John Wesley and the History of Methodism — Unit 3: Georgia, the Moravians, and Aldersgate (1738)

Key Verse

"Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." (Romans 5:1, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

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

1. Explain why John Wesley went to Georgia in 1735 and describe what happened to him there.

2. Describe the influence of the Moravians on Wesley, including Peter Böhler.

3. Tell the story of Aldersgate Street on 24 May 1738 and the experience of assurance that Wesley described.

4. State the main ways historians and theologians interpret Aldersgate, and say how our tradition understands it.

5. Explain why Wesley later separated from the Moravians at Fetter Lane, and what this shows about his teaching.

The Voice of This Unit

This unit is written from inside the Wesleyan tradition, for Wesleyan students. We believe the events of 1738 were a turning point in the life of Wesley and a gift of God to the church. We also know that careful Christians and historians read Aldersgate in different ways. We state those readings fairly and then answer from Scripture and from Wesley's own teaching.

Why Georgia?

By 1735 John Wesley was thirty-two years old, a fellow of Lincoln College and the leader of the Holy Club. His father had died that spring. In the same year General James Oglethorpe, the founder of the colony of Georgia in North America, was looking for clergy. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, an Anglican missionary society, supported the work. Two aims were set before Wesley: to serve the English settlers as a minister, and to preach the gospel to the native peoples.

Wesley accepted. He sailed in October 1735 with his brother Charles, who went as secretary to Oglethorpe, and with two friends from the Holy Club, Benjamin Ingham and Charles Delamotte. The ship was called the Simmonds. The voyage lasted until early 1736, and in it Wesley met a people who would change his life.

The Moravians on the Ship

Among the passengers was a company of Moravians, German Christians who came out of the older Bohemian church of Jan Hus and who had been renewed in the 1720s on the estate of Count Zinzendorf. They were simple, humble people who prayed, sang and studied the Bible together, and they took the lowest jobs on board without complaint.

In January 1736 a great storm struck the ship. The waves broke over the deck and the English passengers were terrified. Wesley was afraid as well, and he was ashamed to find that he feared to die. The Moravians were singing in their service, without fear. Afterward Wesley asked one of them whether his women and children were not afraid. The answer was that they were not. Wesley saw a peace he did not have. "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18).

When Wesley reached Savannah, a Moravian pastor named August Spangenberg asked him some questions. Did he have the witness of God's Spirit within him? Did he know Jesus Christ? Wesley answered with words, but he later recognized that he had spoken without really knowing. He could not say that he had the assurance of salvation.

Wesley in Georgia

Wesley worked hard in Savannah. He held daily prayers, visited his people and taught the children. He studied German so that he could speak to the Moravians, and he translated some of their hymns. In 1737 he published a small hymn book, which was among the first used in the colonies. But the ministry did not go well.

Wesley held to strict high church practice. He refused to give communion to people who did not meet his standards and he insisted on baptism by immersion for infants. Many of the colonists found him rigid and unwelcoming. He also had little success with the native peoples. The ministry fell apart in the end because of a painful episode involving a young woman named Sophy Hopkey. When she married another man, Wesley turned her away from the Lord's Table, and her family took him to court. He left Georgia in December 1737 and reached England at the start of 1738.

Historians debate how to read this period. Some call it a failure, and in worldly terms it was. Others say it was a time of testing in which Wesley discovered his need. Wesley himself looked back and said that he had gone to America to convert others, but had not been converted himself. We hold that both are true. The mission failed, and the failure was one of the means God used to prepare him. "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word" (Psalm 119:67).

Peter Böhler and the Search for Faith

Back in London, Wesley met a young Moravian named Peter Böhler in February 1738. Böhler spoke with him often. He told Wesley that he needed faith, and that faith is given freely, in an instant, and brings with it forgiveness and a changed heart. Wesley objected. He turned to the Scriptures and the testimony of the early church, and found that Böhler was right. Wesley was also persuaded by the testimony of several living people who said they had been changed in a moment.

Böhler's counsel was practical. If Wesley did not yet have faith, he should keep preaching faith until he had it. Wesley followed this advice. He did not wait. He preached what he had not yet experienced and he continued to seek.

On 21 May 1738, the day of Pentecost, Charles Wesley, who had been ill, was brought to peace and assurance in a house in London. Three days later it was John's turn.

Aldersgate Street, 24 May 1738

On the morning of 24 May, Wesley opened his Bible and read passages that spoke of the promises of God, and in the afternoon he went to St. Paul's Cathedral to hear the anthem. In the evening he went, with some reluctance, to a society meeting on Aldersgate Street in London. There someone was reading from Martin Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans, which describes the change God works in the heart through faith in Christ.

At about a quarter before nine, while the reader was describing that change, Wesley felt, in his own words, that his heart was "strangely warmed." He wrote that he trusted in Christ, in Christ alone, for his salvation, and that he was given an assurance that Christ had taken away his sins, even his, and had saved him from the law of sin and death. This was the very heart of Böhler's teaching.

Notice what the account says. The center of it is not the warm feeling but the trust. The warmth was the effect, and the trust in Christ alone was the thing itself. "Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:1). The Spirit's witness completed it: "For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, 'Abba, Father.' The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God" (Romans 8:15-16).

Wesley's doubts did not vanish immediately. He wrote that the enemy attacked him that same night, and he prayed for those who had wronged him. He also learned that it is one thing to have peace and another to have constant joy. But a new confidence marked his life and preaching from then on.

