The Elect Methodists , livre ebook

The Elect Methodists
The Elect Methodists
Calvinistic Methodism in England and Wales, 1735–1811
David Ceri Jones, Boyd Stanley Schlenther and Eryn Mant White
© David Ceri Jones, Boyd Stanley Schlenther and Eryn Mant White, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff CF10 4UP.
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British Library CIP Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-0-7083-2501-8 e-ISBN 978-1-78316-505-6
The rights of David Ceri Jones, Boyd Stanley Schlenther and Eryn Mant White to be identified as authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Cover image: from an engraving of George Whitefield, by John Greenwood, after Nathaniel Hone, 1769. The National Portrait Gallery, London.
For our Aberystwyth colleagues in History, Past and Present
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1 ‘A sweet prospect’ for the gospel: the origins of Calvinistic Methodism, 1735–1738
2 ‘A great pouring out of the Spirit’: the forging of a movement, 1739–1740
3 A n ‘outward settled agreement’: shaping a structure and a spirituality, 1741–1742
4 From high hopes to ‘miserable divisions’: the consolidation and splintering of Calvinistic Methodism, 1744–1750
5 ‘A leader is wanting’: lean years in Wales, 1750–1762, tentative years in England, 1750–1765
6 ‘I will once more shake the heavens’: a new revival for Wales, 1762–1779
7 ‘You are only going to a few simple souls’: new English Calvinistic groupings, at mid-century
8 ‘My Lady’s society’: the birth and growth of the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion, 1770–1791
9 ‘The Lord’s gift to the north’: the spread of the movement throughout Wales, 1780–1791
10 ‘A smooth and satisfactory order’: towards a new denomination for Wales and decline in England, 1791–1811
Conclusion
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Jacket Illustration:
Engraving of George Whitefield, by J. Woolaston, after Nathaniel Hone, 1769. The National Portrait Gallery, London.
1 Portrait of George Whitefield, by J. Woolaston, c .1742. The National Portrait Gallery, London.
2 Portrait of John Wesley, by N. Hone, c .1766. The National Portrait Gallery, London.
3 Engraving of John Cennick, by R. Purcell, 1754. The National Portrait Gallery, London.
4 Drawing of Howel Harris. From Gomer Roberts (ed.), Selected Trevecka Letters (1742–1747) (Caernarvon, 1956).
5 Miniature of Daniel Rowland, by R. Bowyer, 1790. The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.
6a Portrait of William Williams. From J. M. Jones and W. Morgan, Y Tadau Methodistaidd , vol. I (1895).
6b Painting of the first joint Association of English and Welsh Calvinistic Methodists, held at Watford, near Caerphilly, 5 and 6 January 1743, by Hugh Williams, 1912. The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.
7 Portrait of the Countess of Huntingdon, by J. Russell. The Cheshunt Foundation, Westminster College, Cambridge.
8 Engraving of Thomas Charles. From D. E. Jenkins, The Life of the Rev. Thomas Charles of Bala (2nd edition: 1910), vol. III : frontispiece.
Abbreviations Cheshunt Cheshunt Foundation, Westminster College, Cambridge CMA Calvinistic Methodist Archives (at NLW) Drew Drew University Library, Madison, New Jersey Duke Duke University Library, Durham, North Carolina JHSPCW Journal of the Historical Society of the Presbyterian Church of Wales (known also as The Journal of the Calvinistic Methodist Historical Society ). In Welsh: Cylchgrawn Cymdeithas Hanes y Methodistiaid Calfinaidd NLW National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth Rylands John Rylands University Library of Manchester SMU Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas
1. George Whitefield

2. John Wesley

3. John Cennick

4. Howel Harris

5. Daniel Rowland

6a. William Williams

6b. ‘Y Sasiwn Gyntaf’ [The First Association]

