Wesley’s Muddled Love Life

Last updated on: November 25, 2019 at 4:00 pm by Scot McKnight

Wesley’s Muddled Love Life 2019-11-25T16:00:40-06:00 Scot McKnight

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By Ruth Tucker

Years ago when I was a member of Fifth Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, our minister on several occasions read from a volume of John Wesley’s 8-volume set of journals—always having found a good sermon illustration. He had inherited the set from his father, also a Reformed minister, the pages having become worn with his father’s re-reading and hand-written markings. You certainly don’t have to be a Methodist to recognize Wesley as a fascinating individual who devoted his life to gospel ministry. But anyone who has studied him knows that his ministry was too-often clouded by his muddled romantic inclinations.

Google results for “Joseph Smith” Mormon are nearly double those for “John Wesley” Methodist. That seems to make sense. Wesley didn’t start a new religion; he didn’t encounter Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ in a grove of trees; he didn’t dig up a gold bible out of Hill Cumorah; and he didn’t have more than 40 wives (including two 14-year-olds). But, not to be completely outdone, John Wesley did have girlfriends—and one wife.

By the time of his death in 1791, John Wesley was widely recognized for his contributions not only to the Christian faith but also to the social and economic milieu of England as well. The Gentleman’s Magazine eulogized him for “infinite good to the lower classes of the people.” Social involvement, for Wesley, was intrinsically tied to evangelism, thus his involvement in prison reform, employment assistance, poverty relief, and anti-slavery.

Born in 1703, the story is often told of 6-year-old John being the last child rescued during a house fire. His preacher father interrupted first responders: “Let us kneel down. Let us give thanks to God! He has given me all my eight children. Let the house go, I am rich enough.” Hardly a landmark prayer and vision in a grove of trees, but good enough for Wesley to later identify himself as “a brand plucked out of the burning”—God’s signal of his future ministry.

The “Holy Club” at Oxford is another well-known aspect of John’s preparation for ministry, as well as his later decision to become a missionary in Georgia. Responding to his father’s objections, he wrote: “My chief motive, to which all the rest are subordinate, is the hope of saving my own soul.” Anticipating a follow-up question, why not “save your own soul in England,” he answered. that he could not attain “the same degree of holiness here which I may there.” That may have been altogether true were it not for natives put off by his pretentious demeanor and uninterested in words they couldn’t understand and colonists who understood him all too well, letting him know in no uncertain terms, “we won’t hear ourselves abused.” In fact, his self-righteousness was so irritating that he was physically assaulted by an angry woman.

But if that were not enough to incinerate the holiness of this plucked brand, his “unholy desire” was: Sophy Hopkey, 18, comely and the wealthy niece of a colonial official. But, of course, such things were of no import. Her “soul appeared to be wholly made up of mildness, gentleness, longsuffering.” He had apparently made some sort a feeble marriage proposal, but like the natives she apparently didn’t understand him—at least well enough to say no. And besides he feared he was “not strong enough to bear the complicated temptations of a married state.” There is no evidence that Sophy actually desired marriage with a thirty-something opinionated Anglican priest. Nor is there evidence she told him there was someone else in the picture to whom she shortly became engaged.

Upon learning John was beside himself, convinced she belonged to him. Amid the muddle, the lovers eloped. When they returned, John denied her communion; she sued for defamation; he insisted he’s in the right but then decided to high-tail-it out of town. “The hour has come for me to fly for my life . . . and as soon as evening prayers were over, about eight o’clock, the tide then serving, I shook off the dust of my feet, and left Georgia [in December 1737], after having preached the Gospel there . . . not as I ought, but as I was able, one year and nearly nine months.”

Then in 1749 (years after his May 24, 1738 Aldersgate Street “conversion”) and more than a decade after his curious relationship with Sophy, he was again seriously contemplating marriage—this time to Grace Murray. A Methodist class leader with a good reputation, she was a catch. But John Bennett was also interested in her. Charles—fearing his brother would be distracted from the ministry if he married—met privately with the couple and convinced them to tie the knot quickly while John was away. When John learned of his brother’s treachery, he was furious. He rushed on horseback to the scene, getting lost along the way, only to find the couple already married. (Inept at making marriage proposals, John assumed Grace had agreed to be his wife.) His relationship with Charles might have been permanently severed but for the intervention of George Whitefield, who brought them together and wept in great distress, pleading with them to not let the matter ruin the ministry.

