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the hymnnist of Methodism, and one of “the sweet singers in Israel,” was celebrated also as a preacher and a coadjutor of his brother John in the great evangelical and ecclesiastical movement of their lives and times.
I. Life. — Charles Wesley was born at the parsonage, Epworth, Lincolnshire, Dec. 18, 1707, being the eighteenth child and the youngest son of Rev. Samuel Wesley. (All the biographers. except one give the date as Dec. 18, 1708; the latest, Mr. Geo. J. Stevenson, says that the information now at hand places the date a year earlier. See Memorials of the Wesley Family [Lond. 1876], p. 385). When five years of age he entered his mother's school, where began that systematic course of mental discipline which laid the groundwork of his after success in academic pursuits. At eight he was enrolled at Westminster School, where his brother Samuel was usher — elegant scholar, and who imbued his little charge with his own High-Church notions. Here he became a friend of a Scotch lad, James Murray, afterwards the celebrated lord Mansfield.
Young Charles made such progress in his studies that in 1721 he was admitted one of the king's scholars, his expenses being thus henceforth borne by the Foundation. The biographers think it doubtful whether religion would ever have had the services of the great hymnist, or the State those of the administrator of India and the hero of Waterloo, if the student at Westminster had accepted an heirship to the estates of Garrett Wesley, Esq., member of Parliament for the County of Meath, at this time (about 1726) pressed upon him by his landed relative. In 1726 he was elected to Christ Church College, Oxford, an institution which his brother John had left a little before. Here he and a few friends became so diligent in study, serious in manner, and observed with such strictness the method of study and practice laid down in the statutes of the university, that they won for themselves an epithet first applied to a college of physicians in Rome in the time of Nero, and soon the little band was known by a word that has now in a large measure lost its opprobrious note — Methodist. At the age of twenty-one Charles took his A.B. degree, and became tutor in the college. In November, 1729, the “Methodists” were joined by John Wesley, and through insult and ridicule pursued their devotional and self-denying labors.
The brothers remained at the university until the death of their father, in April, 1735. Having been persuaded to accompany John on the mission to Georgia, primarily as secretary to the managing committee of the colony and private secretary to general Oglethorpe, its founder, Charles, at the instance of Dr. Burton, was ordained deacon in Oxford by Dr. John Potter, bishop of that city, and on the following Sunday he was ordained priest in the metropolis by Dr. Gibson, bishop of London (autumn of 1735). The ship Symmonds sailed up the Savannah Feb. 5, 1736. It is needless to treat the reader with an account of the mishaps, privations, trials, and persecutions which befell our subject in this country. He can read it in Charles Wesley's Journal and Life. Suffice it to say that diligently and conscientiously he endured hardship as a good soldier while stationed at Frederica. On the 11th of August, 1736, Charles Wesley, sick and disappointed, embarked for England. The vessel was compelled to put into Boston, here, under kind and hospitable treatment, he quite filly recovered, so as to be able to preach frequently in King's Chapel. On Dec. 3, 1736, he arrived at Deal. England. By the desire of the University of Oxford, Charles Wesley was requested to present their address to the king, which he did at Hampton Court, Aug. 29, 1737. He was graciously received, and dined with the royal household.
In February, 1738, the brothers Wesley were introduced to Peter Bohler, the Moravian. On the 20th, Charles began to instruct his friend in English, and Peter in return taught him the plan of salvation by faith. It was on Whitsunday, May 21, 1738, his heart having been prepared by sickness, that this devout and laborious priest of the Church of England obtained the sense of pardon and adoption. It was just a week before his brother received the same blessing. Henceforth, what had been a labor of conscience and duty was to be one also of joy and love. Heat once commenced addressing small audiences in the houses of friends, having sometimes as a devout hearer Robert Ainsworth, author of the Latin Dictionary. He was soon appointed curate of St. Mary's, Islington, London, which was the only preferment Charles Wesley ever had in the: Church of England, although to the end of his long lifeline of her firmest adherents. His faithful ministry speedily procured his dismissal. “He was literally,” says Dr. Adams, expelled by violence, and that violence received the sanction of the diocesan” (The Poet Preacher, p. 67). In June, 1739, he was summoned to appear before the archbishop of Canterbury to answer the charge of preaching in churches to which he had no canonical appointment.
