Word and Table: Recovering the Evangelical and Sacramental Legacy of John Wesley
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When most people think of John Wesley, they rightly think of the evangelical Great Awakening of the eighteenth century that swept through England and North America. During his lifetime, Wesley traveled more than 250,000 miles and preached over 40,560 sermons. However, Wesley’s evangelical heritage is only part of his story. As we examine the life and ministry of John Wesley, we find two major streams that converge in the Wesleyan revival of the eighteenth century: the sacramental and evangelical, which gave way to a unique, creative Wesleyan movement. Sadly, these two streams have been separated over time. This unique synthesis needs to be recovered today.
Wesley’s Sacramental Theology
John Wesley’s sacramental theology comes from his roots in the Anglican tradition. He and his brother Charles were both ordained Church of England clergy. Although they were the founders of the Methodist movement, it is important to mention that it was never Wesley’s intention to separate from the Church of England; rather, he believed that Methodism was a renewal movement within the Church of England. He wrote to Henry Moore in 1788, “I am a Church of England man, and, as I said fifty years ago, so I say still, in the Church I will live and die, unless I am thrust out.”
Anglicanism was the greatest influence in shaping Wesley’s view of church tradition. He was immersed in the social and religious culture of that denomination. He grew up the son of an Anglican priest. He devoured Anglican homilies and devotional literature from a young age. Three major English works that influenced Wesley were Bishop Jeremy Taylor’s The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living and Dying; Thomas à Kempis’ The Christian’s Pattern; and Mr. William Law’s Christian Perfection and A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. Wesley was educated at Oxford and was ordained in the Anglican priesthood. His love for the Church of England is also seen in the fact that he never wanted Methodism to become a separate denomination, but desired instead to bring renewal to the Church of England.
Because Wesley lived and died an Anglican priest, he daily used the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer. This book is a rich treasure from church history that is meant to be used for both private and public prayer and worship. It contains orders of services, ancient creeds, communal prayers, and a lectionary, a suggested reading plan for use throughout the liturgical year. Wesley said, “I believe there is no Liturgy in the world, either in ancient or modern language, which breathes more of a solid, scriptural, rational piety than the Common Prayer of the Church of England.”
Wesley’s The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America was simply an abridgement of the 1662 edition of the Book of Common Prayer. In a letter dated June 20, 1789, Wesley wrote, “Dr. Coke made two or three little alterations in the Prayer-book without my knowledge. I took particular care throughout to alter nothing merely for altering’s sake. In religion I am for as few innovations as possible. I love the old wine best.”
While at Oxford, John and Charles were accused of being “sacramentalist” because of their insistence upon taking communion regularly. Along with their academic pursuits, these young men even as students were devotedly engaged in prayer, Bible study, fasting, communion, and social work, including prison visitation and caring for the sick.
The visibility of these holy practices earned them several nicknames, including “Sacramentarians,” “Enthusiasts,” “Bible Moths,” and “Methodists.” This last insult would be the one to stick, eventually becoming the moniker of the movement. The Wesley brothers also connected with George Whitefield, who later became another leader in the spreading evangelical revival. The experiences with the Holy Club marked the Wesleys’ time at Oxford and were an important season of religious development for them. It was also at Oxford that Wesley began to develop his vision for the recovery of “primitive Christianity” that would become a distinctive hallmark of the Methodist movement. The combination of personal piety, spiritual discipline, intimate community, and ministry to the poor and sick—all present in seed form in the Holy Club—became the foundation for the Wesleyan movement as it spread throughout England and across the Atlantic.
Convinced of the evangelical value of the Lord’s Supper as both a converting and sanctifying ordinance, the Wesley brothers practiced frequent communion. Wesley took the Lord’s Supper at least once every four to five days, and he encouraged Methodists to celebrate the Lord’s Supper weekly. Commenting on the importance of communion, Wesley said, “It is the duty of every Christian to receive the Lord’s Supper as often as he can.” Wesley’s “high church” view of the sacrament can be seen by the publication of Hymns on the Lord’s Supper, published in 1745. In his sermon “The Duty of Constant Communion,” Wesley said,
I am to show that it is the duty of every Christian to receive the Lord's Supper as often as he can. Let every one, therefore, who has either any desire to please God, or any love of his own soul, obey God, and consult the good of his own soul, by communicating every time he can; like the first Christians, with whom the Christian sacrifice was a constant part of the Lord's day service. And for several centuries they received it almost every day: Four times a week always, and every saint's day beside. Accordingly, those that joined in the prayers of the faithful never failed to partake of the blessed sacrament. What opinion they had of any who turned his back upon it, we may learn from that ancient canon: "If any believer join in the prayers of the faithful, and go away without receiving the Lord's Supper, let him be excommunicated, as bringing confusion into the church of God."
