(Charles Wesley died 29 March 1788. John Wesley died 2 March 1791.
Because Chad is remembered on 2 March, the Wesleys are remembered on
3 March.)

The Wesley brothers, born in 1703 and 1707, were leaders of the
evangelical revival in the Church of England in the eighteenth
century. They both attended Oxford University, and there they
gathered a few friends with whom they undertook a strict adherence
to the worship and discipline of the Book of Common Prayer, from
which strict observance they received the nickname, “Methodists.”
Having been ordained, they went to the American colony of Georgia in
1735, John as a missionary and Charles as secretary to Governor
Oglethorpe. They found the experience disheartening, and returned
home in a few years. There, three days apart, they underwent a
conversion experience. John, present with a group of Moravians who
were reading Martin Luther’s PREFACE TO THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS,
received a strong emotional awareness of the love of Christ
displayed in freely forgiving his sins and granting him eternal
life.

Following this experience, John and Charles, with others, set about
to stir up in others a like awareness of and response to the saving
love of God. Of the two, John was the more powerful preacher, and
averaged 8000 miles of travel a year, mostly on horseback. At the
time of his death he was probably the best known and best loved man
in England.

(Albert C. Outler, JOHN WESLEY’S SERMONS: An Introduction, p 79f)

Wesley’s biblical world was, however, no enclave. Sola
Scriptura was never a displacement of, or substitute for,
classical learning: and this was natural enough in view of the
fact that he had mastered the baseline curriculum of his Oxford
education and had come to cherish the classical tradition as
the font of Western civilization.

In the sermons (and elsewhere, too) Wesley’s favourite
classical source was Horace; there are twenty-seven quotations
from him in the sermons alone, some repeated in different
contexts. One sense that he read Virgil with more personal
pleasure, but he quotes from him only twenty-one times. Ovid
follows with ten, Circero with nine, Juvenal with seven.
Thirteen others are quoted at least once: Aristophanes,
Hadrian, Homer, Lucan, Lucretius, Persius, Pindar, Sophocles,
Suetonius, Symmachus, Terence, Velleius Paterculus.

This display was more than mere ornamentation; (My comment:
this would have violated Wesley’s doctrine of ‘plain
preaching’.) within these borrowings we find the germs of some
of Wesley’s most distinctive general ideas (e.g. his
participation theme, his mind-body dualism, and his ideas about
psycho-physical parallelism). These are major sources for his
ideas about human nature, human volition, and the human
passions. Out of this heritage had come his predilection for
form over raw feelings, his concept of conscience as a
universal moral sense. Plato had bolstered his convictions
about the ontological primacy of good over evil. The whole of
the Greco-Roman tradition had stressed coherence as a criterion
of rationality. Besides, these ancient authors were shrewd
critics of human folly; thus Wesley found in them discerning
witnesses to the flaws in contemporary proposals about
‘natural’ theology and ethics. It was in this sense that his
long dialogue with the ancients was a genuine preparatio
evangelica; one might even suppose that he might still commend
it as such.

But, although Wesley found it natural to approach the Gospel with
habits of thought formed by a classical education, he was quick to
recognize the value of other approaches. The early Methodist
meetings were often led by lay preachers with very limited
education. On one occasion, such a preacher took as his text Luke
19:21, “Lord, I feared thee, because thou art an austere man.” Not
knowing the word “austere,” he thought that the text spoke of “an
oyster man.” He spoke about the work of those who retrieve oysters
from the sea-bed. The diver plunges down from the surface, cut off
from his natural environment, into bone-chilling water. He gropes
in the dark, cutting his hands on the sharp edges of the shells. Now
he has the oyster, and kicks back up to the surface, up to the
warmth and light and air, clutching in his torn and bleeding hands
the object of his search. So Christ descended from the glory of
heaven into the squalor of earth, into sinful human society, in
order to retrieve humans and bring them back up with Him to the
glory of heaven, His torn and bleeding hands a sign of the value He
has placed on the object of His quest. Twelve men were converted
that evening. Afterwards, someone complained to Wesley about the
inappropriateness of allowing preachers who were too ignorant to
know the meaning of the texts they were preaching on. Wesley,
simply said, “Never mind, the Lord got a dozen oysters tonight.”

