Wesley

WESLEY, Jolts, the founder of the Methodists (q.v.), was born at Epworth, in Lin. colnshire, England, June 17, 1703. The family name was variously spelled Wesley and Westley, and is supposed to be the same with Wellesley, and to be derived from a Place of that name near Wells. An Irish gentleman, Garrett Wellesley, esq., of Dun gannon. offered to make Charles Wesley, younger brother of John, his heir, on condi tion of his settling in Ireland, believing him to be of his own family. The offer was not accepted; and the estate of 3Ir. Wellesley went to another branch of the' family, which was soon raised to the Irish peerage, with the title of earl of Mornington, and from which the duke of Wellington and the marquis of Wellesley sprung. The more immediate progenitors of John Wesley were ministers of the church of England, of Puritan principles. Some of them suffered for non-conformity. Bartholomew Wesley, the great-grandfather of John, was ejected from his living by the act of uniformity in 1662. John Wesley, the son of Bartholomew, was also deprived of his living, and was often fined, and several times imprisoned for preaching contrary to the law. Samuel Wesley, a son of this John Wesley, conformed to the church of England, but opposed the schemes of James II., refusing to be bribed by offers of preferment, which, ou ac count of his erudition and talents, it was thought worth while to make to him. He sup ported the cause of the revolution, in circumstances of personal danger; and, in the beginning of the reign of William and Mary, was rewarded with the living of Epworth. He wrote an epic poem entitled The Life of Christ, and other similar works. He had a family of nineteen children. His wife Susannah Annesley, the daughter of an ejected minister, was a woman of remarkable intelligence and fervent piety, who devoted her self very much to the education, and particularly the religious education, of her cbil dren. His eldest son, Samuel, head-master of Tiverton school Devonshire, was a tory and high-churchman, who strongly ,disapproved of the " new faith" and peculiar course of his brothers John and Charles. John Wesley was the second son of Samuel, or the second who grew up to manhood. In his infancy he had a narrow escape from being burned to death, when the parsonage of Epworth was burned by some of the phr ishioners in their rage against their pastor for his faithful reproving of their vices. Another remarkable story is connected with the parsonage of Epworth, and with the early years of ,John Wesley's life—the continued disturbance of the family throughout a con siderable time, by loud knockings and other noises, which could not be accounted for, and which therefore were regarued as preternatural, although Mr. Wesley and his household were less affected by the strange visitation than perhaps its authors expected them to be, and persisted in residing in the parsonage, even making sport of Old Jef fery," their unseen visitant, who "was plainly a Jacobite goblin, and seldom suffered Mr. Wesley to pray for the king and the prince of Wales without disturbing the family prayers." John Wesley was a very diligent and successful student. The religious history of his college life belongs to the history of Methodism (q.v.). After much conscientious hesitation as to his motives and fitness for entering into the clerical profession, he was ordained deacon in 1725, and in 1726 he graduated as M.A., and was elected fellow of Lincoln college, Oxford. In the same year he was appointed Greek lecturer and mod erator of the classes. He became curate to his father at Wroote, a small living which Samuel Wesley held along with that of Epworth. and while serving here, he was advanced to priest's orders in 1728. He retuned to Oxford, and along with his younger brother, Charles, entered into those religious associations from which Methodism sprang. The intercourse of the brothers Wesley at this time with William Law, the author of the Serious Call, had a great influence on their opinions and conduct. They walked two or three times a year from Oxford to visit Law at his house near London. In 1735, John Wesley was induced to out to Georgia with general Oglethorpe, to preach to the Indians and colonists. His religious views at this time were strongly tinctured with asceticism. His intercourse with .Moravians, who were his fellow passengers to Amer Ica, and afterward his fellow-laborers in the colony, tended to stimulate his religious zeal. lie attempted to establish a discipline in the colony, very different from that of

the church of England at home, and failed in the attempt. The difficulties of his posi tion were increased by an affair in which he became involved with the daughter of the chief magistrate of Savannah, whom he wished to marry; but on the advice of the Moravian bishop and elders, to whom he submitted the matter, he withdrew from her, mid she very soon marrying another, Wesley refused her admission to the communion; upon which her husband raised an action at law, and Wesley, finding Savannah no suit able place for him, and, as he said, "shaking the dust off his feet," returned to England, having resided in America not quite two years. With religious zeal undiminished, lie nmiutained an intimate connection with the Moravians in London. On May 24, 1738, some months after his return to England, lie attended a meeting of a society in Alders gate street, where, while one was reading Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the Romans, he experienced such a change of religious feeling that, notwithstanding all his previous zeal, he ever afterward regarded this as the time of his conversion. " I felt my heart strangely warmed," he says; " I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death." Many who accept generally Wesley's views of conversion, doubt his opinion as to the hate of his own. After this he visited the Moravian brethren at Ilerrnhut in Germany, made the acquaintance of Zinzendorf, and was introduced to the prince royal of Prussia, afterward Frederick the great. Return ing to England, he became associated with his old college companion, Whitefield, and after his example began, in 1739, the practice of open-air preaching. From this time, lie history of Wesley's life becomes very much the history of Methodism. In 1740, he solemnly separated himself from the Moravians, finding that he differed from them in important points of doctrine; and in the same year the breach took place between Wltitefield and him, which divided the Methodists into two sections, Calvanistic and Arminian. Iu the evangelistic work which he carried on in England, and in organizing the Methodist body, Wesley was indefatigable. IIe seldom traveled less than forty miles a_day, usually on horseback, till near the close of his life, when he used a chaise. In 1752, he married a widow with four children, but the marriage proved an unhappy one, and a separation ensued. His health gradually declined during the last three years of his life, and after a short illness, he died in London, Mar. 2, 1791, in the 68th year of his age. His remains lay in state for several days in his chapel in the City road, dressed in the sacerdotal robes which he usually wore, with a Bible in his hand. Wesley was a voluminous writer. His writings are chiefly polemical and religious. His style in the pulpit was fluent, clear, and argumentative, not impassioned like Whitefield's; his countenance was mild and grave; and his manners agreeable, although lie exercised a :Try imperial domination over the preachers of the Methodist body. He was a man of great benevolence, and gave away all his living to the poor. Probably no man ever exerted so great an influence on the religious condition of the people of England as John Wesley, and his influence has extended to the most remote parts of the world.— CHARLES IVEsi,Ey, his younger brother, b. at Epworth, Dec. 18. 1708, was associated with him in the whole Methodist movement. Having studied at Christ church, Oxford, and visited Georgia at the same time with his brother, lie took an active part in the subsequent work in England. He was a clear and simple preacher, and a man of fervent piety, but of a disposition very far removed from asceticism. He is the author of a great number of hymns in use among the Methodists; some of which, however„ are among the best and most admired hymns in the English language, replete with pious feeling, and of lyrical power and sweetness almost unsurpassed.—See The Works of the Rev. John Wesley (10 vols. Load. 1809); Life of the Rev. John Wesley, A. M., by Dr. Coke and Mr. Moore (Loud. 1792);, The Life of Wesley, by Southey (2 vols. 1820; new ed. 1864); The Life and Times if Wesley, by Tyerrnan (1870); and John Wesley and the Evangelical Reaction, by Miss Wedgwood (1870).