The learned prelate angrily dismissed the youthful preacher, and forbade the clergy to permit the Wesleys to preach in their churches. On the Sunday after Dr. Potter's interdiction, Charles Wesley preached to ten thousand people in Moorfields from the words “Come unto me, all ye that travail,” etc. Henceforth this ardents Churchman, contrary to all the traditions of his training and life, baptized with the spirit of consecration, entered upon that work which, under Wesley and Whitefield, and Cownley and Hopper, was to stir through and through the rotten society and dead churches of England from Land's End to the Tweed. From this time until 1756, Charles Wesley itinerated throughout England and Vales, in delicate health, and amid-bodily infirmities, but with a zeal which hardships never abated, and with a courage which opposition never, quelled. Charles Wesley was no muscular, iron-hearted Cromwell; his spirit was gentle, his sensibilities tender; yet, near to martyrdom, he over and over again faced mobs and held his ground “until his clothes were torn to tatters and the blood ran down his face in streams” (Daniels, Ill. Hist. of Meth. p. 326). For the thrilling but sickening details of these adventures, see his biographers and the history of the early Methodist movement.
After 1756, it appears, according to Jackson) that Charles Wesley ceased the active itinerant life. His labors now became chiefly confined to London and Bristol, with visits to intermediate and surrounding places. The reasons for this change were, his marriage, the cares and attractions of domestic life and the fact that, differing so widely from his brother in points of Church order, he could not regulate the affairs of the societies satisfactorily to all concerned as the preachers and members almost invariably agreed with John.). He therefore thought it best to leave the oversight with John, whose unrivalled administrative ability he could not fail to see, in fact acknowledged. (See Jackson, Life of C. Wesley, N. Y. ed., p. 548). “The effect of his retirement from the itinerancy was the reverse of favorable, so far as he was personally concerned. His mind was naturally inclined to view-things in a gloomy aspect, but amid the excitement, the change, the toil of all itinerant ministry, he had no time to be melancholy.... The manifest success which attended his preaching filled him with unutterable gratitude; — and while all his powers were engaged in this work, he enjoyed a heaven upon earth. When he ceased to travel, he was at leisure to cherish his painful forebodings; croakers and busybodies tormented-him with letters complaining of the ambition of the preachers, and of the alienation of the people from the Church; and the pernicious leaven of mysticism which he had imbibed at Oxford, and from which his mind had never been ‘thoroughly purged, regained its ascendancy over him so as often to interfere with his spiritual enjoyments yet his piety and integrity of purpose were unimpeachable.
Often was he in agonies of fear lest the Methodists should leave the Church when he and his brother were dead, while John was as happy as an angel, flying through the three kingdoms, sounding the trumpet of the world's jubilee and joyfully witnessing every successive year the steady advancement of the work of God” (Jackson, ut sup., p. 549) he still remained with the Methodists, and still threw off his matchless hymns. In 1771-72 he finally removed to. London. In 1777 he frequently visited the unfortunate Dr. Dodd, condemned to die for forgery, and from his pen came A Prayer for Dodd under Condemnation. In 1780, in age and feebleness, he attended at Bristol his last Conference. Gradually he weakened until he quietly passed away at No. l Chesterfield Street, London, March 29, 1788. His body rests in the old Marylebone church- yard.
II. A few special topics remain to be treated before we can get a satisfactory view of the career, influence, and genius of Charles Wesley.
1. His Family. — On April 8, 1749, Charles Wesley was married to Sarah Gwynne, a Welsh lady of piety, refinement, and fortune. Of this happy marriage were born four sons and four daughters. Three only 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 touching 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 Roman 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. is Character. — Although abrupt and singular in his manners, and with the utmost simplicity and frankness of mind, he had much warmth of affection and tenderness 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 for what othermen prize, the unworldly aspirations, the miracle-working 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 perpetually introverted; he had no eyes for external objects, no interest in the things that other men care most for; he was 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 Bible 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 ignorant days he did, not hesitate to preach long sometimes two hours if he thought good could be accomplished 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 Eneid. Jackson thinks that had he devoted, himself to sacred literature, he would haven taken high rank among the poets of Great Britain.
