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John Wesley's Indebtedness to John Norris

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

John C. English
John C. English
Affiliation:
Professor of history in Baker University, Baldwin City, Kansas.
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Extract

Several scholars, including Workman, Cragg, Dreyer, and now Henry Rack, have called attention to Wesley's endorsement of Locke's philosophy (within limits) and, more broadly, to the debt which he owed to empiricist psychology and theories of knowledge. Wesley read the Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1725 during the interval between his commencement as a Bachelor of Arts and his election to a Fellowship at Lincoln College, Oxford. The book made a favorable impression which endured to the end of his life. During the decade of the eighties, for instance, Wesley published a series of extracts from the Essay, books I and II, in his Arminian Magazine (volumes 5–7, 1782–1784). He also praised The Procedure, Extent, and Limits of Human Understanding and Things Divine and Supernatural Conceived by Analogy with Things Natural and Divine, books written by Peter Browne (died 1735), an Irish bishop and philosopher whom Locke had influenced to a considerable degree. Indeed, at one juncture, Wesley expressed a preference for Browne over Locke. He wrote in his journal for 6 December 1756, “I began reading to our preachers the late Bishop of Cork's Treatise on Human Understanding, in most points far clearer and more judicious than Mr. Locke's, as well as designed to advance a better cause.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , March 1991 , pp. 55 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1991

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References

1. Workman, H. B., “The Place of Methodism in the Life and Thought of the Christian Church,” in Townsend, W. J., Workman, H. B., Eayrs, G., eds., A New History of Methodism, 2 vols. (London, 1909),Google Scholar Vol. 1, pp. 17–19, 27; The Works of John Wesley, ed. Frank Baker, Vol. 11, The Appeals to Men of Reason and Religion and Certain Related Open Letters, ed. Cragg, Gerald R. (Oxford, 1975), p. 57,Google Scholar n. 1; Dreyer, F., “Faith and Experience in the Thought of John Wesley,” American Historical Review 88 (1983): 21–23;CrossRefGoogle ScholarRack, H. D., Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism (London, 1989), pp. 65, 384–388.Google Scholar See also Hindley, J. C., “The Philosophy of Enthusiasm: A Study in the Origins of ‘Experimental Philosophy,’” London Quarterly and Holborn Review 182 (1957): 99–109, 199–210;Google ScholarWood, L. W., “Wesley's Epistemology,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 10 (1975): 51;Google ScholarNoro, Y., “Wesley's Theological Epistemology,” Iliff Review 28 (1971): 59, 68–71.Google Scholar

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4. Albert C. Outler, in his edition of Wesley's sermons, calls attention to this fact. Professor Outler writes: “[Wesley was] an unembarrassed intuitionist who openly claimed his heritage of Christian Platonism. This had come to him generally from the Fathers, William of St. Thierry, the Victorines, St. Bonaventura, and the Cambridge Platonists. More directly, however, he had also been instructed by his father's friend, John Norris, and also by Richard Lucas. Norris was the chief English disciple of the French Cartesian, Nicholas Malebranche, and Wesley was more heavily influenced by Malebranche's ‘occasionalism’ than was any other eighteenth-century British theologian.” The Works of John Wesley, ed. Frank Baker, Vol. 1, Sermons I, ed. Outler, Albert C. (Nashville, 1984), p. 59.Google Scholar While the main point is well taken, this list is a curious one, both because of what it includes and what it omits. We have no record that Wesley had read the medieval authors whom Outler mentions, although they might have influenced him indirectly. Wesley's criticism of Augustine notwithstanding, his name deserves particular emphasis. Apart from Malebranche, the revival of Augustinianism in seventeenth-century France is not represented. Wesley knew the work of St. Francis de Sales, Pascal, and Fénelon, among others. Both Rex D. Matthews and Gregory S. Clapper acknowledge that Norris probably influenced Wesley's thinking. However, both of them assert that Norris's influence was relatively minor, compared to that of the English Puritan theologians (Matthews, , “‘Religion and Reason joined’: A Study in the Theology ofjohn Wesley” [Unpublished Th.D. diss., Harvard University, 1986], p. 235Google Scholar and Clapper, , “John Wesley on Religious Affections: His Views on Experience and Emotion and Their Role in the Christian Life and Affections” [Unpublished Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 1985], p. 83).Google Scholar

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9. From 1737 onward, John Wesley published a series of hymn books, either alone or in association with his brother Charles. Three paraphrases based upon Norris's Collection of Miscellanies were included in the hymnals of 1738 and 1739 (The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, 13 vols., ed. Osborn, G. [London, 1868], 1: 118–119, 341–343).Google Scholar

10. See Norris, , An Essay Towards the Theoy of the Ideal or Intelligible World, 2 vols. (London, 1701, 1704), 1: ixGoogle Scholar (hereafter cited as Theory).

