Apart from the personal influence of the Wesleys the similarity is historically determined, on the one hand, by the decline of the dogma of predestination, on the other by the powerful revival of the sola fide in the founders of Methodism, especially motivated by its specific missionary character. This brought forth a modified rejuvenation of certain medieval methods of revival preaching and combined them with Pietistic forms. It certainly does not belong in a general line of development toward subjectivism, since in this respect it stood behind not only Pietism, but also the Bernardine religion of the Middle Ages. ↩
In this manner Wesley himself occasionally characterized the effect of the Methodist faith. The relationship to Zinzendorf’s Glückseligkeit is evident. ↩
Given in Watson’s Life of Wesley, p. 331 (German edition). ↩
J. Schneckenburger, Vorlesungen über die Lehrbegriffe der kleinen protestantischen Kirchenparteien, edited by Hundeshagen (Frankfurt, 1863), p. 147. ↩
Whitefield, the leader of the predestinationist group which after his death dissolved for lack of organization, rejected Wesley’s doctrine of perfection in its essentials. In fact, it is only a makeshift for the real Calvinistic idea of proof. ↩
Schneckenburger, Vorlesungen über die Lehrbegriffe der kleinen protestantischen Kirchenparteien, edited by Hundeshagen (Frankfurt, 1863), p. 145. Somewhat different in Loofs, Realenzyklopädie für protestantische Theoogie und Kirche. Both results are typical of all similar religious phenomena. ↩
Thus in the conference of 1770. The first conference of 1744 had already recognized that the Biblical words came “within a hair” of Calvinism on the one hand and Antinomianism on the other. But since they were so obscure it was not well to be separated by doctrinal differences so long as the validity of the Bible as a practical norm was upheld. ↩
The Methodists were separated from the Herrnhuters by their doctrine of the possibility of sinless perfection, which Zinzendorf, in particular, rejected. On the other hand, Wesley felt the emotional element in the Herrnhut religion to be mysticism and branded Luther’s interpretation of the law as blasphemous. This shows the barrier which existed between Lutheranism and every kind of rational religious conduct. ↩
John Wesley emphasizes the fact that everywhere, among Quakers, Presbyterians, and High Churchmen, one must believe in dogmas, except in Methodism. With the above, compare the rather summary discussion in Skeats, History of the Free Churches of England, 1688–1851. ↩
Compare Dexter, Congregationalism, pp. 455 ff. ↩
Though naturally it might interfere with it, as is today the case among the American negroes. Furthermore, the often definitely pathological character of Methodist emotionalism as compared to the relatively mild type of Pietism may possibly, along with purely historical reasons and the publicity of the process, be connected with the greater ascetic penetration of life in the areas where Methodism is widespread. Only a neurologist could decide that. ↩
Loofs, Realenzyklopädie für protestantische Theoogie und Kirche, p. 750, strongly emphasizes the fact that Methodism is distinguished from other ascetic movements in that it came after the English Enlightenment, and compares it with the (surely much less pronounced) German Renaissance of Pietism in the first third of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, it is permissible, following Ritschl, Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, I, pp. 568 f., to retain the parallel with the Zinzendorf form of Pietism, which, unlike that of Spener and Francke, was already itself a reaction against the Enlightenment. However, this reaction takes a very different course in Methodism from that of the Herrnhuters, at least so far as they were influenced by Zinzendorf. ↩
But which, as is shown by the passage from John Wesley (see here), it developed in the same way and with the same effect as the other ascetic denominations. ↩
And, as we have seen, milder forms of the consistent ascetic ethics of Puritanism; while if, in the popular manner, one wished to interpret these religious conceptions as only exponents or reflections of capitalistic institutions, just the opposite would have to be the case. ↩
Of the Baptists only the so-called General Baptists go back to the older movement. The Particular Baptists were, as we have pointed out already, Calvinists, who in principle limited Church membership to the regenerate, or at least personal believers, and hence remained in principle voluntarists and opponents of any State Church. Under Cromwell, no doubt, they were not always consistent in practice. Neither they nor the General Baptists, however important they are as the bearers of the Baptist tradition, give us any occasion for an especial dogmatic analysis here. That the Quakers, though formally a new foundation of George Fox and his associates, were fundamentally a continuation of the Baptist tradition, is beyond question. The best introduction to their history, including their relations to Baptists and Mennonites, is Robert Barclay, The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, 1876. On the history of the Baptists, compare, among others, H. M. Dexter, The True Story of John Smyth, the Se-Baptist, as told by himself and his contemporaries, Boston, 1881 (also J. C. Lang in The Baptist Quarterly Review, 1883, p. 1); J. Murch, A History of
