|
39 |
There are many allusions in the hymns to the writings of the Fathers
of the Church. Samuel Wesley the elder, in a letter to
a young clergyman containing detailed advice as to his studies--a
letter which John Wesley published, with a preface, many years
later--declared that 'the blessed Ignatius's Epistles can never
be enough read, or praised, or valued, next to the inspired
writings.' And John Wesley devoted thirty pages of the first volume
of the Christian Library to the Epistles of Ignatius. It is
not surprising, therefore, that there should be several echoes of
a passage in his Epistle to the Romans (7:2),
'Living I write unto you, but it is as loving to die.
For my Love has been crucified
( 40
all.' The famous phrase becomes the refrain of the hymn,
'O Love Divine, what hast thou done?'--
|
The immortal God for me hath died: My Lord, my Love is crucified-- |
and it is recalled in several other hymns. It had been previously used in an old German hymn which John Wesley is not likely to have seen, and it is quoted in one of the Spiritual Songs of John Mason, which was certainly known to both brothers:
|
My Lord, my Love is crucified, He all the Pains did bear; But in the Sweetness of His Rest, He makes His Servants share. |
Another hymn contains an echo of Tertullian--
|
Though earth and hell the word gainsay The Word of God can never fail; The Lamb shall take my sins away; 'Tis certain, though impossible; The thing impossible shall be, All things are possible to me. |
The passage is in Tertullian's treatise 41
who art destroying the indispensable dishonor of our faith. Whatever is
unworthy of God is of gain to me. . . . The Son of God is born; we are
not ashamed, because we ought to be ashamed. And the Son of God died;
it is perfectly credible, because it is absurd. And being buried He rose
again; it is certain, because it is impossible.'
(
A passage in Tertullian's Apology (c. 39), 'Look ye, say they, how these Christians seem to love one another!' is also recalled in a hymn which is probably by John Wesley--
|
In them let all mankind behold How Christians lived in days of old Mighty their envious foes to move, A proverb of reproach--and love. |
Here it is hardly probable that this is a direct reference to the
passage, for John Wesley wrote to his mother from Marienborn while on his
journey to Herrnhut, quoting the words and attributing them to Julian
the Apostate: 'Eighty-eight of them [the Moravians] praise
God with one heart and one mouth at Marienborn;
another little company at Runnesburg,
an hour off; another at Budingen, an hour from
42
thence; and yet another at Frankfort. I now
understand those words of poor Julian, "See
how these Christians love one another!"' The
phrase is quoted as proverbial in the introduction
to Arndt's True Christianity, and in at least
one other of the works included in the Christian Library.
Another passage in the Apology is referred to in more than one hymn: 'If Tiber overflows, and Nile does not; if heaven stands still and withholds its rain, and the earth quakes; if famine or pestilence take their marches through the country, the word is, Away with these Christians to the lions!' (c. 40.)
|
'Away with them,' the world exclaim, 'The Christians to the lions cast!' The stream is troubled by the lamb, And must be so, while time shall last. |
|
The Lamb, they say, disturbs the stream, The world confounded is by them Who its confusions end: Yet still, 'Away with them,' they cry, 'The Christians burn or crucify, Or to the lions send!' |
It is curious that both these hymns which have
the allusion to Tertullian's words should also contain a reference to
one of Aesop's fables, the story of the wolf who complained that the
stream of which he was drinking was disturbed by a lamb
43
farther down--a mere pretext for devouring the alleged disturber.
It has been suggested that the lines--
|
To damp our earthly joys, To increase our gracious fears, For ever let the Archangel's voice Be sounding in our ears: The solemn midnight cry, Ye dead, the Judge is come. Arise, and meet Him in the sky, And meet your instant doom! |
--recall a passage of Jerome: '
In John Austin's Offices (1668) (partly republished in the Christian Library) there is a hymn of which one verse runs--
|
44 |
|
O quicken, Lord, our Faith, Of these great Joys and Fears; And make the last Day's Trumpet b. Still sounding in our Ears. |
But Charles Wesley's stanza is more than an echo of this: it
carries the allusion to Jerome's language farther than Austin's
lines do, to
The lines in one of the hymns on heaven--
|
A brother dead to God, By sin alas! undone, |
--recall the famous story of St. John and the robber, told by Eusebius in the Ecclesiastical History (iii. 23)--a book which John Wesley records reading for the second time in November, 1741. Inquiring of a bishop in the neighborhood of Ephesus as to the welfare of a young man whom he had previously committed to the bishop's special charge, the Apostle received the answer, 'He is dead.' Being further questioned, the bishop said, 'He is dead to God, for alas! he is become a villain, and is fled to the mountains to be a robber.' Whereupon the Apostle hastened to the mountain fastnesses, and never rested until he had brought back the young man in penitence, and restored him to the Church. (It may be added that the story is told in Wesley's abridgement of Cave's Primitive Christianity in the Christian Library.)
