“Let Saints on Earth Unite to Sing”: The Life and Theology of Charles Wesley

Photo by John Price on Unsplash

Charles Wesley was born at Epworth in Lincolnshire on December 18, 1707, the son of the Rev. Samuel Wesley and his wife Susanna Annesley Wesley. He was born two months premature, which led to illnesses that plagued him throughout his life.

In the Wesley home, Christian faith, hard work, and education were valued. His parents were staunch Anglicans, having returned to the Anglican Church from Puritanism in their teens. There were nine children in the family, and Susanna was the day-to-day force in their lives. She was Charles’ primary school teacher and spiritual director. 

At the age of nine, Charles was sent to Westminster School, one of the oldest and most prestigious boarding schools in the country.  His eldest brother Samuel paid for his education for the first 5 years. After that, Charles was awarded a “King’s Scholarship” provided by the school. He excelled in Latin and Greek and became captain of the school, more for his talent in study than athletics.

While there, Charles received an offer that must have been difficult to decline. Garret Wesley, a relative of the family with estates in Ireland and no heirs, offered to adopt him. He even visited Charles in person to convince him. According to tradition, Charles declined because he did not want to move to Ireland. In the end, Garrett Wesley adopted Richard Colley on the condition that he assume the coat of arms and name of Wesley. Colley, now Wesley, became the first Lord Mornington in 1747, and the grandfather of the first Duke of Wellington. Had Charles accepted, he would have been wealthy in this world, but the Church’s hymnody would have been poorer.

At 19, Charles entered Christ Church, Oxford. His brother John had just finished his undergraduate studies there and had left university to help his father in Epworth. At first Charles lived the normal life of an undergraduate, which caused some concern in Epworth. John was sent to investigate, and later described Charles’ attitude: “He pursued his studies diligently, and led a regular, harmless life; but if I spoke to him about religion he would answer, ‘what! Would you have me be a saint all at once?’ and would hear no more” (Thomas Jackson, Life of the Rev. Charles Wesley, 30).

However, even by the time John wrote that letter, Charles’ convictions about saintliness had begun to shift. He wrote, “My first year at college, I lost in diversions. The next, I set myself to study. Diligence led me into serious thinking. I went to the weekly Sacrament, and persuaded two young scholars to accompany me, and to observe the method of study prescribed by the statutes of the University. This gained me the harmless name, ‘Methodist.’” 

In 1729, John returned to Oxford as a Fellow of Lincoln College. He had decided to enter the priesthood and to lead a holy life in his job of supervising undergraduates in their studies. He joined Charles’ “Holy Club” and enlarged the activities of the group, including visiting prisons and following the patterns of Christian life advocated by the Early Church Fathers. In 1735, on his deathbed, Charles’ father confided, “Be steady, the Christian faith will surely revive in the Kingdom; you shall see though I shall not.”

After Samuel died, Charles was ordained (at the urging of John). The brothers then sailed as missionaries to the colony of Georgia. Charles was in Frederica as pastor to the colonists and secretary to General Oglethorpe. He was miserable. He hated his work as secretary. After a year, he returned to England, ostensibly with dispatches for the British Committee for the colony. In England, he felt he was a failure professionally, physically, and morally. He told the committee that he would be willing to return to the colony as a missionary, but not as secretary to Oglethorpe.

His return was delayed by poor health. Then, in February, 1738, an illness at Oxford nearly killed him. When he recovered, he was introduced to Peter Boehler, a Moravian missionary on his way to America. Boehler taught him about the need to be born again by trusting in the promises of Christ. Charles taught Boehler English. At the end of April, Charles’ illness returned, which he believed was due to his lack of faith.

Saving Faith

On May 21, 1738, Pentecost Sunday, he experienced new birth while convalescing at the home of “a poor mechanic, who knows nothing but Christ, yet by knowing him, knows and discerns all.” He felt accepted by God not because he was holy, but as a sinner by grace, whom God might make holy. He wrote his first hymn.

