Westminster 07 B

The second paper this year was on our old friend Charles Wesley who was born December 18, 1707. I chaired this session and Graham Harrison of Newport spoke. He spent the first 25 minutes on Wesley's life and then most of the rest of the time on his 5-9,000 (probably around 7,000 hymns). From the day he was converted he wrote an average of 10 verses a day on almost every subject under the sun and above it, words of the highest calibre.
Mr Harrison then spoke on his anti-Calvinism and his views on perfectionism and assurance as it comes out in his hymns. A tendentiousness against Calvinism seems to come in around 1740, about two years after his earliest sinner focused hymns. He can be quite belligerent, caustic and persistent in this. So we have eg

See, sinners, in the gospel glass,
The friend and Saviour of mankind!
Not one of all the apostate race
But may in him salvation find!
His thoughts, and words, and actions prove,
His life and death, - that God is love!

Behold the Lamb of God, who bears
The sins of all the world away!

The individual phrases are not so bad but the way it is done is often tendentious and sarcasm and similar devices creep in. Cf

God is unchangeable, and therefore so are you:
And therefore, they can never fail who once His goodness knew.
In part perhaps you may, You cannot wholly fall
Cannot become a castaway like non elected Paul.

He would deliberately and unfairly refer to the decretum horibile as the horrible decree (The horrible decree confound, Enlarge thy people’s heart!).
Some of CWs hymns we just can't sing some need to be edited, some we need to read differently.
More briefly we then looked negatively at his perfectionism, later moderated, and positively at his insistence on the inward witness of the Spirit. Cf

I cannot rest in sins forgiven;
Where is the earnest of my heaven?
Where the Indubitable Seal
That ascertains the kingdom mine?
The powerful stamp I long to feel,
The signature of love Divine:
O, shed it in my heart abroad,
Fullness of love, of heaven, of God!

Interestingly older brother John would often tone down what he disliked in Charles. It is said that he thought Love divine too sentimental and would change the 'dear's to 'great's (My great redeemer praise instead of my dear redeemer).

A useful enough discussion followed.

[Pic referred to in the talk is in Bristol]