermons, and while there Whitefield partnered with the clergyman, theologian, and philosopher Jonathan Edwards. He also founded an orphanage in Georgia, the debt on which he only managed to clear a couple of years before his death.

Whitefield, while early on he was the acknowledged leader of Methodism, he relinquished that leadership in 1749:

“Let the name of Whitefield perish…I want to bring souls, not to a party…but to true faith in Jesus Christ….I know my place…even to be servant of all. I want not to have a people called by my name.”

Hence, by the end of the century there were many Wesleyans, but no Whitefieldites. However, with this burden removed Whitefield reached out further: not only to the coal miners in Wales and the West Country, but he preached to the upper classes and aristocracy as well. From the latter there arose a connexion of chapels under the patronage of Lady Selina, Countess of Huntingdon (right), a staunch supporter of Whitefield’s work. The Earl of Bath also came to conversion, and was thereafter a regular worshipper at the Whitefield Chapel in Tottenham Court Rd. Even Frederick Prince of Wales was profoundly affected by Whitefield’s message.

As “servant of all” Whitefield was essentially non-denominational: although he saw himself as a loyal son of the Established Church, he found acceptance with Scottish Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, Moravians, and Reformed. However, in England the large majority of his many converts stayed within the Establishment.

John Wesley’s ministry began on an indifferent note in Georgia, 1736-7 under the supervision of Sir James Oglethorpe, but he returned in 1738 very disillusioned. After initially seeking to pursue academic life at Oxford he came to conversion in a famous meeting of the Moravian Brethren in May, 1738, in Aldersgate St. Thereafter he embarked on his evangelistic labours over the next 50+ years. That ministry was largely confined to England and Scotland, where he travelled on horseback up and down the country, often sleeping on the floors of inns, but sometimes in barns and outbuildings, and even in the open air. He preached both to handfuls and to thousands at a time: from market crosses (left), in fields and commons, in churchyards, and at roadsides. His clothing often threadbare, he yet preached constantly: rain, hail, or shine, preaching both to common folk and to upper classes, and often had to face angry stone-throwing mobs stirred up by opponents. On one occasion in 1742 he went to his home town at Epworth where he hoped to have access to the pulpit in the parish church, but the vicar not only refused but threatened to drum him out of town. Wesley took his stand on his father’s tomb outside the church, and from there preached to a large crowd while the service proceeded inside.

As his followers increased, and with many parish churches closed to him, his first chapel was a cannon foundry in Moorgate, near the Nonconformist cemetery at Bunhill Fields. This later became Wesley’s Chapel.

Charles Wesley (left): while he engaged in itinerant preaching in his early years, made his mark as a hymn writer: through the medium of song the Revival message spread across the country, influencing even more than did his sermons. In all, Wesley wrote over 7000 hymns, many of which have been translated into a host of languages and are still sung all over the world. Indeed, Charles Wesley’s talent as a poet was outstanding, and he properly belongs in the annals of English literature. Otherwise, Charles, having a pastor’s heart, was consistent to the very end in visiting and ministering to prisoners in the various jails, esp. Newgate. Prisons in those days were cesspits of disease (typhus) and squalor, and jailers cared little for the welfare of inmates, often ill-treating them unmercifully. Yet Charles was undaunted.

Field preaching did not come easily to these evangelists: it was forced on them as their robust evangelical preaching provoked opposition from Anglican clergy and bishops, who closed their pulpits against them. But they were determined to continue, and the common people came in droves to hear them. Formally, they were breaking the rules of the Church, but they maintained that there were higher principles which prevailed over the details of Canon Law.

One anecdote illustrates both the opposition of the bishops, and the estimate by others of their indolence: one bishop complained to King George III about (for him) the baneful influence of Wesley’s preaching. The king promptly replied, “Make him a bishop, my lord! Make him a bishop! Then I’ll warrant you he’ll preach seldom enough!” The same thing was said about Whitefield.

