The population of Savannah would have none of John’s pastoral-care argument and came down firmly on the side of William and Sophia Williamson. Soon all of Savannah was in an uproar over the incident. Thomas Causton, Sophia’s uncle, gathered complaints from disgruntled parishioners in town, and at seven o’clock in the morning of August 8, John answered a knock at the door. A constable handed him a document signed by Thomas Christie, the court recorder at Savannah. The document read,
Georgia, Savannah,
To all Constables, Tithingmen and others, whom these may concern:
You, and each of you, are hereby required to take the body of John Wesley, Clerk:
And bring him before one of the bailiffs of the said town to answer the complaint of William Williamson and Sophia, his wife, for defaming the said Sophia, and refusing to administer to her the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, in the public congregation, without cause; by which the said William Williamson is damaged one thousand pounds sterling: And for so doing, this is your warrant, certifying what you are to do in the premises. Given under my hand and seal of the eighth day of August, Anno Domini 1737.
Tho. Christie.
After reading the warrant, John pulled on his coat and followed the constable to the courthouse, where the charges against him were read. He was released without bail and admonished not to flee the colony. His court hearing was set for early December. Unfortunately for John, Governor Oglethorpe, the one man who might have been able to help him, was away in England.
As winter approached, John worried that he would never get a fair hearing in a court in Georgia—he had made too many enemies in the colony. Under the cover of darkness in the early hours of Saturday morning, December 2, 1737, John left the parsonage in Savannah behind for good. Skulking in the shadows he made his way to the banks of the Savannah River at a place where he could not be seen from the fort at the river’s edge. Three men were waiting in a boat to aid John in his escape. They rowed him across the river to South Carolina. The plan, once they reached South Carolina, was to walk overland through the swamps and woods to Port Royal, where John and one of the other men, also escaping from Georgia, would board a ship headed for England.
Dawn was beginning to break as John and his companions set out through the thick forest. The men soon became disoriented and unable to tell which direction they were headed. They came upon a small cabin in which lived an old man named Benjamin Arieu. They stopped and asked Benjamin for directions to Port Royal, and Benjamin pointed to a narrow path.
“Follow the blazed trees, and they will take you to your destination,” Benjamin said. (A tree had been “blazed” when a piece of its bark had been cut away to mark a trail.)
Soon the group were making good progress following the marked trees, that is, until midafternoon, when they came to a fork in the track, with blazed trees lining each fork. Not knowing which way to go, the group decided to follow the track that veered to the right. But after a mile, this track came to a sudden end in the middle of a dense stand of trees. The men could do nothing but turn around, retrace their footsteps, and follow the other fork of the track. This they did, but the other fork of the track also came to an abrupt end in the middle of a dense stand of trees. By that time the sun had begun to set, and the four men settled in to spend a cold night in the woods. Using a stick, they managed to dig down three feet to water so that they could drink, and John had brought a small cake with him, which he divided four ways.
Despite the difficult circumstances, John slept well on the damp ground, and as soon as the sun was up, the men began searching for the path to Port Royal. By midday they had not found it and decided to return to Benjamin Arieu’s cabin. They arrived there just as darkness was descending. Benjamin was surprised that they had not been able to find their way and promised to send his nephew with them in the morning as a guide.
At sunup the next morning the group set out once again from Benjamin’s cabin. It did not take the men long to learn that the old man’s nephew was not very familiar with the path to Port Royal, and soon they were lost once again. Fortunately, the old man’s nephew had a good sense of direction. When the track came to an end, he led the group on as they crashed through the dense forest and underbrush and sloshed over swampy ground. It took two more days, but eventually the group made it to Port Royal. John was glad to see the place, though his delight was tempered by the fact that no ships were anchored at the port, waiting to return to England. In fact, it was not until December 22 that John finally climbed aboard the Samuel, which had arrived several days before and was about to set to sea for England. The captain agreed to transport John home.
If John had hoped that his spirits would rise when he set sail from North America, he was sadly mistaken. He started the voyage with a bout of seasickness that subsided into a general depression. Thoughts of the high hopes he had had for himself when he had left England flooded his mind. He was going to be a missionary to the Indians, living a simple life and seeking God wholeheartedly. But what a mockery he had made of these intentions. He had hardly spoken to an Indian, had gotten caught up in all sorts of gossip, and had turned his life and Sophia’s into a public spectacle. He had tried the best he could, and this was the mess he had managed to make of things. What good was he? Would he ever be able to do anything worthwhile for God?
To make matters worse, if that were possible, a storm blew up, and once again John feared for his life. This time there were no Moravians aboard ship to sing hymns with, and he felt as scared of dying as he ever had in his life. Haven’t I learned anything about trusting God in the last year and a half? he asked himself. In the midst of his despair, John reached for his journal and wrote:
I went to America to convert the Indians; but O! who shall convert me? Who, what is he that will deliver me from this evil heart of mischief? I have a fair summer of religion. I can talk well: nay, and believe myself, while no danger is near; but let death look me in the face, and my spirit is troubled. Nor can I say, “To die is gain!…” In a storm I think, “What if the Gospel is not true?” (Then I am of all men most foolish.)