|
45 |
When we reach Augustine we are on surer ground. The Wesleys evidently knew the Confessions well. It was one of the highly interesting list of books which had to be provided (by the direction of an early Conference) for the use of Wesley and the preachers at the three centers of London, Bristol, and Newcastle. Wesley once prepared for the press an edition of it in the original Latin, probably intended for the scholars of Kingswood School.
In 1745 Wesley maintained a long correspondence with 'Mr John Smith'--supposed to be the nom de guerre of Dr. Secker, Bishop of Oxford. In one of his letters Wesley quoted, as an instance of what he meant by his doctrine of assurance, a whole chapter of the Confessions, 'which,' he writes, 'I was reading yesterday.' It is the great passage which ends with the words, 'And Thou criedst to me from afar, Yea, verily, I am that I am. And I heard, as the heart heareth, nor had I room to doubt, and I should sooner doubt that I live, than that Truth is not' (vii. 10).
This great spiritual classic has left considerable traces in the
hymns of both brothers. A passage in the first book recalls some of
Charles Wesley's most impassioned lines. Augustine wrote: 'Hide not
Thy face from me. Let me die (that I die not) that I may see Thy
face!' ( 46
in the Soliloquies: 'But why dost thou hide Thy face? Haply
Thou wilt say, "No man can see Me and live." Ah, Lord, let me die,
that I may see Thee; let me see Thee, that I may die.'
(
|
I cannot see Thy face and live! Then let me see Thy face, and die! Now, Lord, my gasping spirit receive! Give me on eagles' wings to fly; With eagles' eyes on Thee to gaze, And plunge into the glorious blaze. |
And if there were any doubt about the connection between such lines as these and the words of the great African Father, it would be dispelled by the fact that another hymn which echoes the thought--
|
Live only Christ in me, not I; O let me see Thy face, and die! |
--was headed, when published in the Hymns
and Sacred Poems of 1742, '
Another reminiscence of the Confessions occurs in John Wesley's
translation of Tersteegen's
47
great hymn, 'Thou hidden love of God, whose height.' The lines--
|
My heart is pained, nor can it be At rest, till it finds rest in Thee-- |
deliberately recall the famous passage: 'Thou dost arouse us to delight in praising Thee; for Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it find rest in Thee!' (i. 1). Here the allusion is John Wesley's own; there is nothing of it in Tersteegen's German, the last lines of which are--
|
|
There is a further reminiscence of Augustine in another of John Wesley's translations from the German. The lines--
|
Ah! why did I so late Thee know, Thee, lovelier than the sons of men! |
--recall the classic passage: 'Too late I loved
Thee, Beauty so old and yet so new, too late
I loved Thee!' (x. 27). Here it is Scheffler
himself who is responsible for the allusion to
Augustine, for it is clearer in the German than in
the English: '
A phrase in one verse of John Wesley's translation of
Scheffler's 48
been colored by the translator's remembrance
of the same passage in Augustine. Angelus wrote
'
|
Primeval Beauty! in Thy sight, The first-born, fairest sons of light See all their brightest glories fade! |
In the hymn 'For an Unconverted Child' the lines occur:
|
Regard my endless griefs and fears Nor let the Son of all these tears Be finally undone. |
This is an unmistakable allusion to the story told by Augustine in the
Confessions (iii. 12)
about his mother and the Bishop. Monica besought the Bishop to
see her son, and strive to bring him from the error of his ways.