11. For a brief discussion of Norris and the Society of Friends, see Braithwaite, W. C., The Second Period of Quakerism (London, 1919), pp. 392–394.Google Scholar

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17. Plato, Republic 519C (Shorey, 2: 135).Google Scholar

18. Fifty Spiritual Homilies of St. Macanus the Egyptian, trans. Mason, A. J. (London, 1921), P. 2.Google Scholar Wesley included an abridgment of Macanus's homilies in his Christian Library: Consisting of Extracts from, and Abridgements of, the Choicest Pieces of Practical Divinity which have been publish'd in the English Tongue, 50 vols. (Bristol, 1749–1755).Google Scholar “An extract of from the Homilies of Macanus” is found in vol. 1, pp. 79–154.

19. The Works of John Wesley, ed. Heitzerater, Richard P., Vol. 26, Letters II: 1740–1755, ed. Frank Baker (Oxford, 1982), p. 178Google Scholar and see p. 199; Augustine, Selected Writings, trans. Clark, M. T. (New York, 1984), pp. 90–91.Google Scholar

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28. Browne, , Procedure, p 102.Google Scholar

29. On this issue see Buckley, M. J., At the Origins of Modern Atheism (New Haven, 1987), pp. 184, 269.Google Scholar

30. Browne, , Procedure, p. 81.Google Scholar

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32. Browne, , Procedure, pp. 251–252.Google Scholar

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39. Norris, , Theory, 2: 285;Google ScholarTreatises, p. 54.

40. Norris, , Theory, 2: 280;Google Scholar see Treatises, p. 34.

41. On essences, see Norris, , Treatises, p. 49Google Scholar and Theory, 1: 399; on archetypes: Treatises, p. 50 and Theory, 1: 231; on Trinity, : Treatises, pp. 130–131.Google Scholar

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43. Norris, , Treatises, p. 13.Google Scholar

44. As Alexander Knox summarized it so neatly, Remains of Alexander Knox, 4 vols., 2nd ed. (London, 1836–1837), 3: 154.Google Scholar

45. The Works of John Weley, ed. Baker, Frank, Vol. 3, Sermons III, ed. Albert C. Outler (Nashville, 1986), p. 109;Google Scholar see Journal of John Wesley, ed. N. Curnock, 8 vols. (London, 1938), 6: 108.Google Scholar

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47. Norris, , Reflections, pp. 26–27.Google Scholar

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51. Norris, , Reflections, p. 41;Google Scholar see pp. 86–87.

52. Norris, , Reflections, p. 114.Google Scholar

53. Norris's demonstration that the ideal world really exists illustrates his method of argument and his use of authorities (Theory, 1: 17–132).

54. Norris, , Reflections, pp. 137–139,Google Scholar pp. 140–141.

55. [Wesley, J.], Reflections upon the Conduct of Human Life: With Reference to Learning and Knowledge. Extracted from Mr. Norris, 2nd ed. (London, 1741), pp.6, 36.Google Scholar

56. John Locke on Education, ed. Gay, P. (New York, 1964), pp. 108–109.Google Scholar

57. Norris, , Reflections, pp. 166–168.Google Scholar

58. Wesley recommends a compendium of logic; this might be his abridgment of Henry Aldrich's Artis Logicae Compendium (Shimizu, M., “Epistemology in the Thought ofJohn Wesley” [Unpublished Ph.D. diss., Drew University, 1980], p. 202).Google Scholar

59. Norris agreed that the “new” science might produce valuable results in the future but in his judgment it had not advanced very far as yet (Reflections, p. 82).

60. Norris, , Reflections, p. 143.Google Scholar

61. See, for instance, the correspondence between Newton, and Bentley, Richard, Isaac Newton's Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy and Related Documents, ed. Cohen, I. B., 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), pp. 279–394;Google ScholarGillespie, N. C., “Natural History, Natural Theology, and Social Order: John Ray and the ‘Newtonian Ideology,’” Journal of the History of Biology 20 (1987): 1–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar