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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
John Wesley’s sermon ‘Of Former Times’ (1787) provides just one example of his belief in the historical importance of the eighteenth-century Great Awakening. In its conclusion he noted that ‘[n]o “former time” since the apostles left the earth has been “better than the present”’. In another sermon he argued explicitly that religious progress in the eighteenth century was greater than during the Reformation. Undecided about a more suitable comparison, he could not choose between the apostolic age and the rule of Constantine the Great. In these arguments the early Methodists understandably afforded little time to the Middle Ages, which were seen as a dark period between the light of early Christianity and the brightness of their own movement. Yet this essay will argue that, despite this general approach to the history of the medieval church, there is an early Methodist medievalism worth recovering and that it can be best understood in the context of eighteenth-century religious polemic and debate.
I would like to thank Sarah Scutts for her comments on this essay, Patricia Baker for helping track down a Wymeswold ‘enthusiast’ (see n. 10 below), and Colin Haydon, Bernard Hamilton, John Hargreaves and Peter Forsaith for helpful conversations at the EHS Summer Meeting in 2011.
1 Wesley, John, ‘Of Former Times’, in Sermons III, ed. Outler, Albert C., vol. 3 of The Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley (Nashville: TN, 1976– ), 442–53 (Sermon 102), at 453.Google Scholar
2 John Wesley, ‘On Laying the Foundation of the New Chapel’ (1777), in Sermons III, ed. Outler, 577–92 (Sermon 112), at 587.
3 For a recent introduction to the role that the medieval past played in debates about Britain’s identity and its relationship with Europe, see Claydon, Tony, Europe and the Making of England (Cambridge, 2007), 101–20.Google Scholar
4 Anon., ‘Observations on the conduct of Mr Whitefield’, Gentleman’s Magazine 9 (1739), 239–42. at 241.Google Scholar
5 Ibid.
6 Snape, Michael F., ‘Anti-Methodism in Eighteenth-Century England: The Pendle Forest Riots of 1758’, JEH 49 (1998), 257–81.Google Scholar
7 Ward, W. R., ‘Was there a Methodist Evangelistic Strategy in the Eighteenth Century?’, in Tyacke, Nicholas, ed., England’s Long Reformation, 1500–1800 (London, 1988), 285–306, at 305.Google Scholar
8 References here are to the first complete edition of the work: Lavington, George, Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists Compared, 3 vols (London, 1754).Google Scholar
9 See Baker, F., ‘Bishop Lavington and the Methodists’, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 34 (1963-4), 37–42.Google Scholar
10 Green, Thomas, A Dissertation on Enthusiasm (London, 1755).Google Scholar Green became vicar of Wymeswold on graduating from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1728. In addition, he became rector of Walton-le-Wolds from 1758, holding both positions until his death.
11 Green, Dissertation, 45.
12 Anon., A review of the Policy, Doctrines and Morals of the Methodists (London, 1791), 10–11.Google Scholar
13 See Scase, Wendy, ‘Antifraternal Traditions in Reformation Pamphlets’, in The Friars in Medieval Britain: Proceedings of the Harlaxton Symposium 2007, ed. Rogers, Nicholas, Harlaxton Medieval Studies n.s. 19 (Donington, 2010), 238–64.Google Scholar
14 For a positive interpretation of the Dominican vows of poverty, see Hinnebusch, William A., ‘Poverty in the Order of Preachers’, CathHR 45 (1960), 436–53.Google Scholar
15 Le Goff, Jacques, ‘Ordres mendiants et urbanisation dans la France médiévale’, Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations 25 (1970), 924–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16 It is worth noting that the medieval mendicants were not cited in other, similar polemics. When Lavington attacked the Moravians, for example, he used a completely different set of older historical examples, including the Valentinians and the Collyridians: Lavington, George, The Moravians Compared and Detected (London, 1755).Google Scholar
17 Hempton, D., ‘Methodism and the Law’, BJRL 70 (1988), 93–107.Google Scholar
18 de Ribadeneira, Pedro, Lives of Saints with other feasts of the year according to the Roman Calendar, transl. W. P., 2 vols (London, 1730).Google Scholar
