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“My chains fell off, my heart was free”: Early Methodist Conversion Narrative in England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

D. Bruce Hindmarsh
D. Bruce Hindmarsh
Affiliation:
D. Bruce Hindmarsh is professor of church history and historical theology at Briercrest Biblical Seminary.
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Extract

From twelve at night till two it was my turn to stand sentinel at a dangerous post … As soon as I was alone, I kneeled down, and determined not to rise, but to continue crying and wrestling with God, till He had mercy on me. How long I was in that agony I cannot tell; but as I looked up to heaven I saw the clouds open exceeding bright, and I saw Jesus hanging on the cross. At the same moment these words were applied to my heart, “thy sins are forgiven thee.” My chains fell off; my heart was free. All guilt was gone, and my soul was filled with unutterable peace. I loved God and all mankind, and the fear of death and hell was vanished away. I was filled with wonder and astonishment.

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Articles
Information
Church History , Volume 68 , Issue 4 , December 1999 , pp. 910 - 929
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1999

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References

1. Telford, John, ed., Wesley's Veterans: Lives of Early Methodist Preachers Told by Themselves (London: Robert Culley, 1912), 1:74–75;Google ScholarJackson, Thomas, ed., Lives of Early Methodist Preachers, 3d ed. (London: Wesleyan Conference Office, 1865–1866), 4:122.Google ScholarI cross-reference the third edition (1865–66) of Jackson's Lives throughout this article, since this (or the identical fourth edition begun 1871) is the most complete and authoritative edition produced by Jackson. For a comparison of the Telford and Jackson editions, see Bretherton, F. F., “ ‘Early Methodist Preachers’ and ‘Wesley's Veterans,’” Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 22 (1940): 102–3. Telford's edition also provides cross-references to the original autobiographical essays in the Arminian Magazine.Google Scholar

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4. On evangelical traditions of conversion, see for example Hy. Pickering, , Twice-Born Men (London: Pickering and Inglis, n.d. [1932 or later]).Google ScholarRoutley, Erik refers to Paul, Augustine, and Wesley as “classic conversions” in his Conversion (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1960), 19–23.Google ScholarOn readings of John Wesley's conversion, see Maddox, Randy L., “Aldersgate: A Tradition History,” in Aldersgate Reconsidered, ed. Maddox, Randy L. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), 133–i6.Google Scholar

5. The discussion that follows sets the evangelical conversion type in the context of historical shifts in the understanding of conversion. I explore these historical shifts in more detail in D. B. Hindmarsh, “Early Evangelical Conversion in the Light of Early Evangelical Mission History,” position paper no. 25, North Atlantic Missiology Project, Cambridge, 1997. For an analytical typology of conversion, see Lewis Rambo, R., Understanding Religious Conversion (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993), esp. 5–19.Google Scholar

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15. See further Hindmarsh, “Early Evangelical Conversion.”Google Scholar

16. Mascuch, Michael, Origins of the Individualist Self: Autobiography and Self-Identity in England, 1591–1791 (Cambridge: Polity, 1997), 23–24;Google Scholarcf.Gusdorf, Georges, “Conditions and Limits of Autobiography,” in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, ed. Olney, James (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 28–48;Google ScholarWeintraub, Karl J., “Autobiography and Historical Consciousness,” Critical Inquiry 1 (1975): 821–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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18. On the elements of autobiography as a hermeneutical genre, see Olney, James, “Autobiography and the Cultural Moment,” in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, ed. Olney, 6.Google Scholar

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20. The best analysis of Wesley's changing self-interpretation is Heitzenrater, Richard P., “Great Expectations: Aldersgate and the Evidences of Genuine Christianity,” in Aldersgate Reconsidered, ed. Maddox, Randy L. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), 49–91.Google Scholar

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23. Jackson, Lives, l:xii.Google Scholar

24. Sometimes there was a further crisis of travail and relief when experiencing “entire sanctification,” though the preachers were understandably often more reticent to speak of this until drawn out by others. See for example the cases of John Haime and William Hunter in Telford, Wesley's Veterans, 1:56–58 and 4:177–79; Jackson, Lives, 1:269–311 and 2:240–61.