Where shall my wondering soul begin?
How shall I all to heaven aspire?
A slave redeemed from death and sin,
A brand plucked from eternal fire.
How shall I equal triumphs raise,
And sing my great deliverer’s praise?

O how shall I the goodness tell,
Father, which thou to me hast showed?
That I, a child of wrath and hell,
I should be called a child of God!
Should know, should feel my sins forgiven,
Blest with this antepast of heaven!

Outcasts of men, to you I call,
Harlots and publicans and thieves;
He spreads his arms to embrace you all,
Sinners alone his grace receive.
No need of him the righteous have;
He came the lost to seek and save.

Come, O my guilty brethren, come,
Groaning beneath your load of sin;
his bleeding heart shall make you room,
His open side shall take you in.
He calls you now, invites you home:
Come, O my guilty brethren, come.

For you the purple current flowed
In pardon from his wounded side,
Languished for you the eternal God,
For you the prince of glory died.
Believe, and all your guilt’s forgiven,
Only believe – and yours is heaven.

On the following Wednesday night John visited his brother. Charles wrote, “towards ten, my brother was brought in triumph by a troop of our friends, and declared, ‘I believe.’ We sang the hymn with great joy, and parted with prayer.” 

Charles began preaching the doctrine of the New Birth in any London church that would have him. That same year he wrote “And Can It Be,” perhaps his most popular hymn among Methodists. In it, he used the story of Peter being freed from prison, with love as the beginning and end of salvation. 

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 explain his strange design?
In vain the firstborn 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 died for Adam’s helpless race.
‘Tis mercy all, immense and free, for O my God, if found out me.

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 th’eternal throne, and claim the crown through Christ my own.

Preaching the possibility of an experience of new birth through faith in Christ was considered divisive. Gradually pulpits were closed to him. On May 29 he was invited by a farmer in Essex to preach in his field. About 500 heard him preach on, “Repent for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” On June 24, 1739, he spoke to several thousand in Moorfields, London, on “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” Field preaching became a regular Sunday pattern, in the morning at Moorfields, later in the day at Kensington Common. After a few months, he joined his brother in Bristol, who had begun field preaching and overseeing a society of Methodists.

For the next decade, Charles was based in Bristol, itinerant preaching throughout England and writing hymns. From 1739-42 he published three editions of Hymns and Sacred Poems. In the first of these appeared his most famous Christmas hymn. The original words were:

Hark how all the welkin rings! ‘Glory to the King of Kings,’
Peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled!’
Joyful, all ye nation, rise, join the triumph of the skies;
Universal nature say: Christ the Lord is born today.

These words emphasizing creation’s welcome of the Christ child were altered in 1753 by the famous evangelist George Whitfield to make them more accessible to a general audience.

Poet Theologian

In 1741, Charles published Hymns on God’s Everlasting Love; in 1745, Hymns on the Lord’s Supper; in 1746, Hymns of Petition and Thanksgiving for the Promise of the Father; in 1747, Hymns for those that seek and those that have redemption; and in 1749, another volume of Hymns and Sacred Poems. During his life, Charles wrote between five and ten thousand hymns and poems. Most of them were never published. But those that were became the main written, and sung, source for communicating the Christian doctrine to the masses. 

On the incarnation, Charles wrote:

Let earth and heaven combine, angels and men agree,
To praise in songs divine the incarnate deity
Our God contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man.

He laid his glory by, He wrapped him in our clay;
Unmarked by human eye, the latent Godhead lay;
Infant of Days he here became, and bore the mild Immanuel’s name.

He deigns in flesh to appear, widest of extremes to join;
To bring our vileness near, and make us all divine:
And we the life of God shall know, for God is manifest below.

On the atonement:

O love divine, what hast thou done! The immortal God hath died for me!
The Father’s coeternal Son bore all my sins upon the tree.
Th’immortal God for me hath died: My Lord, my Love, is crucified.