4. His Differences of Opinion with his Brother, and his Relation to Methodism. — Charles Wesley was an ardent Churchman (see his Postscript in John Wesley's Reasons against a Separation from the Church of England). 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 ordaining the preachers he made no exceptions for Scotland and America, although Dr. Rigg says he admitted his brother's right to ordain his preachers to administer. (Dr. Rigg gives non authority for that statement; there are facts which look, to say the least, the other way.) “He lived in hope, sometimes sanguine, more often desperate and scarce surviving, that a bishop would be raised up to ordain the best of the preachers in-the succession, as they became ripe for ordination, to cures in the Church of England.
He would thus have made Methodism a nursery for evangelical pastors and preachers in the Church of England, ands an outwork (if the Establishment. He 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 they pleased,” he wrote to Latrobe, the Moravian minister, in 1785, “save the largest and soundest part of them back into the Church; perhaps to leaven the whole lump, as archbishop Potter 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 the porter to open the door” (John H. Rigg, London. Qua. Rev. [Wesleyan], No. LX, July, 1868, 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 discrepancy between his theory of churchmanship and his conduct. For thirty years he made more noise on the subject of the continued union of the Methodists with the Church than any man of the age; and all this time he was beyond comparison the greatest practical separatist in the whole connection.
John Wesley spent most of his time traveling 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 where he happened to be, and pressed the people to accompany him thither. Many of the itinerant preachers pursued the same course.... This was the recognized 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 every Sabbath, and indulged the society with a weekly sacrament at their own places of worship. He conducted divine worship, indeed, according to the order of the Church of England, except that he used extemporary prayer and sang 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 was under no episcopal control, the chapels were licensed by no bishop.... The country societies wished in this respect to be on an equality with their metropolitan brethren, and they were never satisfied until this was conceded to them” (Life of Charles Wesley, Lond. ed., 2, 404, 405). Though Charles Wesley hardly ever went to Church, and was no more under the jurisdiction of a bishop than I am, yet he was so attached to the name of a Churchman that I heard him say he should be afraid to meet his father's spirit in Paradise if he left the Church” (Bradburn, Are the Methodists Dissenters? [Bristol, 1792]).
Charles lacked the breadth of view, the practical cast of mind, the wisdom, of his brother; and in measures of Church administration his influence over the latter was slight. Perhaps the remark of Dr. Stevens is justified: “Had the leadership of Methodism early devolved upon him by the death of his brother, as was at one time likely, it would probably have been either extinct to-day, or hardly distinguishable as a special religious agency in the world” (Hist. of Methodism, 2, 275). It was as a hymnist his influence over Methodism was so great and so blessed.
5. His Hymns. — Charles Wesley's fame rests, and will forever rest, upon his hymns. Upon these it is secure for all time. Critics, however, have found certain faults in these hymns. These alleged defects we will first give. They call attention to “the prosaic, literal, doctrinal character of many of the lines; their occasional harshness, and the preponderance of the subjective element of personal experience” (Amer. Presb. Rev. April, 1867, p. 349). “The paucity of his topics produces frequent repetition. He has little variety of manner, and less variety of matter... Many of his pieces ear the exclusive aspect of the sectarian; he casts his mite into the treasury of a party; he writes as a poet of Methodism, not as the servant of the universal Church” (Milner, Life of Watts)... Certain extravagant expressions and ‘violations' of correct judgment amid taste are pointed out as, e.g., the remarkable hymn, “Ah, lovely appearance in death,” the lines of which, the objector allows, “are invested: with all his own grade and tenderness” (Bird, Biblioth. Sac. Jan. 1664) p; 143). [Dr. Whedon stoutly defends this hymn, taking issue with Dr. Floy and critics generally. He says it is rarely excelled for originality, solemnity, and pathos; compares it with Byron's celebrated passage in the Giaour, and awards the palm to the poem of Wesley, “describing an inexpressible moral and divine beauty connected with repose from the toils, sorrows, and sins of life, and the hush of the spirit to its eternal and ineffable repose” (Meth. Quar. Rev. April, 1867, p. 307). Finally, George Macdonald-an undoubted authority-denies them “much literary merit” (England's Antiphon, 1869. See also adversely, J. D. Burns, in the Encyclop. Brit., 8th ed., 12:189).