25. Arminian Magazine 2 (1779): 77–89, 129–6; Telford, Wesley's Veterans, 1:197–251; Jackson, Lives, 2:48–106.Google Scholar

26. Telford, Wesley's Veterans, 1:205; Jackson, Lives, 2:56.Google Scholar

27. Telford, Wesley's Veterans, 1:242–43; Jackson, Lives, 2:89.Google Scholar

28. Indeed, the preachers' lives do not refer to Wesley's Aldersgate experience as a model for their own conversion. Even in Methodist history subsequent to Wesley, Aldersgate figured less prominently in the nineteenth century than in the twentieth. See further, Jean Miller Schmidt,“‘Strangely Warmed’: The Place of Aldersgate in the Methodist Canon,” in Aldersgate Reconsidered, ed. Maddox, 109–119.Google Scholar

29. See Heitzenrater, “Great Expectations,” 84–91.Google Scholar

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31. Rivers, “ ‘Strangers and Pilgrims,’ ” 195–96.Google Scholar

32. Rivers, “ ‘Strangers and Pilgrims,’ ” 195.Google Scholar

33. I discuss the epistolary form in more detail in Hindmarsh, D. B., John Newton and the English Evangelical Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 29–34, 243–47Google Scholar

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35. Margaret Austin to Charles Wesley, 19 May 1740, Early Methodist Volume, John Rylands Library, Manchester. (For sources cited from this archive, the abbreviation JRL will be used hereafter.)Google Scholar

36. Austin to Wesley, 19 May 1740.Google Scholar

37. Jackson, Journal of Charles Wesley, 1:211. Some of the narratives of members of both the Wesleyan Methodist and Moravian bands in London during the stillness controversy are extant, and it would be useful to compare the two. The narratives from the Wesleyan side of the dispute are in the Early Methodist Volume at the John Rylands Library, Manchester. Unfortunately, the Moravian records of the Fetter Lane Society, housed at Moravian Church House, London, have been mothballed for several years and are not available to researchers.Google Scholar

38. Jackson, Journal of Charles Wesley, 1207.Google Scholar

39. Jackson, Journal of Charles Wesley, 1207.Google Scholar

40. In this vein, Maria Price began her letter to Charles Wesley in 1740 by addressing him, “My dear father in God,” MS letter, JRL. It appears that Charles Wesley solicited several of the first MS letters in this volume from women in the London bands as documentation against stillness and confirmation “—‘seals’ to his ministry.” The letter from Bristow, E., the earliest in the archive, is reprinted in Jackson, Journal of Charles Wesley, 1:217–18, only three days after the date on the MS letter.Google Scholar

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43. Mrs. Clagget to Charles Wesley, 24 July 1738, MS letter, JRL; cf. Jackson, , journal of Charles Wesley, 1:112–14.Google Scholar

44. Taverner Wallis to Charles Wesley, 24 November 1741, MS letter, JRL.Google Scholar

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48. Martha Jones to Charles Wesley, 1 June 1740, MS letter, JRL.Google Scholar

49. For example, Sarah Middleton began her account to Charles Wesley, “I wrote these lines to let you know what a pharisee I was. I went to Church and Sacrament Constantly and I thought I did very well for I was a strict pharisee.” 25 May 1740, MSS letter, JRL.Google Scholar

50. Newton, John, Memoirs of the Life of the Late Rev. William Grimshaw (London, 1799; reprint, London, 1825), 4.Google Scholar

51. See John Wesley's anniversary recollection of the fire on February 9, 1750 in Journals and Diaries 3, ed. Ward, W. R. and Heitzenrater, Richard P., vol. 20 of The Works of John Wesley, ed. Heitzenrater, Richard P. and Baker, Frank (Nashville: Abingdon, 1991), 320; cf. Arminian Magazine (1778): 31–33.Google Scholar