The storm did not claim John’s life or the Samuel, and as the vessel sailed on, John continued to pour out his heart in his journal.
It is now two years and almost four months since I left my native country, in order to teach the Georgia Indians the nature of Christianity: But what have I learned myself in the mean time? Why (what I least of all suspected), that I who went to America to convert others, was never myself converted to God. “I am not mad,” though I thus speak; but “I speak the words of truth and soberness,” if haply some of those who still dream may awake, and see, that as I am, so are they.…
This, then, I have learned at the ends of the earth—that I “am fallen short of the glory of God”; that my whole heart is “altogether corrupt and abominable”; and, consequently, my whole life (seeing it cannot be, that an “evil tree” should “bring forth good fruit”): That “alienated” as I am from the life of God, I am a “child of wrath” and an heir of hell.
Christmas and then New Year 1738 passed aboard ship with little joy for John. As much as he hated being at sea, John dreaded the voyage’s end in England. What would he tell his family and friends when he got there? And what would he do? Would he be accepted as a rector or curate now? He did not know, and he did not care.
Chapter 9
Saved by Faith
John disembarked at Deal in Kent, England, on February 1, 1738, more distraught and depressed than he had been when he embarked on the voyage in Port Royal, South Carolina. Once ashore, not wanting to face his friends in Oxford, John headed for London, where he stayed with his friend James Hutton. Upon reaching London, John was surprised to learn that a handful of small “Methodist” groups had sprung up around England. In the two years that John had been in Georgia, members of the Holy Club had taken up positions as ministers around the country and had spread the club’s ideals. Even so, John did not take much pleasure in the spread of the club—he was preoccupied with his problems.
Six days after arriving back in England, John met a man named Peter Böhler. Peter was a Moravian en route to Savannah, Georgia, who needed somewhere to stay for a few days. Since Peter spoke no English and John spoke limited German, John offered to translate for him and help him find lodging during his stay in England.
It soon became apparent that Peter could help John a lot more than John could help Peter. The two men spent many hours talking about the state of John’s soul and how exactly a person could be saved from hell and live a truly godly life. John put forward his best ideas, but Peter shook his head. “My brother, my brother,” he sighed, “that philosophy of yours must be purged away.” Sometimes John would agree with him, but other times he would argue the point.
Eventually, Peter and John visited Charles Wesley in Oxford. Charles questioned Peter closely and finally came to accept his assertion regarding a Christian being saved by the grace of God and nothing else. Charles’s ready acceptance of Peter’s message upset John. Although John wanted to believe what the Moravian said and tried hard to accept it, even after Peter talked and prayed with him, John felt that nothing had changed in his life.
When John finally asked Peter whether he should give up preaching altogether, the Moravian gave him a surprising answer. “Preach, brother, preach. I will not hear of you giving up.”
“But what shall I preach?” John asked desperately.
“Preach faith till you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith,” Peter replied.
John decided to follow Peter’s advice, and several days later he visited a condemned man at the local jail. As he walked into the prison, his mind was in turmoil. He wanted to tell the condemned prisoner that if he believed in Christ he would go to heaven when he died. But John wondered whether he could bring himself to do so. An instant conversion was far from anything he had ever taught before. After all, a person was supposed to demonstrate his or her conversion by doing “good works.” If the condemned prisoner did convert, the man would not have the time or the freedom to show it by making any changes in his life, since he was to be hanged the next day. Still, John decided to go ahead. As he shared the gospel with the condemned man, both he and the prisoner became convinced that God’s love was great enough to reach out even to a man who would not be able to perform any “works” after his conversion. John left the prison knowing that he was on the right track, though he did not feel that he had made the breakthrough he was waiting for.
The situation began to change for John on May 24, 1738. His day started out like many others, and John wrote in his journal.
I continued thus to seek it (though with strange indifference, dullness, and coldness, and unusually frequent relapses into sin), till Wednesday, May 24. I think it was about five this morning, that I opened my Testament on those words, “There are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, even that ye should be partakers of the divine nature” [2 Peter 1:4]. Just as I went out, I opened it again on those words, “Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.” In the afternoon I was asked to go to St. Paul’s. The anthem was, “Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord: Lord hear my voice. O let thine ears consider well the voice of my complaint. If thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss [wrongly], O Lord, who may abide it? For there is mercy with thee; therefore shalt thou be feared. O Israel, trust in the Lord: For with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous [plentiful] redemption. And He shall redeem Israel from all his sins.”
The following day John’s spiritual journey continued.
In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate-Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation: And an assurance was given me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.
For the first time in a long while, John felt that he was truly a Christian and that his life pleased God. He wasted no time in telling others that they, too, needed to be “saved by faith.” Most of the people who heard him speak thought that he had become unbalanced. James Hutton’s mother even wrote to Samuel Wesley saying, “For after his behaviour on Sunday May 28th, when you hear it, you will think him not quite a right man.… John got up at our house and told the people that, five days before, he was not a Christian.”
