John Wesley

: For entries on other people named John Wesley, see John Wesley (disambiguation).

Ordination of ministers

As his societies multiplied, and the elements of an ecclesiastical system were gradually adopted, the breach between Wesley and the Church of England widened. The question of separation from that church, urged, on the one side,

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by some of his preachers and societies, but most strenuously opposed by his brother Charles and others, needed to be considered, but was not settled. In 1745 Wesley wrote that he would make any concession which his conscience permitted, in order to live in harmony with the clergy, but could not give up the doctrine of an inward and present salvation by faith alone. He would not stop preaching in private houses and the open air or dissolve the societies or end lay preaching. He had no plans to go further. "We dare not," he said, "administer baptism or the Lord's Supper without a commission from a bishop in the apostolic succession."

Related Topics:
Baptism - Lord's Supper - Apostolic succession

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But the next year he read Lord King on the Primitive Church, and was convinced by it that apostolic succession was a fiction, and that he was "a scriptural episcopos as much as any man in England." Some years later Stillingfleet's Irenicon led him to renounce the opinion that Christ or his apostles prescribed any form of church government, and to declare ordination valid when performed by a presbyter. It was not until about forty years later that he ordained by the laying on of hands; but he considered his appointment of his preachers an act of ordination.

Related Topics:
Stillingfleet - Ordination - Presbyter

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When he had waited long enough, and the Bishop of London had refused to ordain a minister for the American Methodists who were without the ordinances, Wesley ordained preachers for Scotland and England and America, with power to administer the sacraments. He also consecrated, by laying on of hands, Dr. Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury, as presbyters of the Church of England, to be superintendents or bishops in America, and a preacher, Alexander Mather, to the same office in England. He intended that Coke, Asbury, and Mather should ordain others. This alarmed his brother Charles, who begged him to stop before he had "quite broken down the bridge," and not embitter his last moments on earth, nor "leave an indelible blot on our memory." Wesley replied that he had not separated from the church, nor did he intend to, but he must and would save as many souls as he could while

Related Topics:
Bishop of London - Sacraments - Thomas Coke - Francis Asbury - Alexander Mather

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alive, "without being careful about what may possibly be when I die." Although he rejoiced that the Methodists in America were free, he advised his English followers to remain in the established church; and he himself died within it.

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