Wesley also believed that the grace of God was conveyed in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper through the “real presence” of Christ. He said,
The grace of God given herein confirms to us the pardon of our sins, by enabling us to leave them. As our bodies are strengthened by bread and wine, so are our souls by these tokens of the body and blood of Christ. This is the food of our souls: This gives strength to perform our duty, and leads us on to perfection. If, therefore, we have any regard for the plain command of Christ, if we desire the pardon of our sins, if we wish for strength to believe, to love and obey God, then we should neglect no opportunity of receiving the Lord's Supper; then we must never turn our backs on the feast which our Lord has prepared for us.
This grace is conveyed through the sacramental presence of the Holy Spirit that makes Christ’s “real presence” available to the believer. The Lord’s Supper, then, is a means of encounter with the living God. So esteemed was the Lord's Supper in the Wesley brothers’ spirituality that they created an entire book of hymns, Hymns on the Lord's Supper, to give Methodists varied and appropriate hymns for their sacramental occasions. Not well known today, these 166 hymns formed one of the greatest works of eucharistic devotion ever produced in Christian literature. The hymns were composed by Charles, but John edited them and supervised their theological content.
We can see this demonstrated in the following hymn.
Come, Holy Ghost, thine influence shed,
And realize the sign;
Thy life infuse into the bread,
Thy power into the wine.
Effectual let the tokens prove,
And made, by heavenly art,
Fit channels to convey thy love
To every faithful heart.
The Growth of the Wesleyan Movement
The Wesleyan revival began with only a handful of people in the 1700s and grew into a movement that established hundreds of societies in England and the United States. Due to growing pressure to provide proper spiritual care for his flock in America, Wesley reluctantly decided to ordain lay preachers for the work in the States. On September 18, 1784, Wesley ordained Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey, and dedicated Thomas Coke, who was an Anglican priest. These three men were sent to the Colonies with instructions for organizing the American Methodist Church and ordaining ministers, and directions to install Coke and Francis Asbury as superintendents of the new church.
These men also brought with them a prayer book based on the Anglican liturgy; Wesley’s The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America; and John and Charles Wesley’s joint work, A Collection of Psalms and Hymns for the Lord’s Day. The Sunday Service included a set of twenty-four doctrinal statements called the Articles of Religion, which were simplified from the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. He made minor changes to the Anglican liturgy for the sake of “flexibility and adaptability” for the American context.
By the time of John Wesley’s death in 1791, Methodism had become a global church movement with more than 70,000 members in England and more than 40,000 in the newly-founded United States and other mission stations around the world. Due to its strong foundation, the growth of Methodism continued well beyond the life of Wesley. Under the leadership of Francis Asbury, Methodism in North America grew from 1,200 to 200,000 strong with over 4,000 preachers. By 1830, official membership was almost 250,000, and the number of actual attenders was six million. Then, in the half century from 1850 to 1905, American Methodism averaged planting over 700 churches per year. Unfortunately, a consequence of the rapid growth of early Methodism, especially in North America, was a loss of Wesley’s sacramentality.
Today, the World Methodist Council represents over 50 million adherents worldwide. While there are major differences, each can trace their roots back to John Wesley. The further the Wesleyan movement has gotten from John Wesley, the more it has moved away from his sacramental theology. In fact, many of the denominations and movements that sprang from Wesley have focused on his evangelical heritage at the expense of his sacramental theology.
I believe that Wesley’s synthesis of the evangelical and sacramental dimensions of his theology belong together and helped fuel the deep spirituality of the early Methodist revival. To separate the evangelical from the sacramental is a false dichotomy. Regardless of your denomination, if you claim Wesley as your theological ancestor, I would like to call you back to recovering the evangelical and sacramental legacy of John Wesley, which was at the very heart of the Wesleyan revival.
Winfield Bevins the Director of Church Planting at Asbury Theological Seminary. He also is a frequent conference speaker and author. Some of his recent books include Ever Ancient, Ever New: The Allure of Liturgy for a New Generation, Marks of a Movement: What the Church Today Can Learn From the Wesleyan Revival, and the just released, Simply Anglican: An Ancient Faith for Today's World.