The Bishop replied that it was best to leave him
alone, and pray for him. 'When she would not
be satisfied, but urged him more, with entreaties
and many tears, that he would see me, and discourse
with me; he, a little displeased at her
importunity, saith, "Go thy ways, and God be
with thee: it is not possible that the son of these
tears should perish." Which answer she took (as
49
she often mentioned in her conversations with
me) as if it had been a voice from heaven.
And there is at least one other of Augustine's wonderful phrases; in the Confessions that influenced the verse of Charles Wesley. It is a part of a great supplication: 'Narrow is the home of my soul; enlarge it, that Thou mayest enter in. It is ruinous; do Thou repair it, (i. 5). This is reflected in the lines--
|
Thou know'st the way to bring me back, My fallen spirit to restore O for Thy truth and mercy's sake, Forgive, and bid me sin no more; The ruins of my soul repair, And make my heart a house of prayer. |
There are other passages in the Soliloquies which seem to have
influenced the hymns.
'
|
Jesu, my all in all Thou art; My rest in toil, my ease in pain, The medicine of my broken heart, In war my peace, in loss my gain, My smile beneath the tyrant's frown, In shame my glory and my crown: |
|
In want my plentiful supply, In weakness my almighty power, In bonds my perfect liberty, My light in Satan's darkest hour, In grid my joy unspeakable, My life in death, my heaven in hell. |
And here is another characteristic passage:
'
|
All power is Thine in earth and heaven, All fullness dwells in Thee alone; Whate'er I have was freely given, Nothing but sin I call my own. |
And, once more, Augustine's words: '
|
And now if more at length I see, 'Tis through Thy light, and comes from Thee. |
Augustine's fine comment upon our Lord's first
miracle (In Joan. Ev. Tract. viii. I) is quoted in
another hymn. 'For He who made wine on that day at the marriage
feast, in those six water-pots, which He commanded to be
filled with water, the selfsame does this every
51
year in vines... But we do not wonder at the
latter, because it happens every year: it has lost
its marvellousness by its constant recurrence.'
Charles Wesley wrote, in a hymn upon John 2:7:
|
When wine they want, the Almighty Lord Water instead of wine demands: He both created by His word, Nothing His sovereign will withstands: And every year in every vine He changes water into wine. |
In one of the hymns there is a singular idea as to the intercourse of heaven:
|
Where glorified spirits by sight Converse in their holy abode. |
This, it has been suggested, may be derived from a passage in Hudibras (the Heroical Epistle)--a strange source!--
|
For what can earth produce, but love, To represent the joys above? Or who but lovers can converse, Like angels, by the eye-discourse? |
But the notion really comes from Plotinus, and it is quite likely
that Charles Wesley may have met with it there. The passage is in the
fifth Ennead (viii. 4), 'They speak not one with
the other; but, as we understand many things by
the eyes only, so does soul read soul in heaven,
52
where the spiritual body is pure, and nothing is
hidden, and nothing feigned.
There are two rather recondite allusions in a stanza of one of the hymns on the Passion:
|
Dies the glorious Cause of all, The true eternal Pan, Falls to raise us from our fall, To ransom sinful man: Well may Sol withdraw his light, With the Sufferer sympathize, Leave the world in sudden night, While his Creator dies! |
The first reference is to the story recorded by
Plutarch (
The other allusion is fainter. There is a legend that Dionysius the
Areopagite, perceiving a disturbance in nature at the time of the
Crucifixion, said, 53
It is a striking fact that Methodism has supplied English Christendom
with hymns for all the great festivals of the ecclesiastical year.
At Christmas 'Hark! the herald angels sing!' is heard in every land where
the English language is spoken. It is the same at Easter with
'Christ the Lord is risen today!' and much the same on Ascension Day with
'Hail the day that sees Him rise,' and on Whit-Sunday with
'Granted is the Savior's prayer.' Some time ago an interesting suggestion was made by an Anglican hymnologist
3 with regard to two of these hymns. It was suggested that
'Hark! the herald angels sing!' was possibly
inspired by a hymn from the Menaion of the Greek Church,
54
It was also suggested by the same writer that Charles Wesley may have
had in mind, when writing 'Hail the day that sees Him rise,' the hymn of
Fortunatus (or a fourteenth-century imitator of his), But these suggestions, baseless as they seem to be, are enough to
raise in one's mind the whole question of a possible indebtedness, on
the part of the Wesleys, to the great hymns of the Middle Ages. At
first sight, such a relation does not seem at all likely. In the eighteenth
century the whole of the mediaeval hymnody was almost a terra incognita.