7. The countess of Huntingdon

8. Thomas Charles
Introduction
In common parlance, Methodism is Wesleyan Methodism, following the pattern and precepts laid down by the eighteenth-century Church of England clergyman John Wesley. Not only has his movement spread widely in the centuries since his death, but Wesleyan Methodism and its founder have received extensive, perhaps even disproportionate, academic treatment. 1 Beyond those interested in the history of religion, Methodism’s association with the rising artisan classes of the nineteenth century has provided a rich field for those pursuing sociological study. 2 Theologically, Wesley’s Methodism was frequently called Arminian’, since it followed the teachings of Jacobus Arminius, an early seventeenth-century Dutch theologian who stressed man’s free will in accepting or rejecting salvation. It was a theological position ideally suited to the optimistic spirit of the age, and to Wesley’s overriding desire to proclaim the gospel indiscriminately to all.
However, what we today refer to as Methodism and Methodist was in reality only a portion – albeit a substantial portion – of the eighteenth-century Methodist movement. Methodism was born in the mid-eighteenth-century evangelical revivals, a swath of religious awakenings that stretched from the eastern seaboard of the American colonies to many parts of the British Isles and extended as far to the east as Bohemia, Moravia and even Siberia. 3 They were revivals that cumulatively gave birth to a new religious movement, Evangelicalism. 4 English Wesleyan Methodism was merely one constituent element of this movement. In England, a numerically smaller section, which pre-dated Wesleyanism, was Calvinistic. Rooted firmly in the English Reformed Protestant tradition, this movement maintained a markedly different theological position to Wesley’s. The Calvinistic Methodists, the ‘elect’ Methodists, followed the teachings of John Calvin, the sixteenth-century Reformer, who in his desire to magnify God’s sovereignty laid great stress on the doctrine of divine predestination: that God had chosen, had ‘elected’, certain people for eternal salvation. As a rigid logician, Calvin went on to suppose that if God were all-supreme he also had chosen those who would experience eternal damnation. This aspect of the doctrine has been called ‘double predestination’ and was held by some, though not by any means all, Calvinistic Methodists during the eighteenth century.
Where Wesley’s movement grew rapidly in England and later throughout the English-speaking world, Calvinistic Methodism did not. Yet this probably had very little to do with theology. While Calvinistic Methodism showed some early signs of success in England, and was certainly a viable alternative to Wesleyanism for its first decade or so, its initial growth proved to be largely fleeting. The one area of real and sustained growth was in Wales, and the religious denomination ultimately formed there in 1811 was the only branch of ‘Methodism’ that has ever called itself ‘Calvinistic’. The English branch of the movement quickly became fragmented, the consequence of a whole host of factors, with the result that Calvinistic Methodists in England either formed their own religious networks (and there was a rich tapestry of these), morphed into evangelical Anglicans, or wound up in one or other of the various branches of more mainstream Nonconformist dissent.
Calvinistic Methodism, the smaller, almost forgotten, Methodist sibling, has received considerably less academic attention than Wesleyan Methodism. Much of the historical writing on it has been as fragmented as the movement itself, but there are a number of milestones that deserve attention. There has been perennial interest in the life and career of the English revivalist, George Whitefield, but much of this work has been hagiographical in nature. 5 It is only more recently that historians such as Harry Stout, Frank Lambert and Jerome Mahaffey have tried, with varying degrees of success, to understand Whitefield in his eighteenth-century context. 6 Unlike for Wesley, there has been no attempt to collate and edit Whitefield’s voluminous papers, including almost 2,500 items of correspondence. To date they are an under-utilised resource. However, they have much to add to our understanding of the mid-eighteenth-century British Atlantic world, and were they more readily available they would surely add further complexity to our understanding of early Methodism, and maybe even begin to tilt the balance away from the dominant Wesleyan narrative. So also, the countess of Huntingdon and her connexion has been the subject of renewed historical attention in recent times; significant biographical studies have appeared. 7 In addition, Edwin Welch’s edition of the minutes of Whitefield’s London headquarters, the Tabernacle, and the countess’s Spa Fields Chapel have done much to stimulate interest in the alternative Methodism of the Calvinists. 8 The later development of Calvinistic Methodism, especially following the rise to prominence of the countess of Huntingdon, has been painstakingly pieced together in Alan Harding’s The Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion: A Sect in Action in Eighteenth-Century England (2003). However, many of the smaller fringe networks that made up the wider Calvinistic Methodist movement during the often highly chaotic development of the eighteenth-century evangelical movement have yet to receive extended analysis. We hope that one of the virtues of our book will be its drawin