On the resurrection:

Love’s redeeming work is done
Fought the fight, the battle won,
Death in vain forbids him rise,
Christ has opened paradise.

On the work of the Holy Spirit, he wrote:

Expand thy wings, celestial dove, brood o'er our nature’s night
On our disordered spirits move, and let there now be light.
God, through the Spirit we shall know if thou within us shine,
and sound with all the saints below, the depths of love divine.

On the meaning of Eucharist:

O the depth of love divine, the unfathomable grace!
Who shall say how bread and wine God into us conveys!
How the bread his flesh imparts, how the wine transmits his blood,
Fills his faithful people's hearts with all the life of God!

How can the spirits heavenward rise, by earthly matter fed,
Drink herewith divine supplies and eat immortal bread?
Ask the Father’s wisdom how: Christ who did the means ordain;
Angels round our altars bow to search it out in vain.

On sanctification:

Finish then thy new creation; pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see thy great salvation perfectly restored in thee.
Changed from glory into glory till in heaven we take our place
Till we cast our crowns before thee lost in wonder, love and praise.

You probably noticed a theme. The Reformed tradition generally begins theology from the idea of God’s sovereignty. For the Wesleys, theology’s starting point was God’s love. Love is God’s nature. Love is the image of God, which in humans is disordered. We love wrongly. We love things. But in Christ, the divine human, that image is whole. Through faith in His extreme act of love for our sakes, the restoration of our divine image can begin. Love for God and neighbor grows to the end that we might be overwhelmed by it – perfected in love. 

Charles was the perfect poet of this theology. Unlike John, Charles felt passionately. He could speak what he felt. His experience of divine love was rapturous and he let the world know it.

O Thou who camest from above, the pure celestial fire to impart
Kindle a flame of sacred love upon the mean altar of my heart.
There let it for thy glory burn with inextinguishable blaze,
And trembling to its source return in humble prayer and fervent praise.

In a hymn on the return of Christ, he wrote:

The dear tokens of his passion still his dazzling body bears; 
Cause of endless exultation to his ransomed worshippers
With what rapture, with what rapture, gaze we on those glorious scars.

Family Life

Perhaps related to his ability to communicate his affections, Charles was happily married to Sarah (Sally) Gwynne. Sally’s family had been initially resistant to Methodism. Her father, a Welsh magistrate, had heard negative reports of rabble-rousing preachers. He went to hear Howell Harris, the great Welsh Methodist, with a cease-and-desist order in his pocket. Instead he was converted.

Sally met Charles in August 1747, when he and his brother stayed at her family’s estate on one of their preaching tours. During their courtship, he and Sally got caught in a thunderstorm and took shelter in a barn. This became a metaphor for God’s protection of us during the storms of life. Charles wrote:

Jesus lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly.
While the nearer waters roll, while the tempest still is nigh.
Hide me o my savior hide, till the storm of life is past
Safe into the haven guide. O receive my soul at last

Sally’s father insisted that his daughter be provided for. Until this time, all income from the publishing of hymns had gone back into Methodism. After conferring with John, Charles got a promise from their publisher for 100 pounds per year, which became the family’s main source of income. The two were married in Wales in 1749. Charles was 42. Sally was 20. They lived in Bristol, the hub for Methodist work in western England and Wales, which Charles oversaw. 

Sally gave birth to eight children, though only three survived infancy. John, born in 1752, died of smallpox, and Charles wrote a series of heart wrenching poems on the death of a child. On December 12, 1757, another son, Charles Jr., was born. That Christmas, Charles wrote:

O mercy divine; How could’st thou incline
my God to become such an infant as mine.

The poem emphasized the humility of God’s incarnation. 

He comes from on high, who fashioned the sky, 
and meekly vouchsafes in a manger to lie
The shepherds behold him promised of old, 
by angels attended by prophets foretold.
The wise men adore, and bring him their store; 
the rich are permitted to follow the poor.
To the Inn they repair to see the young heir, 
the inn is a palace for Jesus is there.