It was only with the rise of romanticism in literature, at the end
of that century, that these hymns began to come to their own. One may
say that Scott's use of Thomas of Celano's great dirge (in which he
followed Goethe) was almost the beginning of modern interest in
mediaeval hymns. And it was nearly half a century later when these hymns
began to be recovered for the use of the English Churches by Dr. Neale,
and other High Anglican and Catholic scholars. In the age of the Wesleys
there was very little knowledge in England of the Latin hymns of the
Middle Ages, and still less of the Greek hymns, found in the
service-books of the Eastern Church. On the face of it,
55
On the other hand, there are some small but significant facts. John
Wesley translated a German hymn which itself was a translation from the
Latin. 'Jesu, Thy soul renew my own'
is a version of Again, when Charles Wesley was in Dublin in
1747 he wrote in his Journal: 'I spoke with great
freedom to the poor Papists, urging them to repentance and
the love of Christ, from the authority of their own Kempis,
and their own Liturgy.' This can only mean that he was a student
of the Breviary--a very suggestive fact. Doubtless it was there
that he read the splendid story of the ecstasy of St. Thomas
Aquinas, which impressed him so much, and left its mark upon more
than one hymn. The incident is told in one of the lessons for the
saint's festival. 4
As St. Thomas prayed, he heard the
56
Give me Thyself from every boast, From every wish set free, Let all I have in Thee be lost, But give Thyself to me! and-- Nothing beside my God I want, Nothing in earth or heaven! And if Charles Wesley knew the Breviary, he must have known the Latin hymns
in it. Accordingly, we are not surprised to find that the language of the
great hymn of St. Thomas Aquinas, Adoro te devote, has apparently
colored several of our hymns. A phrase in the first line, latens Deitas, appears in a
hymn for the Nativity: He laid His glory by He wrapped Him in our clay, Unmarked by human eye, The latent Godhead lay. Then, later in the hymn, the Angelic Doctor wrote: --lines which have been translated very literally thus: 57
Unclean I am, but cleanse me in Thy blood! Of which a single drop, for sinners spilt, Can purge the entire world of all its guilt. This mystical notion of the efficacy of a single drop of the
Redeemer's blood became a favorite thought with Charles Wesley: By all Thou hast done for my sake, One drop of Thy blood I implore, Now, now let it touch me, and make The sinner a sinner no more! And again: Sprinkle it, Jesus, on my heart! One drop of Thine all-cleansing blood Shall make my sinfulness depart, And fill me with the life of God! At least a dozen other examples might be given of the presence of
this thought in our hymns. It should be said, in fairness, that the thought
occurs in some of the older English poets, notably Donne, who has it more
than once: Now Thou art lifted up, draw me to Thee, And at Thy death, giving such liberal dole, Moist with one drop of Thy blood my dry soul. But Donne undoubtedly got it from St. Thomas Aquinas, and so may
Charles Wesley, as we have seen. And since he knew the Latin hymns in the
Breviary, he may very well have known other mediaeval hymns not found
there. 58
John Wesley certainly did know the old Nativity hymns,
This recurs constantly in Charles Wesley's hymns for Whit-Sunday: Life Divine in us renew, Thou the Gift and Giver too. For Thee our hearts we lift, And wait the heavenly Gift Giver, Lord of life Divine To our dying souls appear. Grant the grace for which we pine, Give Thyself, the Comforter. I come athirst and faint Thy Spirit to receive, Give me the Gift for which I pant, Thyself the Giver give. 59
There are in the hymns many reminiscences of the English Liturgy, as we
should expect. Meet and right it is to sing, In every time and place, Glory to our heavenly king, The God of truth and grace, is a paraphrase of the Preface and the Sanctus
of the Communion Office: 'It is very meet,
right, and our bounden duty . . . Therefore with
angels and archangels . . .' Similarly-- Glory be to God on high, God, whose glory fills the sky, is a paraphrase of the Gloria in Excelsis of the
Communion Office: 'Glory be to God on high,
and on earth peace, good will toward men. We
praise Thee, we bless Thee, we worship Thee. . . .' Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Thy Godhead we adore, is a poetical version of the Gloria Patri. The language of the Litany is paraphrased in the stanza-- Thou loving, all-atoning Lamb, Thee, by Thy painful agony, Thy bloody sweat, Thy grief and shame, Thy Cross and passion on the tree, Thy precious Death and Life, I pray Take all, take all my sins away! 60
And there are numerous other examples of an influence which, in the
case of devout Churchmen like the Wesleys, was inevitable. There is a strain of essential mysticism in the hymns of the Wesleys.