52. Telford, Wesley's Veterans, 1:175; Jackson, Lives, 1:240.Google Scholar

53. Wesley, Journals and Diaries 1, 242–43.Google Scholar

54. Martha Jones to Charles Wesley, 1 June 1740.Google Scholar

55. Thomas Cooper to Charles Wesley, [1741], MS letter, JRL.Google Scholar

56. Maria Price to Charles Wesley, 18 May 1740, MS letter, JRL.Google Scholar

57. Charles Wesley told Maria Price in 1740 that she ought to read this chapter, since it described her state (Price to Wesley, 18 May 1740).Google Scholar

58. Cooper to Wesley, [1741].Google Scholar

59. Telford, Wesley's Veterans, 1:205; Jackson, Lives, 2:56.Google Scholar

60. James Hewett to Charles Wesley, November 1741, MS letter, JRL.Google Scholar

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62. Jackson, Journal of Charles Wesley, entry for 21 May 1738.Google Scholar

63. The locus classicus for this was 1 Peter 1:8, the text upon which Jonathan Edwards based his treatise on The Religious Affections in 1746.Google Scholar

64. A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists, ed. Hildebrandt, Franz and Beckerlegge, Oliver A., with Dale, James, vol. 7 of The Works of John Wesley, ed. Baker, Frank and Heitzenrater, Richard P. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), 323. In the quotation at the beginning of this article, Sampson Staniforth's words, “my chains fell off; my heart was free,” were doubtless an allusion to this hymn.Google Scholar

65. Mrs Platt to Wesley, Charles, 20 September [1740], MS letter, JRL; cf. Jackson, Journal of Charles Wesley, 1:129,Google Scholar where Charles Wesley describes Mrs. Platt's progress from sorrow to joy; and also John Wesley, Journals and Diaries 2, ed. Ward, W. R. and Heitzenrater, Richard P., vol. 19 of The Works of John Wesley, ed. Baker, Frank and Heitzenrater, Richard P. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), 127.Google Scholar

66. Rack, Henry D., “Evangelical Endings: Death-Beds in Evangelical Biography,” Bulletin of the john Rylands University Library of Manchester 74 (1992): 39–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67. Many manuscript narratives of deathbed piety are also included in the Early Methodist Volume, JRL.Google Scholar

68. Account of Joanna Barber's death by her husband [William Barber?] to Charles Wesley, February 1752, MS letter, JRL.Google Scholar

69. Austin to Wesley, 19 May 1740.Google Scholar

70. Mary Ramsay to Charles Wesley, 4 June 1740, MS letter, JRL.Google Scholar

71. Austin to Wesley, 19 May 1740.Google Scholar

72. Sarah Barber to Charles Wesley, May 1740, MS letter, JRL.Google Scholar

73. See for example the narratives by Margaret Austin, Mrs. Platt, and Mrs. Clagget, JRL.Google Scholar

74. On the question of the relationship between gender and religious ideology, as raised in such narratives, see Nussbaum, Felicity A., The Autobiographical Subject: Gender and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 154–77; andGoogle ScholarMartha Tomhave Blauvelt and Rosemary Keller, Skinner, “Women and Revivalism: The Puritan and Wesleyan Traditions,” in Women and Religion in America, vol. 2, The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods, ed. Ruether, Rosemary Radford and Keller, Rosemary Skinner (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983), 316–67.Google ScholarVirginia Lieson Brereton examines nineteenth- and twentieth-century conversion narratives by women in From Sin to Salvation: Stories of Women's Conversions, 1800 to the Present (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991). She uses the notion of “surface” and “submerged”0 plots to demonstrate the way in which the conventional religious story also functioned politically to create a more public role for women: “Rather than becoming retiring flowers, women went on to dedicated, bold, and often courageous activity” (29).Google Scholar

75. See for example the narratives of Mitchell, Thomas and Lee, Thomas in Telford, Wesley's Veterans, 1:175–96 and 3:198–219; and Jackson, Lives, 1:240–59 and 4:152–69. Cf.Walsh, John, “Methodism and the Mob in the Eighteenth Century,” in Popular Belief and Practice, ed. Cumming, G. J. and Baker, Derek, Studies in Church History 8 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 213–27.Google Scholar