METHODISM AND PURITANISM.
Methodism forms the third great wave of the Evangelical Protestant movement in England, and represents the idea of revival. The Reformation destroyed the power of the papacy. Puritanism aimed at a more thorough Reformation in Church and State, and controlled for a time the civil and religious life of the nation. Methodism kept aloof from politics, and confined itself to the sphere of practical religion. Puritanism was animated by the genius of Calvinism; Methodism, in its main current, by the genius of Arminianism. Both made a deep and lasting impression upon the national Church from which they proceeded, and moulded the character of American Christianity. The Methodist revival checked the progress of skepticism and infidelity which had begun to set in with deism. It brought the life and light of the gospel to the most neglected classes of society.
If evangelical Christianity to-day has a stronger hold on the Anglo-Saxon race in both hemispheres than on any other nation, it is chiefly due to the influence of Puritanism and Methodism.
RELATION TO THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
Methodism is a daughter of the Church of England, and was nursed in the same University of Oxford which, a century later, gave rise to the Tractarian school in the opposite direction towards Rome. The 'Holy Club' of the fourteen Oxford students associated for prayer, holy living, and working, began, like Dr. Pusey and his friends, with a revival of earnest, ascetic, and ritualistic High-Churchism, and received the name 'Methodists' for its punctual and methodical habits of devotion. Wesley was at first so exclusive an Episcopalian that he shrank from street-preaching and lay-preaching, and, at least on one occasion, even rebaptized Dissenters. But his contact with the simple-hearted, trustful, and happy German Moravians (Peter Böhler, Nitschmann, and Spangenberg) whom he met on his voyage across the Atlantic, in the Colony of Georgia, and after his return, led to his second 'conversion,' which took place May 24, 1738, and imparted to his piety a cheerfully evangelical and, we may say, a liberal Broad-Church character. [1688]
He now entered upon his independent evangelistic career, yet with no idea of forming a separate denomination. His object was simply to revive experimental piety within the limits of the Anglican Church, as Spener and Francke had done before within the Lutheran Confession in Germany. Although badly treated by bishops and other clergy, he had no quarrel with the authorities in Church or State, but only with sin and Satan. His aim was to build the city of God and to save souls within the establishment, if possible; without it, if necessary. He performed indeed some uncanonical acts which led ultimately to secession, but he did it from necessity, not from choice. He never made common cause with Dissenters. He lived and died in the Church of his fathers. His brother Charles was even more conservative, and took great offense at his violation of the canons.
Had the Church of England been as wise and politic as the Church of Rome, she would have encouraged and utilized the great revival of the eighteenth century for the spread of vital Christianity at home and abroad, and might have made the Wesleyan society an advocate of her own interests as powerful as the order of the Jesuits is of the Papacy. Now, after a century of marvelous success, the founder of Methodism is better appreciated, and has been assigned (1876) a place of honor among England's mighty dead in Westminster Abbey.
The English Wesleyans continue to hold a middle position between the Established Church and the Dissenters proper, but tend latterly more to Free-Churchism.
AMERICAN METHODISM.
In the United States the Methodists were made an independent organization with an episcopal form of government by Wesley's own act. As a Tory and a believer in political non-resistance, he at first wrote against the American 'rebellion,' but accepted the providential result; and, considering himself as a 'Scriptural Episcopos,' he ordained, on the second day of September, 1784, two presbyters (Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey) and one superintendent or bishop, viz., the Rev. Thomas Coke, LL.D. (a presbyter of the Church of England), for his American mission, which then embraced 83 traveling preachers and 14,988 members. [1689] This was a bold and an irregular act, but a master-stroke of policy, justified by necessity and abundant success. [1690]
Bishop Coke, assisted by the Rev. P. W. Otterbein, of the German Reformed Church, ordained, according to Wesley's direction, Francis Asbury to the office of joint superintendent, and twelve others to the office of presbyters, at the first General Conference held in Baltimore (Dec. 27, 1784). These were the first Protestant bishops in America, with the exception of Dr. Samuel Seabury, who was consecrated a few weeks before (Nov. 14, 1784), at Aberdeen, as bishop of the Protestant Episcopal diocese in Connecticut. [1691] In a short time the society, thus fully organized, overtook older denominations, and kept pace with the rapid progress of the young republic.
The separation from the mother Church of England was complete, but her blood still flows in the veins of Methodism and shows itself in a half-way assent to her doctrinal standards (as far as they admit of an Arminian interpretation), to her liturgy (as far as it does not encourage sacerdotalism and ritualism or interfere with the freedom of worship), and to her episcopacy (as based upon expediency, and not on the divine right of succession).