On the other side, we give the judgment of a Lutheran critic. Rev. Frederic M. Bird, a most thorough and ardent student of Wesleyan hymnology. We quote from an able, elaborate, and interesting review in the Bibliotheca Sacra, Jan. and April, 1864: “The more extensively and closely his writings are examined, the more will be found in them worthy to be admired and ‘used” (p. 129). “Dr. Watts has been commonly considered the most powerful of hymnists.
The published Wesleyan hymns are five times as numerous as his; and of this immense mass the literary standard is far higher than that of the lesser bulk of the more celebrated writer. Set aside one hundred of Watts's and five hundred of Wesley's best hymns, there will be no comparison between the remainder in style and poetic merit. Dr. Watts was a poet at certain times, and under special inspiration; Charles Wesley was a poet by nature and habit, and almost always wrote as such. Of course his effusions are not equal among themselves; but he established and observed, through all his multiplicity of verses, a standard which no other hymn-writer, up to his time, was able to approach, and which none has since surpassed” (ibid.). “No other sacred poet has attempted such a ‘variety of matter;' and his versatile muse handles all these multifarious topics with unequalled, almost with unvarying, ease and grace… There are no hymns in the world of such ‘spontaneous devotion;' none so loftily spiritual; none so unmistakably genuine and intensely earnest, as the best- known and most largely used of Wesley's. It is the highest praise of the few noblest hymns of Watts and Cowper that they reach an elevation on which the Methodist poet generally sat, and express a mental state which was habitual with him” (p. 140). “No hymn writer is more intellectual; none puts more doctrine, thought, solid mental pabulum into his poems. And certainly none is more awakening and edifying; few others, in fact, approach him in native moral earnestness, force, fire; and none possesses a higher, purer, more consistent, uniform, and positive spirituality” (p. 311). “As a polemic poet Charles Wesley has never been equaled...
The most powerful, combative, and controversial poems we have ever seen appeared in Hymns on God's Everlasting Love, published in 1741, and greatly enlarged in 1756” (p. 288-289). Mr. Bird gives a fine resume of these rhyming polemics. “The Funeral Hymns of Charles Wesley are, perhaps, the noblest specimens “of his genius” (see further, p. 298 sq.). “Doddridge and Steele are diluted reproductions of Dr. Watts. Montgomery, a professed and life-long poet, is inferior to Wesley in all the qualities mentioned above, and in no respect above him in propriety, harmony, and grace of style. Heber, the most elegant and mellifluous of sacred poets, is not more polished and fluent than his Methodist predecessor; nor has he anything of his so lidity, strength, and fire. Cowper is the greatest name in the hymn-books; but Cowper's best poems, which are very few, are but equal, not superior, to Wesley's best, which are very many. Toplady approaches most nearly the Methodist poet, but Toplady borrowed his inspiration from Wesley and reproduced his style; and it is the Calvinist's highest praise that his finest pieces are undistinguishable from those of his Arminian neighbor. No other names in British sacred lyric poetry can be mentioned with that of Charles Wesley. And when it is remembered that all these counted their poems by dozens or hundreds, while he by thousands; and that his thousands were in power, in elegance, in devotional and literary value, above their few, we call him yet more confidently great among poets and prince of English hymnists” (p. 318). This high praise comes from one who not a Methodist has by long and patient study earned for himself a place among the very few authorities in the hymnology of Wesley.
It is needless to mention single hymns of surpassing excellence. Several have been already referred to in the art. HYMNOLOGY. Suffice it here to call attention to three only:
(a.) The poem on “Wrestling Jacob” has enraptured all readers. Who has not felt the power of that masterpiece? “With consummate art he carries on the action of a lyric drama; every turn in the conflict with the Mysterious Being, against whom he wrestles all night, being marked with precision by the varying language of the speaker, accompanied by intense increasing interest, till the rapturous moment of the discovery, when he prevails and exclaims, ‘I know thee, Savior, who thou art'”(Montgomery, Christian Psalmist [1828]).
(b.) “Jesus, lover of my soul” is the essence of a thousand hymns and prayers. Tributes innumerable might be laid down here. But what are these? The heart of the world is brought near to God.
