One day in the summer of 1723, John took a walk alone in the country. When he stopped to rest beside a stream, he noticed that his nose had begun to bleed. At first he was not too concerned, but as the minutes ticked by and he could not get the bleeding to stop, John began to worry that he might bleed to death. Finally, in desperation he jumped into the cold water of the stream. The sudden shock seemed to stem the flow of blood, and a soggy and shivering John set off for home. As he trudged along, he promised himself that he would pay closer attention to his health and well-being.
In the library at Oxford, John began to search for the latest information available on living a healthy life. One book caught his attention. The book was titled Dr. Cheyne’s Book of Health and Long Life, and John read it from cover to cover. Unlike many theories of the day that promoted bloodletting and the use of purgatives as cures for sickness, Dr. Cheyne’s approach was more preventative. Dr. Cheyne urged his readers to take control of their own health by consuming moderate amounts of food and drink and by exercising regularly. John made a list of foods that Dr. Cheyne considered unhealthy, including anything salted or highly seasoned, as well as pork, fish, and stall-fed cattle. The doctor recommended drinking two pints of water a day, along with eating a total of eight ounces of meat and twelve ounces of vegetables. As far as exercise was concerned, Dr. Cheyne recommended lots of it. He was particularly impressed with horse riding, which “promoted a universal perspiration,” and stated that everyone should be in bed by eight o’clock at night and arise at four in the morning. John did his best to follow the advice in the book, and soon he began to notice an improvement in his health.
Shortly after his twenty-first birthday on June 17, 1724, John received a pleasant surprise. His brother Samuel wrote to say that their mother was coming to London to greet her brother who was returning from India. John was surprised that his mother had decided to make the arduous journey, as she had not been to London since long before he was born. Still, he was delighted to think that the event could mark a turnaround in the Wesley family’s fortunes. Uncle Samuel Annesley was a prominent trader with the East India Company who had made a fortune in India. He had written to Susanna promising that upon his return to England he would give his sister the enormous sum of one thousand pounds in order to get the Wesleys out of debt and set them on a better financial footing. John’s mother then wrote to say that she would use some of the money to pay off John’s debts as well, possibly allowing John to continue at Christ Church to earn a master’s degree.
John traveled to London from Oxford and he, Samuel, and Charles met their mother when she arrived by stagecoach from Epworth. They accompanied her to the dock to await the arrival of the ship carrying her brother. Finally the vessel sailed up the Thames River and tied up alongside the dock, but Samuel Annesley was not aboard. The vessel’s captain did not know why he had not sailed with them when they left India, and no one aboard could give them any information about what had happened to him. There was nothing to do but write to India and wait for a reply from Samuel. But the reply never came. Samuel Annesley and his fortune had disappeared forever. The family suspected foul play, but they were too far away to pursue any investigation. John learned a bitter lesson in counting on money that was promised to him.
When she arrived back in Epworth, Susanna wrote to John. “Do not be discouraged; do your duty, keep close to your studies, and hope for better days.”
Since his debts remained unpaid, John needed to cut back on his spending. He decided to grow his hair long to avoid the cost of buying a new wig. No one else he knew had his own head of long hair, though oddly enough the fashion of the day was for men to wear long-haired wigs. The fact that he grew out his hair did not bother John. In fact he joked about it in a letter to his mother. First he described how dangerous it was to be out at night in Oxford. One of his fellow students had been standing at the entrance to a coffeehouse at about seven o’clock in the evening when someone ran past and snatched both the student’s cap and his wig from his head. John added, “I am pretty safe from such gentlemen, for unless they carried me away, carcass and all, they would have but a poor purchase.”
John continued with his studies, unsure what he would do when he graduated from Christ Church. Because he had no family money behind him, his choices were limited to being either a teacher or a clergyman. Although he came from a line of distinguished ministers, John was not sure that he wanted to follow in their footsteps, yet he felt some pressure to do so. In 1724 John’s father was given a second parish to watch over. The new parish was located in Wroot, about five miles from Epworth, but in winter the two villages were cut off from each other by the rising water of the marshlands. His responsibilities with the new parish paid Samuel Wesley an extra fifty pounds a year, though much of that money was spent employing an assistant curate to preach at one or the other of the churches. It seemed an obvious choice for John to return to Epworth and become his father’s curate once he graduated. But the thought of preaching did not appeal to John, though he was not sure why. Then a chance meeting shed some light on the subject for him.
One chilly night as he entered the main door of the college, John struck up a conversation with the college porter. The porter had on only a light coat as he stood shivering by the door. John encouraged him to go and put on a warmer coat and drink some hot tea, but the porter responded that he was wearing the only coat he owned and all he had to drink each day was water. And even though he was shivering, he added that he thanked God for the coat he did have and the water he had to drink, as well as for the dry stones he would sleep upon that night.
