To an Unidentified Man (September 20, 1757)

To an Unidentified Man

1This letter stands in striking contrast to the letter of the previous day to Rev. Samuel Walker, where JW stressed his encouragement of Methodists to attend Church of England worship. While the recipient is not named, Ebenezer Blackwell is a likely candidate.

Truro
September 20, 1757

Dear Sir,

The longer I am absent from London, and the more I attend the service of the Church in other places, the more I am convinced of the unspeakable advantage which the people called Methodists enjoy. I mean even with regard to public worship, particularly on the Lord’s Day.

2This description of formal Methodist worship focuses on the West Street Chapel (that JW and his brother CW leased in 1743), which had an altar consecrated in its medieval past that allowed them to celebrate the Lord’s Supper within the canonical boundaries of the Church of England.

The church where they assemble is not gay or 98 splendid, which might be an hindrance on the one hand; nor sordid or dirty, which might give distaste on the other; but plain as well as clean. The persons who assemble there are not a gay, giddy crowd, who come chiefly to see and be seen; nor a company of goodly, formal, outside Christians, whose religion lies in a dull round of duties; but a people most of whom know, and the rest earnestly seek, to worship God in spirit and in truth. Accordingly they do not spend their time there in bowing and courtesying, or in staring about them, but in looking upward and looking inward, in hearkening to the voice of God, and pouring out their hearts before him.

It is also no small advantage that the person who reads prayers (though not always the same) yet is always one who may be supposed to speak from his heart,

one whose life is no reproach to his profession, and one who performs that solemn part of divine service, not in a careless, hurrying, slovenly manner, but seriously and slowly, as becomes him who is transacting so high an affair between God and man.

Nor is their solemn addresses to God interrupted either by the formal drawl of a parish clerk, the screaming of boys who bawl out what they neither feel nor understand, or the unseasonable and unmeaning impertinence of a voluntary on the organ.

When it is seasonable to sing praise to God, they do it with the spirit and with the understanding also; not in the miserable, scandalous doggerel of Hopkins and Sternhold,

5Thomas Sternhold, John Hopkins, and others, The Whole Book of Psalms Collected into English Metre (London, 1562); a collection of Psalms in ‘common metre’ that was used broadly in Church of England worship at the time.

but in psalms and hymns which are both sense and poetry,

6I.e., using JW’s Collection of Psalms and Hymns (that had grown through several editions to an enduring form in 1744), which was designed for formal worship, in comparison to the various volumes he also published of Hymns and Sacred Poems for broader Methodist use.

such as would sooner provoke a critic to turn Christian than a Christian to turn critic.

7In 1738 John Byrom had written a similar line to CW, ‘I do not at all desire to discourage your publication. But when you tell me that you write not for the critic but for the Christian, it occurs to my mind that you might as well write for both, or in such a manner that the critic may by your writing be moved to turn Christian, rather than the Christian turn critic’ (letter of Mar. 3, 1738; in Richard Parkinson, ed., The Private Journal and Literary Remains of John Byrom [Manchester, 1856], 2:196).

What they sing is therefore 99a proper continuation of the spiritual and reasonable service; being selected for that end (not by a poor humdrum wretch who can scarce read what he drones out with such an air of importance) but by one who knows what he is about and how to connect the preceding with the following part of the service. Nor does he take just ‘two staves’,

8Although ‘two staves’ might appear to refer to musical harmony (i.e., music with a melody and figured bass written out), it is more likely that JW is using ‘stave’ in the archaic sense of a ‘line of verse’. It was customary for a parish clerk to ‘line out’ the words of a metrical psalm for parishioners to sing. JW’s point would be, then, that the careful leader does not simply give out two lines at a time, but whatever length of lines is appropriate to convey the sense of the lines to the congregants before they sing them. I am indebted to Dr. Nicholas Temperley for this insight into the meaning of ‘staves’.

but more or less, as may best raise the soul to God; especially when sung in well-composed and well-adapted tones not by a handful of wild, unawakened striplings, but by a whole serious congregation; and then not lolling at ease, or in the indecent posture of sitting drawling out one word after another, but all standing before God, and praising him lustily and with a good courage.

Nor is it a little advantage as to the next part of the service to hear a preacher whom you know to live as he speaks, speaking the genuine gospel of present salvation through faith, wrought in the heart by the Holy Ghost, declaring present, free, full justification, and enforcing every branch of inward and outward holiness. And this you hear done in the most clear, plain, simple, unaffected language, yet with an earnestness becoming the importance of the subject and with the demonstration of the Spirit.

With regard to the last and most awful

part of divine service, the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, although we cannot say that either the unworthiness of the minister or the unholiness of some of the communicants deprives the rest of a blessing from God, yet do they greatly lessen the comfort of receiving.

10In the fourth century Donatist controversy, St. Augustine decisively rejected the suggestion that the validity of the sacraments was dependent upon the worthiness of ministers or celebrants, by stressing the faithfulness of Christ as their ultimate source. Augustine’s stance was formally endorsed in the Twenty-sixth Article of Religion of the Church of England. Thus JW treads carefully here, arguing that while a minister’s unworthiness may not invalidate the efficacy of the sacrament, it is nevertheless of comfort to recipients to believe that the ministers of the sacrament and other recipients reflect appropriate Christian holiness.

But these discouragements are removed from you. You have proof that he who administers fears God, and you have no reason to believe that any of your fellow communicants walk unworthy of their profession. Add to that the whole service is performed in a decent and solemn 100manner, is enlivened by hymns suitable to the occasion, and concluded with prayer that comes not out of feigned lips.

Surely then, of all the people in Great Britain, the Methodists would be the most inexcusable should they let any opportunity slip of attending that worship which has so many advantages, should they prefer any before it, or not continually improve by the advantages they enjoy! What can be pleaded for them if they do not worship God in spirit and in truth,

if they are still outward worshippers only, approaching God with their lips while their hearts are far from him? Yea, if, having known him, they do not daily grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ?

13See 2 Pet. 3:18.

J.W.