II. A few special topics remain to be treated before we can get a satisfactory view of the career, infiueiice, and genius of Charles Wesley.
1. His Family. — On April 8, 1749, Charles Wesley was married to Sarah Gwynne, a Welsh lady of piety, refine- ment, and fortune. Of this happy marriage were born four sons and four daughters. Three oidy survived their father — Charles, Sarah, and Samuel. The two sons were musical prodigies. They gave concerts before the elite of London with great applause, and were shown marked favor by the royal family. The last days of their father's life were embittered by the perversion of his third son, Samuel, to the Church of Rome in 1785. This called forth from the old man one of the most touch- ing poems in the language, commencing " Farewell, my all of earthly hope." If the father had lived long enough, he would have seen his son leave the Koman Catholic Church in contempt and become her public antagonist. Mrs. Wesley survived her husband thirty-five years, and died Dec. 28, 1822, aged ninety -six years. Numerous descendants are living (see Stevenson, Pedigree of the Wesley Family from A.D. 938 to 1875, in Memorials of the Family).
2. His Character. — Although abrupt and singular in his manners, and with the utmost simplicity and frank- ness of mind, he had much warmth of affection and ten- derness of sympathy ; so that his friendship was felt to be of inestimable value. His views were ascetic. In him appeared " the true Reformer's fire, the fearless zeal, the utter self-renunciation, the contempt tor Avhat other men prize, the unworldly aspirations, the miracle-work- ing faith" (Bird, ut infra, p. 146). "The most remark- able feature of the poet's mind," continues the same writer, "was its subjectiveness. His vision was per- petually introverted ; he had no eyes for external objects, no interest in the things that other men care most for; he vvas all soul; spiritual ideas and facts were the world to him" (p. 151). He was powerful in his antipathies and tenacious of his peculiarities of opinion.
3. His Preaching and Scholarship. — His discourses were effusions of the heart rather than the offspring of the intellect or of the imagination. Of the ISible he was a diligent and enraptured student, and he imbued his sermons with its doctrines and language. To turn men from sin to Christ was the object of his preaching, and in those less artificial, slower, and perhaps more ig- norant days he did not hesitate to preach long — some- times two hours — if he thought good could be accom- plished thereby. With the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and French languages he was well acquainted, and he had studied Arabic. Horace and Virgil he loved, and often repeated from memory large portions of the yEneid. Jackson thinks that had he devoted himself to sacred literature, he would have taken high rank among the poets of Great Britain.
4. Ills Differences of Opinion with his Brother, and his Relation to Methodism. — Charles Wesley was an ar- dent Churchman (see his Postscript in John Wesley's Reasons against a Sepairition from the Church of Eng- land). He loved the Church as his own life; yet he thought he was not for that reason less a Methodist. Against the administration of the sacraments by the preachers he resolutely contended (see his letters quoted in his biographies). He also differed with his brother concerning the qualifications necessary for an itinerant preacher, and sometimes silenced those whom John had admitted. From the first he opposed his brother's or- daining the preachers ; he made no exceptions for Scot- land and America, although Dr. Rigg says he admitted his brother's right to ordain his preachers to administer. (Dr. Rigg gives no authority for that statement; there are facts which look, to saj' the least, the other way.) " He lived in hope, sometimes sanguine, more often des- perate and scarce surviving, that a bishop would be raised up to ordain the best of the preachers in the succes- sion, as they became ripe for ordination, to cures in the Church of England. He would thus have made Meth-
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odism a nursery for evangelical pastors and preachers in till- Clmrcli of Kngland, and an outwork ol'tlie Es- tablisliinent. lie was, however, himself practically even less of a Churchman than his brother, and his hopes of a bishop were continually disappointed. 'The bishops might, if thej' pleased,' he wrote to Latrobe, the Mora- vian minister, in 1785, ' save the largest and soundest part of them back into the Cluirch; perhaps to leaven the wliok- lump, as archhishop I'otter said to me. But I fear, however, betwixt you and me, their lordships care for none of these things. Still, I should hope, if God raised up but one primitive bishop, and commanded tlie porter to open the door"" (John 11. Kigg, Loiulon Qua?: Rev. [Wesleyan], No. LX, July, 18G8, p.' 302). Yet this same Churchman approved of lay preaching, separate meetings, and almost everything else that belonged to the earliest Methodism. He himself was the first to administer the Lord's supper to the separate societies. In fact, as Jackson well says, " there was a singular dis- crepancy between his theory of churchmanship and his conduct. For thirty years he made more noise on the subject of the contiiuied union of the Methodists with the Church than any man of tiie age; and all this time he was bevond comparison the greatest practical sepa- ratist in the whole connection. John Wesley spent most of his time travelling through Great Britain and Ireland, often preaching twice every day, and two or three times on the Sabbath. Rarely, however, did he preach in Church hours except when he officiated for a brother clergyman. . . . He attended the Church w^here he happened to be, and pressed the peo[)le to accompanj' him thither. ]Many of the itinerant preachers pursued the same course. . . . This was the recognised plan of Methodist practice. . . . But this was not the state of things in London under the administration of Charles Wesley. He preached twice during Church hours eve- ry Sabbath, and indulged the society with a weekly sacrament at their own places of worship. lie conduct- ed divine worship, indeed, according to the order of the Church of England, except that he used extemporary prayer and saug his own beautiful hymns; but he and the society had otherwise no more connection with the Established Church than any Dissenting minister and congregation had. He w^is under no episcopal control, the chapels were licensed by no bishop. . . . The countrj' societies wished in this respect to be on an equality with their metropolitan brethren, and they were never satis- fied until this was conceded to them" {Life of Chaiies Wesley, Lond. ed., ii, 404, 405). " Though Charles Wes- ley hardly ever went to Church, and was no more under the jurisdiction of a bishop than I am, yet he was so at- tached to the name of a Churchman that I heard him say he should bo afraid to meet his father's spirit in Paradise if he left the Church" ( Bradburn, ^?-e the Methodists Dissenters'? [Bristol, 1792]).