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by God’s grace shall never be put out.”
The Church of England, following in the steps of Rome, perse- [174]
cuted dissenters from the established faith. In the seventeenth cen-
tury thousands of godly pastors were expelled from their positions.
The people were forbidden, on pain of heavy fines, imprisonment,
and banishment, to attend any religious meetings except such as
were sanctioned by the church. Those faithful souls who could not
refrain from gathering to worship God, were compelled to meet in
dark alleys, in obscure garrets, and at some seasons in the woods at
midnight. In the sheltering depths of the forest, a temple of God’s
own building, those scattered and persecuted children of the Lord
assembled to pour out their souls in prayer and praise. But despite
all their precautions, many suffered for their faith. The jails were
crowded. Families were broken up. Many were banished to foreign
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lands. Yet God was with his people, and persecution could not pre-
vail to silence their testimony. Many were driven across the ocean to
America, and here laid the foundations of civil and religious liberty
which have been the bulwark and glory of our country.
As in apostolic days, the persecution turned out rather to the
furtherance of the gospel. In a loathsome dungeon crowded with
profligates and felons, John Bunyan breathed the very atmosphere of
Heaven, and there he wrote his wonderful allegory of the pilgrim’s
journey from the land of destruction to the celestial city. For two
hundred years that voice from Bedford jail has spoken with thrilling
power to the hearts of men. Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” and
“Grace Abounding to the Chief Si
the path of life.
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Baxter, Flavel, Alleine, and other men of talent, education, and
deep Christian experience, stood up in valiant defense of “the faith
once delivered to the saints.” The work accomplished by these men,
proscribed and outlawed by the rulers of this world, can never per-
ish. Flavel’s “Fountain of Life” and “Method of Grace” have taught
thousands how to commit the keeping of their souls to Christ. Bax-
ter’s “Reformed Pastor” has proved a blessing to many who desire a
revival of the work of God, and his “Saints’ Everlasting Rest” has
done its work in leading souls to the “rest that remaineth for the
people of God.”
A hundred years later, in a day of great spiritual darkness, White-
field and the Wesleys appeared as light-bearers for God. Under the
rule of the established church, the people of England had lapsed
into a state of religious declension hardly to be distinguished from
heathenism. Natural religion was the favorite study of the clergy,
and included most of their theology. The higher classes sneered at
piety, and prided themselves on being above what they called its fa-
naticism. The lower classes were grossly ignorant, and abandoned to
vice, while the church had no courage or faith to any longer support
the downfallen cause of truth.
Whitefield and the Wesleys were prepared for their work by long
and sharp personal convictions of their own lost condition; and that
they might be able to endure hardness as good soldiers of Christ, they
were subjected to the fiery ordeal of scorn, derision, and persecution,
both in the university and as they were entering the ministry. They
Later Reformers
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and a few others who sympathized with them were contemptuously
[176]
called Methodists by their ungodly fellow-students,—a name which
is at the present time regarded as honorable by one of the largest
denominations in England and America.
They were members of the Church of England, and were strongly
attached to her forms of worship; but the Lord had presented before
them in his word a higher standard. The Holy Spirit urged them to
preach Christ and him crucified. The power of the Highest attended
their labors. Thousands were convicted and truly converted. It
was necessary that these sheep be protected from ravening wolves.
Wesley had no thought of forming a new denomination, but he
organized them under what was called the Methodist Co
Mysterious and trying was the opposition which these preachers
encountered from the established church; yet God, in his wisdom,
had overruled events to cause the reform to begin where it did. Had
it come wholly from without, it would not have penetrated where it
was so much needed. As the revival preachers were churchmen, and
labored within the pale of the church wherever they could find op-
portunity, the truth had an entrance where the doors would otherwise
have remained closed. Some of the clergy were roused from their
moral stupor, and became zealous preachers in their own parishes.
The churches that had been petrified by formalism were quickened
into life.
Men of different gifts performed their appointed work. They did
not harmonize upon every point of doctrine, but all were moved by
the Spirit of God, and united in the absorbing aim to win souls to
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Christ. The differences between Whitefield and the Wesleys threat-
ened at one time to create alienation; but as they learned meekness
in the school of Christ, mutual forbearance and charity reconciled
them. They had no time to dispute, while error and iniquity were
teeming everywhere, and si
labored and prayed together, and their friendship was strengthened
as they sowed the gospel seed in the same fields.
The servants of God trod a rugged path. Men of influence and
learning employed their powers against them. After a time many
of the clergy manifested determined hostility, and the doors of the
churches were closed against a pure faith and those who proclaimed
it. The course of the clergy in denouncing them from the pulpit,
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aroused the elements of darkness, ignorance, and iniquity. Again
and again did John Wesley escape death by a miracle of God’s mercy.
When the rage of the mob was excited against him, and there seemed
no way of escape, an angel in human form came to his side, the mob
fell back, and the servant of Christ passed in safety from the place
of danger.
The Methodists of those early days—people as well as preach-
ers—endured ridicule and persecution, alike from church-members
and from the openly irreligious who were inflamed by their misrep-
resentations. They were arraigned before courts of justice—such
only in name, for justice had no place in the courts of that time.
Often they suffered violence from their persecutors. Mobs went
from house to house, destroying furniture and goods, plundering