John Wesley and the History of Methodism — Unit 2: Epworth and Oxford: The Wesley Family and the Holy Club

Key Verse

"and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus." (2 Timothy 3:15, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Describe the Wesley family at Epworth and the part played by Samuel and Susanna Wesley in John's early life.

2. Explain Susanna Wesley's method of teaching her children and the meetings she held in her kitchen in 1712.

3. Trace John Wesley's path from Epworth through school and Oxford to ordination and the Holy Club.

4. Name the practices of the Holy Club and its main members, and explain how they were received.

5. State fairly the debate about whether the Holy Club was a true beginning of Methodism or a stage of seeking, and give the Wesleyan answer.

The Voice of This Unit

This unit is written from inside the Wesleyan tradition for Wesleyan students. We honor the Wesley family as a gift of God to the church, and we also tell the truth about them. The family was godly, poor, gifted and often in conflict. Historians have written about them with admiration and with criticism. We state both and give our answer, remembering that Scripture alone is our final rule.

The Rectory at Epworth

Epworth is a small market town in Lincolnshire, in the east of England. John Wesley's father, Samuel Wesley, became its rector in 1695. He was a priest of the Church of England, a scholar and a writer of verse. His wife, Susanna, was the daughter of a well-known Nonconformist minister, and she had chosen for herself to join the Church of England. The two were strong-willed people of deep faith.

Life at the rectory was hard. Samuel's income was small, and the family was always short of money. At one time Samuel was put in prison for debt. Susanna bore nineteen children, and about ten of them lived beyond infancy. Among the survivors were John, born in 1703, and Charles, born in 1707. The rectory was crowded, noisy and poor, and it was also a house of prayer and learning.

Their parish was not easy. Some of the people of Epworth disliked their rector and treated the family harshly. Because of this, John grew up knowing what it is to serve in a hard place. Many of you know the same thing.

Susanna Wesley and the Teaching of the Children

Susanna taught her children herself. She did not leave their education to chance. When a child reached the age of five, she began lessons with him in a fixed schedule of hours, and she taught the children to read before anything else. Their first great textbook was the Bible. She also set a regular time for each child to talk with her privately about his soul. She wanted each one to learn to obey, to pray and to love God from his earliest years.

The key verse for this unit reminds us of Timothy, who knew the Holy Scriptures from childhood through his mother and his grandmother (2 Timothy 1:5). Scripture speaks also of the duty of parents: "And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up" (Deuteronomy 6:7). Susanna took this duty seriously. John later looked back on his mother as a teacher of the faith, and Methodists have honored her as "the mother of Methodism" ever since.

The kitchen meetings of 1712

In 1712 Samuel was away in London for many months, and a young curate took the Sunday services at Epworth. Susanna led prayers with her own children in the rectory on Sunday evenings. Neighbors asked to join, and soon a large number of people were coming. She read sermons and prayed with them, because the services in the church were not feeding the people.

The curate complained to Samuel, and Samuel wrote to ask her to stop. Susanna answered with reasons. She said that the meetings were doing good, and that she did not wish to stop unless he gave a plain command. This episode is often cited, for it shows an early case of what later became Methodist practice: ordinary lay people, including women, gathering for prayer and Scripture to meet a need the regular services did not meet.

Historians and Susanna

Historians have asked how much weight to give to Susanna. Some writers in the past made her almost a saint and gave her credit for everything in Methodism. Other writers have said that her methods were rigid and cold, and that the picture of a perfect household has been overdrawn. The facts are limited. We have her letters, some of her writings, and later accounts. Our answer is balanced. Susanna was a real woman, with strengths and faults. The evidence shows that she gave her children a deep knowledge of Scripture, a habit of order and a concern for the soul. We do not need to make her perfect to thank God for her.

The Fire of 1709

In February 1709 the rectory at Epworth burned. The children were hurried out into the night. Five-year-old John was left behind in an upper room until a neighbor stood on another man's shoulders and pulled him from the window just before the roof fell in. He never forgot it. Years later he called himself a "brand plucked from the burning," a phrase from Scripture (Zechariah 3:2; Amos 4:11). He believed that God had spared him for a purpose. Whether or not we read this event as Wesley did, we may certainly say that God used it to shape a man who gave his life to rescue others from the fire of sin.

From Epworth to Oxford

John was sent to the Charterhouse school in London in 1714. In 1720 he entered Christ Church, Oxford. He received his first degree in 1724, was ordained a deacon in the Church of England in 1725, and in 1726 was elected a fellow of Lincoln College, which gave him a home and income at the university. He took his master's degree in 1727. For a time he helped his father by serving as a curate at Wroot, near Epworth. He was ordained a priest in 1728, and in 1729 he returned to Oxford to take up his duties as a fellow.

During these years Wesley was a serious young man, hungry for God. Three books affected him greatly. The first was Holy Living and Holy Dying by Jeremy Taylor, which taught him to give every part of his life to God. The second was The Imitation of Christ, attributed to Thomas à Kempis, which pointed him to a heart wholly given to God. The third was William Law's work on Christian perfection and the devout life. From these writers Wesley learned that God desires the whole heart and all of life. This became a lifelong theme, though in his early years he did not yet fully understand how such holiness is received by faith.