However, apart from Whitefield and the Wesleys the others worked in their own parishes, although Grimshaw, Rowlands, Berridge, and Walker did venture outside from time to time. They all believed the situation demanded it because of the indolence and absenteeism of so many of the clergy, and the fact that those clergy did not preach, or even believe, the Gospel principles they were pledged to uphold.

Character of “Methodism”

Contrary to the common allegation, both at the time and since, these men were not unlearned and ignorant, whose sermons were strong on noise and histrionics, but thin on substance. On the contrary, they were almost all university trained, skilled in the classical languages, while some like Romaine, Berridge, Toplady, Venn, and John Wesley himself, were up with and even represented the best scholarship of their day.

The theology of the Revival was essentially Puritanism: indeed, that was the allegation of critics when Whitefield first began preaching. With the exception of the Wesleys and Fletcher the doctrine preached was solidly Calvinistic, and even the Wesleys were closer to that position than often they – especially John – cared to admit. However, the movement came not from Dissent, but from the Established Church. Dissent was heavily introverted when the awakening came, and their relations with the Established Church icy indeed, but eventually they recognised its value and threw their weight behind it. As the century progressed, many Puritan works – those of e.g. Baxter, Howe, Owen, Manton, Bunyan, and Henry – were reprinted for a voracious reading public. Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress became the second book to the Bible itself. Hence Puritanism, now stripped of its political aspirations and programme, accomplished its real work of transforming a nation. The Revival was, as one historian has put it, “Puritanism come into its own”.

Critics derided their preaching and emphasis on “heart religion” as “enthusiasm”, which contradicted the current fashion of “moderatism”. Cf. the vicious (and by modern standards, libellous) cartoon by Hogarth satirising Whitefield, entitled “Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism: A Medley”(left). The Methodists nevertheless boldly cut across the current fashions in their concern to “save souls” and reach the masses of humanity for whom the official church for the most part cared little.

Wesley, and all the others, were known as friends of the poor and oppressed. Wesley in particular set up schools and training houses (egs. at Bristol, and Newcastle-on-Tyne) so that common labourers, both men and women, could learn a skill or a trade and thus better themselves financially. With this sort of enterprise across the country a new ‘middle class’ emerged as the century progressed. Wesley’s dictum on personal finance was, “Earn what you can; save what you can; give what you can.” And for him the more people earned, the more they could use to help others.

However, it must be duly noted that all these men had the proverbial “feet of clay”, and their “blind spots”:

Whitefield, while he was the first to preach to the slaves, himself purchased slaves for work on his orphanage in Georgia. He did not see the evil of the institution as did, e.g. John Wesley.

John Wesley married a widow, Mrs Molly Vazeille, in 1751, but shamefully neglected her in his zeal for evangelistic labours. Poor Mrs Wesley could not keep pace and eventually they separated!

Charles Wesley could be insufferably meddlesome at times, particularly over his brother’s marital aspirations.

Augustus Toplady as a controversialist took up the pen against Wesley and abused him in disgraceful language, whether over theological issues, or over the American Revolution.

William Grimshaw at times shamefully used force to round up parishioners to attend services.

In all, the most all-round, blameless characters of the ones mentioned above would be John Fletcher, and Daniel Rowlands.

Wesley and the Church of England

Wesley disowned being a Dissenter, encouraged his people to attend parish services, while his “Society” meetings were always held at times other than stipulated service times. For all this he was nevertheless ambivalent in his attitude to the Established Church. To appreciate this ambivalence we must explore first his background.

John Wesley was the grandson of John Westley (the medial ‘t’ was later dropped), a Puritan protégé of John Owen, who pastored in the Dorset region during the Commonwealth period. Ejected in 1662 for his Nonconformity he nevertheless continued preaching in those difficult times, and for this was arraigned before the Bishop of Bristol, who insisted that he minister “according to law, and to the order of the Church of England”. Although Westley composed a diary of the events, including his interview with the bishop, and sent it to Edmund Calamy, it has not survived. John Wesley did, however, have access to a copy, and included an excerpt in his Journal in 1765, while he also disseminated it among his converts.