The recognition of this fact would correct a frequent mis-judgement.
Leslie Stephen wrote 'Mysticism seemed to John Wesley to be simply folly.
His feet were on the solid earth, and he preferred the plain light of day
to the glooms and glories loved by more imaginative natures.'
5 Even so learned and so candid a writer as Dr. Gwatkin thinks that
Wesley's teaching was 'as clear and full of common sense as Matthew
Tindal's Deism, and as characteristically wanting in a sense of mystery.'
6
Now it is perfectly true that Wesley was a man of his century, that he
had a precise and logical intellect, and that he hated vagueness. It is
also true that he said hard things, again and again, about 'the mystic
divines,' driven thereto by the disastrous effects of an errant Quietism
among the Societies. But it should be remembered that there is much on
the other side. Some of the finest of John Wesley's translations from the German
are versions of the profoundly mystical hymns of Tersteegen and
61
O sovereign Love to Thee I cry! Give me Thyself, or else I die! Save me from death; from hell set free: Death, hell, are but the want of Thee, and-- Eager for Thee I ask and pant, So strong the principle divine, Carries me out with sweet constraint, Till all my hallowed soul is Thine; Plunged in the Godhead's deepest sea, And lost in Thy immensity! and-- Nothing else in earth or skies, In time, or in eternity: Heaven itself could not suffice: I seek not Thine, but Thee. Then John Wesley was early and deeply imbued with mystical teaching.
He read the Theologia Germanica and some of the writings of
Tauler in early life, and at Oxford was a professed
disciple of William Law. He greatly admired
62
He was specially interested in two mystics of the preceding century,
and refers to their life and doctrine again and again--Antoinette Bourignon
and Jeanne de la Mothe Guyon.
He read Antoinette Bourignon's Treatise of Solid Virtue and
Light of the World in April 1736, while in Georgia.
He included the former work in the Christian Library in 1754, and
many years before he had published translations of some of the author's
devotional verse. Scattered through her voluminous works are five hymns,
two of which were translated and included in the Hymns and Sacred
Poems of 1739, Venez, Jesus, mon salutaire,
'Come, Savior Jesus, from above,' and Adieu,
Monde, vray pipeur, 'World, adieu, thou real
cheat!' The identity of the translator is a
pretty problem in criticism. The hymns are claimed for Dr. Byrom, on the
strength of two facts. First, they are included in his Miscellaneous
Poems (1773). But, as these were
63
64
The style of the two hymns is unquestionably
more like that of John Wesley than like that of
Byrom. If the versions were by Byrom, they
were certainly somewhat altered by Wesley. An incident related in Antoinette Bourignon's autobiography has
influenced the language of one hymn. When the Flemish Quietist was a
child, struck by the unlikeness of the life around her to what she read
of in the Gospels, she said to her parents, 'Where are the Christians?
Let us go to the country where the Christians live!'