The Holy Club

While John was away at Wroot, his younger brother Charles entered Oxford and began to meet with a few fellow students. They agreed to study, to pray, and to live by a rule. When John came back in 1729, he joined them, and because of his age and his gifts he soon became their leader. Others in the group included William Morgan and Robert Kirkham. A few years later Benjamin Ingham, James Hervey and George Whitefield joined them as well. Whitefield will be an important figure in Unit 5.

The group's practices were these:

• They took the Lord's Supper every week, which was unusual at the time.

• They fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays, as some early Christians had done.

• They studied the Greek New Testament and other devotional books together.

• They set aside fixed hours for prayer and kept careful records of how they spent their days.

• They visited the prisoners in the Oxford jail, the sick, and the poor, and they taught poor children to read.

• They gave away money, sometimes much of what they had.

Fellow students laughed at them and used the nicknames "Holy Club" and "Methodists," as we saw in Unit 1. Wesley accepted the work for what it was: a serious attempt to live out the faith. The ministry among prisoners and the poor shows that from the start his concern for holiness included love of neighbor. "Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world" (James 1:27).

The Debate: A Beginning or a Stage of Seeking?

This is the main question historians ask about Oxford. Was the Holy Club the true beginning of Methodism? Or was it only a stage in which Wesley, a sincere man, was trying to earn his way to God?

One view says that the Holy Club was the seed of everything that followed. The weekly small meeting, the visits to the poor, the discipline of time, the love of the Lord's Supper and the study of Scripture all show up again in the societies, classes and bands. On this reading, Methodism began at Oxford.

The other view is that of Wesley himself in later years. He looked back and said that in those days he was trying to be accepted by God through his own effort and strict living. He was serving God, he said, but he did not yet have the peace of a child of God. Some critics today go further and say that the Holy Club shows Methodism to be a religion of works.

Our answer. We think that both parts of the truth must be held together. The Holy Club was a real beginning. God used it to give Wesley a love for the Bible, for the sacrament, for the poor and for holiness, and we thank Him for it. But it was not yet the full gospel, and Wesley himself said so. Salvation does not come by doing. "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works" (Ephesians 2:8-9). Wesley had to learn at Aldersgate what the book of Romans teaches: that we are justified by faith. This is the subject of Unit 3.

Yet we must not swing to the opposite error. The disciplines of the Holy Club were good in themselves. Scripture says, "faith without works is dead also" (James 2:26). Wesley later called such practices "means of grace," ways in which God meets those who seek Him. The error at Oxford was not that Wesley prayed, fasted and served the poor. The error was trusting these actions as the ground of his acceptance, rather than the finished work of Christ. A true Wesleyan holds both: we are saved by grace through faith alone, and a saved person will give himself to prayer, to Scripture, to the Supper and to the poor.

What This Unit Teaches Pastors

Three lessons stand out.

First, the home is the first school of faith. Susanna had little money and no formal office, yet she shaped the man who shaped a movement. The first pulpit in a family is the kitchen table.

Second, God uses ordinary people and small groups. Wesley did not begin with a crowd. He began with a few students who agreed to take God seriously.

Third, discipline and grace belong together. We must teach habits of prayer and obedience, and we must teach clearly that they do not earn our salvation.

Pastoral Application

A mother in your congregation is raising four children alone. She works long hours and is tired. One Sunday she tells you, "I feel useless in the church. I cannot teach a class or lead a group. I barely have time to pray."

First, you listen without hurrying her. She is carrying a heavy load, and she needs to hear that it is seen.

Second, you tell her of Susanna Wesley, who also had little money and a crowded house. Her teaching of her children was not a small thing, and God used it greatly.

Third, you help her to choose one simple habit for her family: a short Scripture reading and prayer at the same time each day, perhaps at the evening meal.

Fourth, you invite her to share it with one neighbor or another mother. Like the kitchen meeting at Epworth, a small gathering in a home may become a means of grace for others. You assure her that her place in the church is not measured by what she does for the church, but by the grace she has received.

Summary

John Wesley was born at Epworth in 1703 to Samuel, an Anglican rector, and Susanna, who taught her children at home, set a regular hour to speak with each about his soul, and in 1712 led prayer and Scripture reading in her kitchen. John survived the rectory fire of 1709 and later called himself a brand plucked from the burning. He attended Charterhouse and Christ Church, Oxford, was ordained a deacon in 1725 and a priest in 1728, and became a fellow of Lincoln College. Influenced by Taylor, à Kempis and Law, he led the Holy Club that Charles had begun, whose members took weekly communion, fasted, studied Scripture and visited prisoners and the poor. They were mocked as Methodists. Historians ask whether this was the true beginning of Methodism or only a stage of seeking. We answer that it was a real beginning, which gave Wesley a love of holiness and service, but that Wesley had still to learn salvation by faith alone. Disciplines are means of grace, not the ground of our acceptance.

Further Reading

• John Wesley, The Journal of John Wesley, the early volumes.

• John Wesley, Sermon "The Means of Grace."

• John Wesley, Sermon "Salvation by Faith" (1738).

• Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living and Holy Dying.

• Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ.

• William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728).

• Holiness Through the Ages (Coleman, Danielson and Parry), the CTS textbook.

Submit Exam & Check Pass Reset