On the maternal side there were even more illustrious Nonconformist roots. Susannah’s father was Dr. Samuel Annesley, dubbed the “St Paul of Nonconformity” in his time, and who in 1694 organised the first ordinations of Nonconformist pastors after the Revolution, a major milestone in Dissenting history. Hence Wesleyan Methodism had strong Nonconformist connections.

At critical pressure points Wesley was to revert to those roots, and despite his pleas to the contrary he laid the foundations for separation from the Established Church:

At the first Conference of ministers and preachers in 1744 the question was raised about a “schism” in the Church, to which the reply was given that while they would remain within until thrust out, they would continue to avail themselves of the present opportunity of saving souls.

By the 1750s Wesley’s views regarding the status of bishops had changed: he no longer accepted the doctrine of apostolic succession and the jure divino of bishops. By this time he had also appointed a whole team of lay preachers, who now wanted the right to administer sacraments. In 1760 three lay preachers took it on themselves to do precisely this, and to Charles’ dismay John did not discipline them.

The crunch came in 1784 when Wesley ordained Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury as “superintendents” of the growing work in America (now a separate country). Asbury, against Wesley’s wishes, designated himself as “bishop”, and worked tirelessly in itinerant evangelism, but also laid the foundation of American Methodism as an episcopal church. The same year Wesley himself also laid hands on Thomas Vasey and Richard Whatcoat for the American work. Charles was alarmed at this development, insisting, “Ordination is separation!” John calmly replied, in true Nonconformist style, that he was as much as Scriptural episkopos as any man in England! Charles was so angry that he refused to speak to his brother for nearly a year. He penned, in typical style, a sardonic piece of doggerel on the episode:

How easily are bishops made
By man or woman’s whim!
Wesley his hands on Coke has laid
But who laid hands on him?

The ultimate breach then came three years later when Methodist preaching places were licensed under the Toleration Act. Wesley, having consulted with his legal advisers regarding “that execrable act called the Conventicle Act”, now began tacitly to concede that Methodism was now a Dissenting denomination, yet still insisting that Methodism was a reform movement within Anglicanism. Charles, though deeply grieved, still loved his brother despite him having strayed from the true fold.

The capstone came four years after Wesley’s death, with the Plan of Pacification of 1795, when what had been tacitly conceded now became official.

In summary, John Wesley ultimately gravitated to the nonconformity of his mother Susannah and his grandfathers, but with Charles the High church conservatism of his father gained the ascendancy. Hence John was buried in the graveyard of the Wesley Chapel, but Charles was laid to rest in the churchyard of his parish church of Marylebone in central London.

Impact of the Revival

By the time of Wesley’s death in 1791 there were 77,000 members in his chapels around Britain and the Dominions, plus 313 preachers. Some modern historians have seized on this relatively small number to minimise the Revival’s impact. However, this is only a small part of the story:

1. This figure includes only members, but to become a full-standing member the requirements were very strict. Hence there were many more adherents: people much affected, but who for the time being did not actually commit to membership.

2. Such modern dismissals ignore the fact that a movement can have an influence out of all proportion to its numerical size. Just imagine some researcher 300 years hence investigating the influence of the “Green” movement in the late C20th and discounting its influence because actual membership of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth etc. numbered only about 50,000 in a population of 20 million!

3. The real situation, however, was that most of the many converts stayed within the Church of England, becoming the “Evangelical Party”. All of the revival leaders encouraged this, even insisted on it, and although the Dissenting churches picked up some of the converts, the large majority stayed on in the belief that what Whitefield, the Wesleys, and the others preached was authentic Anglicanism.

Such in brief is the story of the Revival, but its social impact in many aspects was profound. That is in part the story of William Wilberforce and his wok to abolish the slave trade and slave institution.