(c.) “Stand the omnipotent decree,” “the finest lyric in the English language,” says Southey:III. Literature. — We classify this for convenience sake, under separate heads.
1. Charles Wesley's own poetical works (published during his life) may be enumerated, as follows, in tabular form (we include a few prose writings):
Date of Publ.
1746
2. Collective Poems. — A Collection of the Poems of John and Charles Wesley (Wesl. Conf. Office, Lond. 1868-72, 13 vols. 8vo), reprinted from the originals with the last corrections of the authors, collected and arranged by G. Osborne, D.D.; Charles Wesley Seen in his Finer and Less Familiar Poems (N. 1867, 24mo), edited with notes by Frederic I. Bird; Wesley [Chas.], A Poetical Version of the Psalms (Lond. 1854, 8vo), edited, with an introduction, by Henry Fish, A.M.
3. For authorities on Charles Wesley's life, see Whitehead, Lives of John and Charles Wesley (Loud. 1793; Boston, Mass., 1844, 8vo; Auburn and Rochester, N.Y., 1854); Moore, Lies of John and Charles Wesley (Lond. 1824); Jackson, Life of Charles Wesley (Lond. 1841, 2 vols. 8vo; N. Y. 1844, 8vo, slightly retrenched [an abridgment of this excellent work was subsequently publ. in Lond.]), with a review of his poetry, sketches of the rise and progress of Methodism, and notices of contemporary events and characters; Dove, Biog. Notices of the Wesley Family; Stevenson, Memorials of the Wesley Family (Lond., N.Y., and Cincinnati, 1876, 8vo [invaluable]), p. 38.4-413; Adams, The Poet Preacher (N.Y. 1859, 16mo); Wakeley, Anecdotes of the Wesleys (ibid. 1869, 16mo), p. 323-386; Jackson, Journal of Charles Wesley (Lond. 1849, 2 vols. 8vo), selections from his correspondence and poetry, with introduction. and notes; Smith, Stevens, and Porter, Histories of Methodism (N. Y. 1875, 12mo); Daniels, History of Methodism (ibid. 1879, 8ro [see Indices]); Crowther, Portraiture of Methodism, p. 15-19; Myles, Chronicles Hist. of the Methodists, ann. 1729, 1788; Atmore, Meth. Memorial, s.v.; Minutes of the Conferences (Lond. 1788, 8vo), p. 201; Meth. Quar. Review, Jan. 1842, art. 8; Lyerman, Life of John Wesley (see Index), vol. 3; Wesley, Works (see Index); Stevenson, Hist. of City Road Chapel. p. 148, 348; and articles in the cyclopaedias.
4. On his poetry, see, in addition to the above and to the authorities cited in the text, Christophers, The Epworth Singers and other Poets of Methodism. (Lond., and N. Y. 1874. 12mo); Creamer, Meth. Hymnology (N. Y. 1848, 12mo); Burgess, Wesleyan-Hymnology, (Lond. 1845); Holland, Psalmists of Britain Symons, rotes on Methodist Hymn-writers and their Hymns; Kirk, Charles Wesley, the Poet of Methodism (1860, 12mo); Belcher, Hist. Sketches of Hymns; Stevenson, The Methodist Hymn-book. and Its Associations (Lond. 1870, 12mo); Lond. Quar. Review [I Wesl. Jan. 1869, p. 500; Bibl. Sacrna, July, 1867, p. 591; McMullen, Sacred Poetry; Schaff. Christ in Song (N. Y. 1868); Miller, Our Hymns, Their Authors and Origin (Lond. 1867 [see Lond. Quar. Review, April, 1867, p. 258]); Ladies' Repository, May, 1874, p. 355; The Christian Advocate (N. Y.), Oct. 7, 1880, p. 1. See works mentioned in articles SEE HYMNOLOGY; SEE PSALMODY, SEE CHRISTIAN.
5. The great musicians Lampe, Giardini, and Handel composed tunes for Charles Wesley's hymns. Wesley, Charles (2), an eminent musician, son of the Rev. Charles Wesley, was born at Bristol, England, in 1757; was for many years organist at St. Marylebole, and died in 1834. He was the author of A Set of Eight Songs (1784): — and among other pieces, an anthem entitled My Soul Hath Patiently Tarried.