This is remembered in a hymn on 'Primitive Christianity': Ye different sects, who all declare Lo! here is Christ! or 'Christ is there!' Your stronger proofs divinely give, And show me where the Christians live! When John Wesley was on his way to Herrnhut in July 1738 he recorded
in his Journal: 'In the afternoon we came to Weymar, where we had
more difficulty to get through the city than is
65
Moore, in his Life of Wesley (i. 329), says that
the 'great man' was 'Frederick, afterwards King
of Prussia, then Prince Royal, as Mr. Wesley was
informed.' It would be attractive to think of an
encounter between two men so famous, and so
different, as Frederick the Great and John Wesley; but unfortunately
there is little to warrant us in such a fancy. Henry Moore was the
intimate friend of Wesley, as well as his biographer, and it is not
easy to understand how he could be mistaken in
the matter, but there is no hint of 'the great
man' being Frederick in the Journal, either in
the passage quoted, or in several later passages
which refer unflatteringly to the great King of
Prussia. Moreover, it is difficult to understand
how he could be doing the work of a city magistrate at Weimar,
which was not in Prussian occupation, as Halle was. And finally, Frederick
would appear to have been in another part of
the country altogether at that time, spending
most of July and August in that year upon
66
In 1776 John Wesley published An Extract
of the Life of Madame Guion. He had
long been a critical student of her life and writings. In 1742 he records in his Journal that he read Madam Guyon's
Les Torrents Spirituelles. It would seem probable that Charles
Wesley read it a few years later, for there appear to be traces of
it in some hymns published in the Hymns and Sacred Poems of 1749.
The imagery of the following passages runs through the whole of the
Spiritual Torrents. 'All have a loving impatience
to purify themselves, and to adopt the necessary
ways and means of returning to their source and
origin, like rivers, which after leaving their source,
flow on continuously, in order to precipitate
themselves into the sea.' . . . 'Finally . . they
reach the sea, where they are lost to be found
no more . . . it is the sea, and yet it is the river,
because the river, being lost in the sea, has
become one with it.' This thought is reflected in the lines-- Wherefore to Thee I all resign: Being Thou art, and love, and power; Thy only will be done, not mine! Thee, Lord, let earth and heaven adore! Flow back the rivers to the sea, And let our all be lost in Thee! 67
and in the lines-- Our love from earthly dross refine: Holy, angelical, divine, Thee its great Author let it show, And back to the pure Fountain flow, A drop of that unbounded sea, O Lord, resorb it into Thee! Another favorite image appears in this passage: 'Therefore
the heart of man is perpetually in motion, and can find no rest until
it returns to its origin and center, which is God: like fire, which,
being removed from its sphere, is in continual agitation, and does not
rest till it has returned to it.' This is reflected in another stanza
of the last hymn quoted: A spark of That ethereal fire, Still let it to its Source aspire: To Thee in every wish return, Intensely for Thy glory burn, While all our souls fly up to Thee, And blaze through all eternity! William Law was a mystic if there ever was one, and he was the early
master of both brothers. They parted company with him,
it is true, but he had an abiding influence upon them. As late as
1768, John Wesley published a volume of extracts
from Law's later writings. Many illustrations of
Law's influence might be given. There are some
favorite ideas of Charles Wesley's which appear
68
O that we now, in love renewed, Might blameless in Thy sight appear Wake me in Thy similitude, Stamped with the Triune character Flesh, spirit, soul, to Thee resign, And live and die entirely Thine! And when we rise, in love renewed, Our souls resemble Thee, An image of of the Triune God To all eternity. Made like the first happy pair, Let us here Thy nature share, Holy, pure, and perfect be, Transcripts of the Trinity. . . . a sinless saint In perfect love renewed; A mirror of the Deity, A transcript of the One in Three, A temple filled with God! Charles Wesley once commented upon these last lines,
which had been criticized. In a letter to his wife he wrote-- You and the other objectors do not understand those
lines. A transcript of the One in Three is the definition
of man unfallen, and of man restored to the divine image.
The expression is Mr. Law's, not mine; who proves a
trinity throughout all nature. 69
The thought recurs perpetually in the writings of William Law.
8 In
An Appeal to all who doubt the Truths of the Gospel, he writes-- How could the Holy Trinity be an object of Man's
worship and adoration, if the Holy Trinity had not produced itself in
Man? . . . Our redemption consists in
nothing else but in the Bringing Forth this new Birth in
us . . . that, being thus born again in the Likeness of the
Holy Trinity, we may be capable of its threefold Blessing
and Happiness. In Christian Regeneration he writes-- We have before shown, that Man was created a living Image of
the Holy Trinity in Unity, that the Divine Birth
arose in him, and that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost saw
themselves in him, in a creaturely Manner. . . . There
appears a surprising Agreeableness and Fitness, in the Means of our
Redemption, namely, that we could only be saved by the eternal Son of God;
that He could only save us by taking our Nature upon Him, and so uniting it
with Him, that His Life, or Birth, might again arise
in us, as at the first, and so we become again a perfect living image
of the Holy Trinity. The notion also occurs in Byrom's writings. In An Epistle to a
Gentleman of the Temple there are the lines describing Adam-- Formed in the likeness of the sacred Three, He stood immortal, powerful, and free; Image of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, The destined sire of a new heavenly host. 70
Byrom and Law had ploughed with the same heifer. They got the thought
from Jacob Böhme, who wrote-- So near thee, indeed, is God, that the birth of the
Holy Trinity takes place in thy heart also, and there all Three
Persons are born, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (Aurora, c. x., 58)
The Hymns and the Ecclesiastical Year
Mediaeval Hymns
therefore, these hymns are not likely to have been known to the brothers.