Just a year after this wrenching ordeal, John was again determined to marry—this time without his brother’s knowledge. So he hastily married widow Molly Vazeille. It was a marriage doomed from the start.

Enter Sarah (Sally) Ryan. She had been active in the ministry even before—at age 19—she married a man she quickly learned had no livelihood and already had a wife. After he abandoned her, she married a sailor who sailed off to America. Next she pledged her troth to an Italian who likewise abandoned her. “That she was married three times was considered bad enough,” I write in Extraordinary Women of Christian History, “but that she had married twice without ever having been divorced was no less than scandalous—though apparently not regarded as such by Wesley.”

After receiving a letter from the sailor asking her to join him in America, Sally determined “it was the will of God, that I should go to him.” However, after seeking John’s counsel she informed him: “At the peril of my soul I dare not come.” John had previously appointed Sarah to a managerial position at the Kingswood School in Bristol.

Molly was outraged. In fact, so furious, according to Mary Fletcher (a noted preacher) that she confronted Sally during a conference at the school when dozens of preachers were having dinner. Molly interrupted the meal: “See that whore who is serving you! She hath three husbands now alive!” And it didn’t end there, as Mary related: “With all the depreciating things she could say, as she was going on, Sister Ryan set down in a chair which stood near her, with her eyes shut.”

Molly had good reason to be upset. Husband John was enamored with “that whore.” She had rifled through his coat pocket and found the incriminating evidence—a note to Sally: “The conversing with you, either by speaking or writing, is an unspeakable blessing to me,” he penned. “I cannot think of you without thinking of God. Others often lead me to Him; but it is, as it were, going round about: you bring me straight into His presence. Therefore, whoever warns me against trusting you, I cannot refrain, as I am clearly convinced He calls me to it.

“In the jargon of entire sanctification,” I write, “this was no less than a love letter.” Shortly after the Kingswood episode, John wrote again to Sally: “Last Friday, after many severe words, my wife left me, vowing she would see me no more.” Then an explanation of her public outburst. “In the evening, while I was preaching at the chapel, she came into the chamber where I had left my clothes, searched my pockets, and found the letter. The letter. Yes. The purloined letter.

John was clearly smitten by Sally, as his words convey: “I am eager to receive your next letter with excitement as always.” At one point, she had apparently apologized for being too familiar with him. He wrote back: “I not only excuse but love your simplicity; and whatever freedom you use it will be welcome. You have refreshed my bowels in the Lord. . . . Surely God will never suffer me to be ashamed of my confidence in you. I have been censured for it by some of your nearest friends; but I cannot repent of it.”

Molly campaigned against John, telling people that he had traveled alone with Sally. But despite the rumors, Sally carried on for several years in her position at Kingswood. At the same time she served as a class leader, meeting with dozens of people each week, also travelling widely overseeing Methodist societies. Some years later she moved to London and, with the help of two other prominent women in the movement, established an orphanage. But her health was declining. She died in 1768 at age forty-three.

Meanwhile, despite all her accusations, Molly returned home time and again until 1774, when she moved away to live with her daughter “never to return.” Wesley was indifferent: “I did not desert her; I did not send her away; I will never recall her.” She died in 1781, which John only grudgingly acknowledged: “I came to London, and was informed that my wife died on Monday. This evening she was buried, though I was not informed of it till a day or two after.”

In 1782, a year after his wife had died, John published some of his correspondence with Sally, stating that her letters “breathe deep, strong sense and piety. I know few like them in the English tongue.”

On his 85th birthday in 1788, John wrote in his journal that he felt no “such thing as weariness, either in traveling or preaching. I am not conscious of any decay in writing sermons which I do as readily, and I believe as correctly, as ever.” The day after his birthday he carried out his regular Sunday preaching schedule of three sermons at three locations, rising early to make it to his 8 am service, then traveling to Newby to preach at 1 pm, and winding it up at “about four at my old stand in Epworth market place, to the great congregation.” Two years later due to health problems he quit preaching and died some months later.

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