19 Lavington, Enthusiasm, 1: 10.
20 Ibid. 395.
21 Ibid. 11.
22 Auvray, L., ed., Les Registres de Grégoire IX, 4 vols (Rome, 1896-1955)Google Scholar, 1: col. 130, no. 214. For a full introduction to the bull, see Armstrong, R.J., ‘ Mira circa nos: Gregory IX’s View of the Saint, Francis of Assisi’, Greyfriars Review 4 (1990), 75–100 Google Scholar (first publ. 1984).
23 Lavington, Enthusiasm, 1: xxxiii.
24 Walter Sellon was closely associated with John Wesley and a group of Methodist preachers. For the reference to one of Green’s flock attending Sellon’s sermons, see J. B., ‘The Church on the Hill: Recollections of Rev. Walter Sellon’, Wesleyatt-Methodist Magazine ser. 5, 2 (1856), 35–42, 133–40, 231–9, 332–40, at 337.
25 Green, Dissertation, 16.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid. Most of this section is extracted from the anonymous work The Frauds of Romish Monks and Priests (London, 1704).
28 Modern scholars have also made the parallel. See Oh, Gwang Seok, John Wesley’s Ecclesiology: A Study in its Sources and Development, Pietist, and Wesleyan Studies 27 (Plymouth, MA, 2008), 32–3.Google Scholar
29 Green, Dissertation, 91–2.
30 The English-language critique of this work can be dated back to the translation of the parody of it by Erasmus Alber (1500–53), The alcaron of the barefote friers (1550).
31 Lavington, Enthusiasm, 1:62.
32 The work in question, Gherardo da Borgo San Donnino’s Liber introductorius ad Evangelium aeturnum (1254), had contributed to the conflict between the secular masters and the mendicants at the University of Paris. See Péano, P., ‘Gérard de Borgo San Donnino’, DHGE 20: 709–21.Google Scholar These details would have been known to Lavington through the work of Matthew Paris, which he used in the compilation of Enthusiasm.
33 Szittya, Penn R., ‘The Antifraternal Tradition in Middle English Literature’, Speculum 52 (1977), 287–313, at 291.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
34 Green, Dissertation, 168–9.
35 Ibid., vi.
36 Thomson, Wiliel R., ‘The Image of the Mendicants in the Chronicles of Matthew Paris’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 70 (1977), 3–34.Google Scholar
37 Paris, Matthew, Historia Major, ed. Wats, W. (London, 1640).Google Scholar As this is the version of the text that Lavington used, it, rather than the modern editions, will be cited below.
38 Paris, Historia Major, 211, 407, 408. An English translation of these passages can be found in Roger of Wendover, Flowers of History, transl. J. A. Giles, 2 vols (London, 1849), 2: 212, 599, 600.
39 Paris, Historia Major, 967–8; 986; 611–12; idem, English History from the Year 1235–1275, transl. J. A. Giles, 3 vols, (London, 1889), 3: 278, 324–5, 1: 247.
40 Lavington, Enthusiasm, 1: 169; Paris, Historia Major, 693–5; Paris, English History, 2: 135–40.
41 Walsh, John, ‘Methodism and the Mob’, in Cuming, G. J. and Baker, D., ed., Popular Belief and Practice, SCH 8 (Cambridge, 1972), 213–27.Google Scholar
42 See Haydon, Colin, Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England (Manchester, 1993), 65 Google Scholar; Ward, ‘Was there a Methodist Evangelistic Strategy?’, 295–6.