Charles was the better hymn-writer of the two. He wrote over 6000
hymns, including about 600 for the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.
Some of the better known are the following:

A charge to keep I have
And can it be that I should gain
Author of life divine
Christ the Lord is risen today
Christ, whose glory fills the skies
Come, Holy Ghost, our hearts inspire
Come, O Thou Traveller unknown
Come, thou long expected Jesus
Forth in Thy name, O Lord, I go
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild
Hail the day that sees Him rise
Hark, the herald angels sing,
Jesus, Lover of my soul
Let saints on earth in concert sing
Lo, He comes with clouds descending
Love Divine, all loves excelling
O Jesus, full of pardoning grace
O Love Divine, how sweet Thou art!
O Thou who camest from above.
Oh for a heart to praise my God
Oh for a thousand tongues to sing
Our Lord is risen from the dead
Rejoice! the Lord is King
Soldiers of Christ, arise!
Ye servants of God, your Master proclaim

Here are two of his hymns printed out at length:

Oh for a thousand tongues to sing
my great Redeemer’s praise,
the glories of my God and King,
the triumphs of his grace!

My gracious Master and my God,
assist me to proclaim,
to spread through all the earth abroad
the honors of thy name.

Jesus! the name that charms our fears,
that bids our sorrows cease;
’tis music in the sinner’s ears,
’tis life, and health, and peace.

He breaks the power of canceled sin,
he sets the prisoner free;
his blood can make the foulest clean;
his blood availed for me.

He speaks, and listening to his voice,
new life the dead receive;
the mournful, broken hearts rejoice,
the humble poor believe.

In Christ, your head, you then shall know,
shall feel your sins forgiven,
anticipate your heaven below,
and own that love in heaven.

[NOTE that in the second line of this next hymn, the word “interest”
is used in the older sense of “benefit” or “advantage.” (Thus, in
some contest, an UNinterested person is one who is bored by the
proceedings, but a DISinterested person is one who has nothing to
gain or lose personally by the outcome. We want a referee or judge
to be DISinterested, but not to be UNinterested. The word
“interested” is ambiguous, being the opposite of both.) Instead of
“an interest in” in the second line, an editor seeking to modernize
the language of this hymn might write “my healing from” or
“redemption from” or “salvation from” or “a cleansing from” or the
like.]

And can it be that I should gain
an interest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain–
for me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! how can it be
that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

‘Tis mystery all! Th’ Immortal dies:
Who can explore His strange design?
In vain the first-born seraph tries
to sound the depths of love divine.
‘Tis mercy all! let earth adore,
let angel minds inquire no more.

He left His Father’s throne above,–
so free, so infinite His grace–
emptied Himself of all but love,
and bled for Adam’s helpless race:
‘Tis mercy all, immense and free;
for, O my God, it found out me!

Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray,–
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
my chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in Him, is mine!
Alive in Him, my living Head,
and clothed in righteousness divine,
Bold I approach the eternal throne,
and claim the crown, thorugh Christ my own.

It was the intention of the Wesleys and their colleagues that their
“Methodist Societies” should be a group within the existing
structure of the Anglican Church, but after their deaths the
Societies in America, and to a lesser extent in England, developed a
separate status.

PRAYER (traditional language):
Lord God, who didst inspire thy servants John and Charles Wesley
with burning zeal for the sanctification of souls, and didst
endow them with eloquence in speech and song: Kindle in thy
Church, we beseech thee, such fervor, that those whose faith
has cooled may be warmed, and those who have not known thy
Christ may turn to him and be saved; who liveth and reigneth
with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

PRAYER (contemporary language):
Lord God, who inspired your servants John and Charles Wesley
with burning zeal for the sanctification of souls, and endowed
them with eloquence in speech and song: Kindle in your Church,
we entreat you, such fervor, that those whose faith has cooled
may be warmed, and those who have not known Christ may turn to
him and be saved; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy
Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Psalm 98 1-4(5-10) or 103:1-4,13-18
Isaiah 49:5-6
Luke 9:2-6 (Pen)

+ For information, visit <http://elvis.rowan.edu/~kilroy/JEK/>