before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” Mr Lecky points out the significance of that event. “It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the scene which took place at that humble meeting in Aldersgate Street forms an epoch in English history. The conviction which then flashed upon one of the most powerful and most active intellects in England is the true source of English Methodism” (History of England in Eighteenth Century, ii. 558).
Wesley spent some time during the summer of 1738 in visiting the Moravian settlement at Herrnhuth and returned to London on September 16, 1738, with his faith greatly strengthened. He preached in all the churches that were open to him, spoke in many religious societies, visited Newgate and the Oxford prisons. On New Year’s Day, 1739, the Wesleys, Whitefield and other friends had a Love Feast at Fetter Lane. In February Whitefield went to Bristol, where his popularity was unbounded. When the churches were closed against him he spoke to the Kingswood colliers in the open air, and after six memorable weeks wrote urging Wesley to come and take up the work. Wesley was in his friend’s congregation on April 1, but says, “I could scarcely reconcile myself to this strange way of preaching in the fields . . . having been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin, if it had not been done in a church.” Next day Wesley followed Whitefield’s example. His fears and prejudices melted away as he discerned that this was the very method needed for reaching the multitudes living in almost heathen darkness. He already had the means of shepherding those who were impressed by the preaching. On the 1st of May 1738 he wrote in his journal: “This evening our little society began, which afterwards met in Fetter Lane.” Among its “fundamental rules” we find a provision for dividing the society into bands of five or ten persons who spoke freely and plainly to each other as to the “real state” of their hearts. The bands united in a conference every Wednesday evening. The society first met at James Hutton’s shop, “The Bible and Sun,” Wild Street, west of Temple Bar. About the 25th of September it moved to Fetter Lane. Wesley describes this as the third beginning of Methodism. After the field preaching began converts multiplied. They found all the world against them, and Wesley advised them to strengthen one another and talk together as often as they could. When he tried to visit them at their homes he found the task beyond him, and therefore invited them to meet him on Thursday evenings. This meeting was held in the end of 1739 at the Foundery in Moorfields which Wesley had just secured as a preaching place. Grave disorders had arisen in the society at Fetter Lane, and on the 25th of July 1740 Wesley withdrew from it. About 25 men and 48 women also left and cast in their lot with the society at the Foundery. The centenary of Methodism was kept in 1839, a hundred years after the society first met at the Foundery.
Wesley’s headquarters at Bristol were in the Horse Fair, where a room was built in May 1739 for two religious societies which had been accustomed to meet in Nicholas Street and Baldwin Street. To meet the cost of this Captain Fox suggested that each member should give a penny per week. When it was urged that some were too poor to do this, he replied, “Then put eleven of the poorest with me; and if they can give anything, well, I will call on them weekly, and if they can give nothing I will give for them as well as for myself.” Others followed his example and were called leaders, a name given as early as the 5th of November 1738 to those who had charge of the bands in London. Wesley saw that here was the very means he needed to watch over his flock. The leaders thus became a body of lay pastors. Those under their care formed a class. It proved more convenient to meet together and this gave opportunity for religious conversation and prayer. As the society increased Wesley found it needed “still greater care to separate the precious from the vile.” He therefore arranged to meet the classes himself every quarter and gave a ticket “under his own hand” to every one “whose seriousness and good conversation” he found no reason to doubt. The ticket furnished an easy means for guarding the meetings of the society against intrusion. “Bands” were formed for those who wished for closer communion. Love-feasts for fellowship and testimony were also introduced, according to the custom of the primitive church. Walchnights were due to the suggestion of a Kingswood collier in 1740. Wesley issued the rules of the united societies in February 1743. Those who wished to enter the society must have “a desire to flee from the wrath to come, to be saved from their sins.” When admitted they were to give evidence of their desire for salvation “by doing no harm; by doing good of every possible sort; by attending upon all the means of grace.” It was expected that all who could do so would contribute the penny a week suggested in Bristol, and give a shilling at the renewal of their quarterly ticket. Wesley had at first to take charge of the contributions, but as they grew larger he appointed stewards to receive the money, to pay debts, and to relieve the needy. The memorable arrangement in Bristol was made a few weeks before Wesley’s field of labour was extended to the north of England in May 1742. He found Newcastle ripe for his message. English Christianity seemed to have no power to uplift the people. Dram-drinking was spreading like an epidemic. Freethinkers’ clubs flourished. “The old religion,” Lecky says, “seemed everywhere loosening round the minds of men, and indeed it had often no great influence even on its defenders.” Some of the clergy in country parishes were devoted workers, but special zeal was resented or discouraged.
The doctrine of election had led to a separation between Whitefield and the Wesleys in 1741. Wesley believed that the grace of God could transform every life that received it. He preached the doctrine of conscious acceptance with God and daily growth in holiness. Victory over sin was the goal which he set before all his people. He made his appeal to the conscience in the clearest language, with the most cogent argument, and with all the weight of personal conviction. Hearers like John Nelson felt as though every word was aimed at themselves. No preacher of the century had this mastery over his audience. His teaching may be described as Evangelical Arminianism and its standards are his own four volumes of sermons and his Notes on the New Testament.
Up till 1742 Wesley’s work was chiefly confined to London and Bristol, with the adjacent towns and villages or the places which lay between them. On his way to Newcastle that year Wesley visited Birstal, where John Nelson, the stone-mason, had already been working. On his return he held memorable services in the churchyard at Epworth. Methodism this year spread out from Birstal into the West Riding. Societies were also formed in Somerset, Wilts, Gloucestershire, Leicester, Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire and the south of Yorkshire. In the summer Charles Wesley visited Wednesbury, Leeds and Newcastle. Next year he took Cornwall by storm. The work in London was prospering. In 1743 Wesley secured a west-end centre at West Street, Seven Dials, which for fifty years had a wonderful history. In August 1747 Wesley paid his first visit to Ireland, where he had such success that he gave more than six years of his life to the country and crossed the Irish Channel forty-two times. Ireland has its own conference presided over by a delegate from the British conference. Wesley’s first visit to Scotland was in 1751. He paid twenty-two visits, which stirred up all the Scottish churches.
Such extension of his field would have been impossible had not Wesley been helped by a heroic band of preachers. Wesley says: “Joseph Humphreys was the first lay preacher that assisted me in England, in the year 1738.” That was probably help in the Fetter Lane Society, for Wesley then had no preaching place of his own. John Cennick, the hymn-writer and schoolmaster at Kingswood, began to preach there in 1739. Thomas Maxwell, who was left to meet and pray with the members at the Foundery during the absence of the Wesleys, began to preach. Wesley humed to London to check this irregularity, but his mother urged him to hear Maxwell