Their only surviving daughter, Sarah, was born in 1759. When Samuel arrived in 1766, they bought a house on Charles Street, which can be visited today.

The boys in the family were extremely musical, a talent they received from their mother. In the house they had a harpsichord where Sally taught her sons to play. They were considered prodigies, the “Mozarts of Bristol.” At the age of two and a half, Charles could play any tune he heard his mother singing. When he was eight, Samuel composed his first oratorio, based on the story of Ruth in the Bible. People lined up to hear the boys play, Charles on the organ and Samuel on violin. In 1771, the family moved to London for better musical training for their sons, and Charles became leader of City Road Chapel, the headquarters for the movement in London and the southeast. 

Brotherly Love

Charles and John at times had a tumultuous relationship. Charles sabotaged John’s relationship with the only woman he loved, Grace Murray, by getting her married off to another man while John was away. Charles’ reasons for doing so were certainly mixed, and John and he were not on speaking terms for several years. The most sympathetic spin which can be put on Charles’ actions is that he believed John’s temperament was unfit for marriage. Certainly, John’s later marriage proved a disaster.

Another major falling out occurred when John consecrated Thomas Coke as the first Methodist Bishop to America in 1784. Charles opposed anything irregular that might move Methodism out of the Anglican Church. He wrote: 

So easily are bishops made by man’s or woman’s whim?
Wesley his hand on Coke hath laid, but who laid hands on him?
Hands upon himself he laid, and took an apostolic chair:
He then ordained his creature Coke, his heir and successor.

Episcopalians now no more with Presbyterians fight,
But give your needless contest o’er, ‘whose ordination’s right?’
It matters not, if both are one, or different in degree,
For lo! Ye see contained in John the whole Presbytery.

That one never made it into the hymnal.

Despite all of that, they were co-leaders of the movement and each other’s deepest confidants. In their correspondence one finds brutal honesty about each other and about the states of their own souls. Charles was probably the one person with whom John could be completely open. 

Death

Charles died in 1788. John ended his tribute to his brother at conference with: “His least praise was, his talent for poetry: although Dr. Isaac Watts did not scruple to say that ‘that single poem, Wrestling Jacob, was worth all the verses he himself had written.’” The hymn takes the story of Jacob wrestling with God as an allegory for the penitent's struggle for faith.

Come, O thou traveler unknown, whom still I hold, but cannot see!
My company before is gone, and I am left alone with thee;
With thee all night I mean to stay and wrestle till the break of day.

I need not tell thee who I am, my misery and sin declare;
Thyself hast called me by my name, look on thy hands and read it there.
But who, I ask thee who art thou? Tell me thy name and tell me now.

Yield to me now, for I am weak but confident in self despair!
Speak to my heart, in blessing speak, be conquered by my instant prayer.
Speak or thou never hence shalt move and tell me if thy name is love.

‘Tis love, ‘tis love! Thou diedst for me, I hear thy whisper in my heart.
The morning breaks, the shadows flee, pure universal love thou art.
To me, to all, thy mercies move; thy nature and thy name is Love.

Two weeks after his brother’s death, John tried to teach the hymn. He broke down at the lines “my company before is gone, and I am left alone with thee.”

After Charles died, John saw that Sally was cared for. When John died in 1792, William Wilberforce, who felt under obligation to both Charles and John, gave Sally an annuity of sixty pounds for thirty years until her death at 96 in 1822.

In life, Charles had dedicated his talents as a poet and theologian to the service of Jesus Christ.  He fought a good fight, finished his course, and kept the faith.

Come let us join our friends above who have obtained the prize,
And on the eagle wings of love to joys celestial rise.
Let saints on earth unite to sing with those to glory gone,
For all the servants of our King in earth and heaven are one.

Scott Kisker is Professor of the History of Christianity at United Theological Seminary.