St. Thomas Aquinas
Savior's voice saying, 'Thou hast written well of Me; what reward
wouldst thou have?' and he exclaimed in answer, 'Thyself, Lord, nothing
but Thyself!' This is recalled unmistakably in such lines as--
Adam of St. Victor
The English Liturgy
Mysticism in the Hymns
Scheffler. And then there is the unmistakable accent of mysticism in
much of Charles Wesley's verse. The latest French writer on Methodism,
Dr. Augustin Leger, has remarked upon this
'
the writings of the Cambridge Platonists (a distinction in itself for
one who lived in the eighteenth century) and printed some of John
Smith's Sermons in the Christian Library. In the same collection
he issued an abridgement of the Guida Spirituale of Molinos, the
Spanish mystic. There does not appear to have been
any other edition in English between 1699 and 1775.
Antoinette Bourignon
Byrom or Wesley?
collected and published ten years after his death,
this is not absolutely conclusive evidence. Byrom
might have copied out the verses because they interested him by their
mysticism, and after his death they might thus have been easily mistaken
for his own. (Yet Wesley read the Miscellaneous
Poems when they appeared in 1773, and made no
remark on the presence of these hymns.) In the
second place, there is a letter of Byrom's to
Charles Wesley dated March 3, 1738: 'As your
brother has brought so many hymns translated
from the French, you will have a sufficient number, and no occasion
to increase them by the small addition of Mademoiselle Bourignon's
two little pieces. I desire you to favor
my present weakness, if I judge wrong, and not
to publish them.' This seems to us to suggest
unmistakably Byrom's authorship of the translations. There remains
the difficulty that no other translations from the French are known to
have been in John Wesley's possession. Is it
possible that this was a slip of Byrom's for 'many
hymns translated from the German,' of which he
had previously heard? The sense would then be,
'since he has so many translated hymns, he will
need no more.' Byrom did not himself begin to
learn German until several years after this, which
would make the mistake as to the language more
conceivable. But, on the other side of the
question, there is the fact that Byrom wrote to
his son on April 26, 1739, referring to the Hymns
and Sacred Poems published in that year by the
Wesleys in these terms: 'They have together
printed a book of hymns, amongst which they
have inserted two of M. Bourignon's, one of
which they call "A Farewell to the World," and
the other "Renouncing all for Christ" (Come,
Savior Jesus), I think, from the French.'
'Where the Christians live!'
usual, even in Germany; being not only detained a considerable time at
the gate, but also carried before I know not what great man (I believe the
Duke) in the Square; who after many other questions, asked what we were
going so far as Herrnhut for: I answered, "To see the place where the
Christians live." He looked hard, and let us go.'
John Wesley and Frederick the Great
a visit to the Duchy of Cleves and Loo in Holland.
Madam Guyon
William Law
in the hymns again and again. Such is the
thought that the regenerate soul is a reflection
of the Holy Trinity:
Transcripts of the Trinity
Jacob Böhme
1 Cf. Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar (May), and Gloss.
2 Cf. Brev. Rom., Oct. 9 (Lectio 4), and Hooker, Eccl. Pol. I. iii. 4.
3 Moorsom, Historical Companion to Hymns Ancient and Modern, pp. 83, 64.
4 Brev. Rom., Mar. 7 (Lectio 5).
5 History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. ii. xii., p. 87.
6 The Knowledge of God, vol. ii., p. 245.
7 La Jeunesse de Wesley, p. 191.
8 Cf. St. Augustine De Civ. Dei, xi. 26.