Herrnhut and the Moravian Connection

In the summer of 1738 Wesley traveled to Germany and visited the Moravian community at Herrnhut. He met leaders, including Count Zinzendorf, and was impressed by their love for one another and their ordered common life. He returned to England in the autumn determined to preach faith in Christ to all.

Back in London he took part in a society at Fetter Lane that included Moravians and Anglicans. Wesley owed much to these friends. The idea of small groups meeting to confess faults and to pray owes much to them. But in 1740 he left the Fetter Lane society after a dispute. Some of the Moravian teachers at Fetter Lane said that new believers should be "still," that is, they should wait and refrain from the ordinary means of grace such as the Lord's Supper, prayer and Scripture reading until they had full faith. Wesley held that Christ commands these practices and that they are the way God meets those who seek Him. Wesley left with a group of followers, who met at the Foundery, a former cannon factory in London. This was the origin of the London Methodist society.

How Do We Read Aldersgate?

This is one of the best-known debates in Methodist history. It has several answers.

Aldersgate as conversion. Many Methodists have told the story as Wesley's conversion, the moment he became a Christian. This view is easy to understand and has been popular in sermons and hymns.

Aldersgate as assurance. Some historians point out that Wesley, long before, was a sincere believer and a priest, and that what he received on 24 May was assurance. In later years Wesley himself spoke of the difference between the faith of a servant of God and the faith of a son. In this reading he went from a servant's faith to a son's faith.

Aldersgate as the second blessing. Some writers in the Holiness movement have read it as entire sanctification. The difficulty is that Wesley described it in terms of faith and assurance and the forgiveness of sins, and he himself did not describe it as being made perfect in love.

Aldersgate as one step among many. The scholar Albert Outler and others have argued that Wesley's life was a long process in which Aldersgate was important but not the only moment. They note that Wesley himself rarely made it the center of his later teaching.

Our answer. We believe the best reading takes seriously what Wesley wrote and what he later said. Aldersgate was, at the least, the moment when Wesley received a full assurance that Christ had forgiven his sins. Whether we call that conversion or the moment of a servant becoming a son, we do not need to settle the argument to learn from it. Wesley's own teaching is plain: forgiveness and the Spirit's witness are for every believer. "These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life" (1 John 5:13). But we also say that Aldersgate was not meant to be a pattern with a fixed date and hour. Many Christians cannot name the day. What matters is that a person trusts Christ alone and knows the witness of the Spirit.

Objections and Answers

Objection 1: Wesley was already a Christian, so Methodism rests on a mistake.

Critics say that if Wesley was a believer before 1738, then his claim to have been saved then is false, and so the whole Methodist message is unsound.

Our answer. The Methodist message does not rest on a date in Wesley's life. It rests on Scripture. Wesley himself admitted that his understanding grew over time. He kept learning and sometimes corrected himself. What he found in 1738 was the truth of Romans, that we are accepted by faith in Christ alone and that God's Spirit gives us assurance of it. That truth stands whatever we say about the state of his soul before.

Objection 2: Assurance by the Spirit's witness leads to presumption or to dependence on feelings.

Reformed teachers hold that assurance comes mainly from believing the promises of Scripture and from seeing the fruit of the Spirit in one's life, and they fear that stress on inner witness feeds emotionalism.

Our answer. We agree with much of this. The promises of Scripture and the fruit of the Spirit are real tests, and Wesley used them. But Romans 8:16 speaks of the Spirit bearing witness with our spirit, and Wesley believed that the Spirit's witness and the fruit of the Spirit work together. A witness without fruit is not trusted, and fruit without a witness may leave a believer in fear.

Pastoral Application

A man in your congregation has attended church for forty years. After a Sunday service he says quietly, "Pastor, I do everything a Christian should, but I'm not sure I'm saved. I don't feel anything."

First, you do not rebuke him or give him a quick answer. Like Böhler with Wesley, you take him seriously.

Second, you read with him Romans 5:1 and 1 John 5:13 and show him that the promise is made to those who trust Christ.

Third, you tell him the story of Wesley, an earnest churchman who did not have assurance and who found peace when he trusted Christ alone. You ask him to trust Christ for himself.

Fourth, you tell him not to wait for a feeling. Faith comes first, and the witness of the Spirit follows. You offer to pray with him this week and to meet again.

Summary

In 1735 John Wesley sailed for Georgia with Charles, Ingham and Delamotte, and on the ship he saw the peace of the Moravians in a storm. His ministry in Savannah failed through rigid practice and the Sophy Hopkey affair, and he returned in early 1738 aware of his need. Peter Böhler taught him that saving faith is a gift received now, and Wesley sought it. On 24 May 1738, in a meeting on Aldersgate Street, while Luther's preface to Romans was read, he trusted Christ alone and felt his heart strangely warmed. Historians read this as conversion, as assurance, as a second blessing, or as one step among many. We hold that it brought Wesley a full assurance of forgiveness, which every believer may have, though no date is required of everyone. In 1740 Wesley left the Moravian society at Fetter Lane over the doctrine of stillness, and the Foundery became the home of London Methodism.

Further Reading

• John Wesley, The Journal of John Wesley, the volumes for 1735-1738.

• John Wesley, Sermons "The Witness of the Spirit" (two sermons), "Salvation by Faith" and "Justification by Faith."

• Martin Luther, Preface to the Epistle to the Romans.

• Charles Wesley, hymns, in A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists (1780).

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

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