John was surprised by the porter’s reply, and he said, “You thank God when you have nothing to wear, nothing to eat, and no bed to lie upon. What else do you thank Him for?”
The porter looked John directly in the eye and said, “I thank Him that He has given me my life and being, and a heart to love Him, and a desire to serve Him.”
As John lay in his bed that night, he thought about what the porter had said, and he asked himself some questions: Why didn’t he feel that same love for God? How was the porter able to carry on with such a grateful attitude even though he had few material comforts? Could the porter have found the secret of a righteous life, while it had eluded him, a soon-to-be graduate of Christ Church? John did not know the answers to these troubling questions, but he knew that he would not stop searching until he found them.
Chapter 5
The Quest for Meaning
Stirred by the questions the short conversation with the college porter had raised within him, John set out on a quest to find true spiritual meaning. It would prove to be a long and difficult journey. John started his quest by reading the book The Rules of Holy Living and Dying by Jeremy Taylor. But the book seemed to raise more questions than it answered. One of the questions it raised had to do with the notion of predestination. The Church of England taught that God predestines, or chooses in advance, the people who will become Christians and receive eternal life. This view was developed by the French theologian John Calvin and his Calvinist followers. According to this way of thinking, John realized that if he had become a Christian, it was not because he had freely chosen to do so but because he was following a set course that God had already planned for him. The opposing doctrine stated that each person freely makes his or her own decision to become a Christian and that even God does not know whether a person will make that choice. A Dutch theologian named Jacobus Arminius was the first to put forward this doctrine, which thus became known as Arminianism.
The more John thought about the issue, the more confused he became. He could see Bible verses that supported both views. Finally, as he often did when he was confused, John turned to his mother for advice. She, too, had struggled with the same question in her youth and was happy to share her conclusions with her son in a complex letter.
Dear Son,
I have often wondered that men should be so vain to amuse themselves by searching into the decrees of God, which no human wit can fathom; and do not rather employ their time and powers in working out their salvation, and making their own calling and election sure.
Such studies tend more to confound them than to inform the understanding; and young people have best let them alone. But…I will tell you my thoughts on the matter, and if they satisfy not, you may desire your father’s direction, who is surely better qualified than me.
The doctrine of predestination as maintained by rigid Calvinists is very shocking, and ought to be abhorred because it charges the most holy God with being the author of sin. And I think you reason very well and justly against it; for it is certainly inconsistent with the justice and goodness of God.…
[Yet] I do firmly believe that God, from all eternity, has elected some to everlasting life; but then I humbly conceive that this election is founded on his foreknowledge.…
This is the sum of what I believe concerning predestination…; since it does in no wise detract from the glory of God’s free grace, nor impair the liberty of man. Nor can it with more reason be supposed that the [foreknowledge] of God is the cause that so many finally perish, than our knowing the sun will rise tomorrow is the cause of the rising.
The letter settled the issue for John. He believed as his mother did, that God chose certain key people to become Christians and that the rest were left with free choice as to whether or not they would be saved and go to heaven.
But while John had settled the matter of predestination to his satisfaction, other issues soon arose to take its place. John talked with Lutherans and Calvinists alike about the role of faith and works in the Christian life. Was it enough to believe in Christ, he wondered, or did a Christian have to do good works to prove that he or she was saved? The opinions he received from others sent John around and around on this issue until eventually he had to accept the fact that he had no firm answer to this question.
All of this thinking about the Christian faith convinced John of one thing: his future lay in the church. When he graduated from Christ Church with his bachelor’s degree in 1724, regardless of his tight financial situation, John immediately signed up to begin work on a master’s degree while seeking to be ordained as a minister in the Church of England.
The following year turned out to be one of the most confusing years of all for John as he studied for his master’s degree. This time his problem was not with theological issues but with young women—four young women to be exact. John’s friend Robin Griffith introduced him to a new circle of friends in the Cotswold village of Stanton, west of Oxford. Whenever he had spare time, John walked or rode to Stanton to spend time picnicking, dancing, or discussing the latest literature with people. Even though he was short and not particularly handsome, on these visits John attracted the attention of many young women. He was serious about his faith, he was intelligent, and, most unusual of all for the time, he accepted women as his intellectual equals, since he had been raised by a well-educated mother and had been surrounded by seven witty and well-read sisters. These qualities soon made John the center of attention of four young women in particular who clung to every word he said. The young women were three sisters, Sally, Elizabeth, and Damaris Kirkman, and a twenty-year-old widow named Mary Pendarves. All four of these women were interested in marriage and saw John as a good possibility for a husband.