43 Orcibal, Jean, ‘The Theological Originality of John Wesley and Continental Spirituality’, in Davies, Rupert, George, A. Raymond and Rupp, Gordon, eds, A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, 4 vols (London, 1965-88), 1: 83–111 Google Scholar; Turner, John Munsey, ‘Methodism, Roman Catholicism and the Middle Ages’, One in Christ 38 (2003), 47–70 Google Scholar; Oh, Gwang Seok, John Wesley’s Ecclesiology, 24–9.Google Scholar
44 Wesley, John, A Concise Ecclesiastical History, 4 vols (London, 1781).Google Scholar
45 Cameron, Euan, ‘Medieval Heretics as Protestant Martyrs’, in Wood, Diana, ed., Martyrs and Martyrologies, SCH 30 (Oxford, 1993), 185–207.Google Scholar
46 Anon, ., A Brief Account of the Late Persecution and Barbarous Usage of the Methodists at Exeter (Exeter, 1746), 36.Google Scholar
47 John Lorenz von Mosheim, Institutiones Historiae Ecclesiasticae (1726); ET by Maclaine, Archibald, An Ecclesiastical History, Antient and Modern, from the Birth of Christ to the Beginning of the Present Century, 2 vols (London, 1765).Google Scholar
48 Wesley, Ecclesiastical History, 1: v.
49 Mosheim, Ecclesiastical History, transl. Maclaine, 1: xxiv.
50 Wesley, John, A Second Letter to the Author of Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists Compared (London, 1751), ix.Google Scholar Wesley’s debates with Catholics about Wycliffe and the Council of Constance (1414–18) have occasioned considerable historical discussion: Butler, David, Methodists and Papists (London, 1995), 60–9.Google Scholar
51 Sutcliffe, Joseph, The Mutual Communion of the Saints Exemplified (London, 1796), 11–13.Google Scholar Sutcliffe’s analysis relied on acceptance of the work of the seventeenth-century Waldensian pastor John Leger, whose mis-dating of several documents gave the Waldensians a doctrinally Reformed medieval past. The true picture was more complicated, and Euan Cameron has noted how ‘slender’ the evidence for this Protestant historiography actually is: Cameron, Euan, Waldenses: Rejections of Holy Church in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 2000), 263, 129 respectively.Google Scholar
52 Wesley, , Ecclesiastical History, 2: 272–9.Google Scholar The ‘execrable crusades against the Albigensians’ also featured in another of Wesley’s works: Popery Calmly Considered (London, 1779), 23.
53 Wesley, , Ecclesiastical History, 2: 209.Google Scholar
54 Ibid. 211.
55 A similar pattern of editorial behaviour can be noted in Wesley’s treatment of the Counter-Reformation French aristocrat Gaston de Renty: Eamon Duffy, ‘Wesley and the Counter-Reformation’, in Garnett, Jane and Matthew, Colin, eds, Revival and Religion since 1700: Essays for John Walsh (London, 1993), 1–19, esp. 11–12.Google Scholar Wesley was not the only Protestant historian to use these tactics when it came to the Cathars or Albigensians: Cameron, ‘Medieval Heretics’, 206.
56 Schmidt, C., Histoire et doctrine de la secte des Cathares ou Albigeois, 2 vols (Paris / Geneva, 1848-9).Google Scholar See Hamilton, Bernard, ‘The Legacy of Charles Schmidt to the Study of Christian Dualism’, JMedH 24 (1998), 191–294.Google Scholar
57 Mosheim, , Ecclesiastical History, transl. Machine, 1: 464 Google Scholar; missing from Wesley, Ecclesiastical History, 2: 84. See Landes, Richard, ‘The Birth of Heresy: A Millennial Phenomenon’, JRH 24 (2000), 26–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
58 Mosheim, Ecclesiastical History, transl. Maclaine, 1: 545; missing from Wesley, Ecclesiastical History, 2: 151. Forty years later another Protestant historian who was engaged in a far more radical redaction of Mosheim’s work did not hesitate to retain this detail: Collins, Charles Trelawney, A Summary of Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History, 2 vols (London, 1822), 1: 294.Google Scholar
59 Mosheim, , Ecclesiastical History, transl. Maclaine, 1: 701.Google Scholar
60 Wesley, , Ecclesiastical History, 2: 279.Google Scholar