Starting with this week’s article, I will be sending you a chapter from one of the books by Dr. Lloyd-Jones which is available online. It was a lecture that Lloyd-Jones gave that was included in his book, The Puritans: Their Origins and Successors. It is a book that has been in my library ever since it was printed, but this chapter was brought to my attention once again by Rev. Ryan Denton, a faithful Vanguard minister in Lubbock, Texas. At the present time, I am overwhelmed with numerous duties including teaching a course on The History of Christian Missions to the seminary in Moscow, Russia. But my primary purpose in sending forth this article is because of the disturbing things that are happening in so-called Reformed circles today. Anyone who is familiar with my book, Historic Christianity and the Federal Vision, will know that I spent a great deal of effort in it to show that the Federal Vision denies subjective grace, the experiential side of Christianity. We must hold both to the objective truths of the gospel as well as have them deeply planted in our hearts by the work of the Holy Spirit. There must be a combination of both the objective and the subjective or our theology will be imbalanced and erroneous. Many people in the wider reformed community are guilty of neglecting subjective grace with the result that their theological systems become nothing more than philosophy. And, sadly, they become angry so-called Reformed philosophers at that. That is not the faith of the Bible. Thus, I am going to send this chapter out in portions over the next few weeks and then I will write a few articles to tie things together. Enjoy! And I would encourage you to get and read the whole book. It will be stimulating to your mind and heart. So, without further ado, here is what Lloyd-Jones wrote:
========================================================================================================================
William Williams and
Welsh Calvinistic Methodism
By Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
1968
This chapter is taken from The Puritans: Their Origins and Successors, published by the Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, Scotland and reproduced with their permission.
Let me start by giving some kind of explanation as to why I am dealing with this subject; it is quite a simple one. Last year I should have been doing what I am going to do tonight, because it was the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Williams. He was actually born at the end of 1717. But I felt constrained to deal with the question of Sandemanianism first. It came in a kind of logical sequence in my own mind with regard to the addresses that I have been delivering at the close of this Conference, and I suddenly realized that it would make quite a good introduction to this subject tonight, because the greatest proponent against Sandemanianism in Wales was none other than William Williams. So it has seemed to me to be right to give this address this year. It does also serve, I trust, as an interesting link with what has been before us almost throughout this Conference because I shall be dealing with Calvinism and Methodism and what I shall say will, in a sense, perhaps, help to sum up the various matters that we have discussed together.
I am not going to say very much about William Williams himself. One could not attempt to deal with him without taking a whole evening, because he was such a many-sided man who stands out as one of the three, or perhaps four, great leaders of Methodism in Wales in the 18th century. Daniel Rowland was the outstanding preacher, as we heard last year. Howell Harris was the great exhorter and the great organizer. But William Williams was a many-sided man.
We think of him instinctively first and foremost as a great writer of hymns, and he was, I would say, supreme in this matter. Certain literary authorities in Wales, who are not Christian themselves, are ready to grant that he is, in their judgment, the greatest of all Welsh poets. This is something of very real significance, because here you have such an outstanding, natural poet, now, under the influence of the Spirit, writing these incomparable hymns. An indication of his place as a writer of hymns, and indeed a writer of prose in addition, is the fact that the University of Wales Press are in process of republishing Williams’ Complete Works. Two volumes have already appeared. So we are dealing with a very remarkable man, a man of very unusual ability.
In addition to being an outstanding poet and writer of hymns he was also, we can say, the theologian of Welsh Calvinistic Methodism. He showed that in his attack upon Sandemanianism, but he showed it in many other ways positively. He was the theologian of this group of three or four men, and he showed great ability there. He would give his theology sometimes in verse and sometimes in prose. But in many ways I would say that the greatest of all his gifts was the gift which he had of instructing the little societies or companies of Methodists that used to meet together. He was acknowledged by everybody to be supreme in this matter. He wrote a book which he called Drwo y Society Profiad or The Door to the Experience Society, or The Door to the Society in which experiences are dealt with. It is quite a classic. I had intended at one time to devote my whole paper to that, because it might be very useful and instructive for us in this phase through which we are passing at the present time, when we have little groups of Christians meeting together for fellowship in different parts of the country. The early Methodists had to face that problem. They had new converts whom they formed into societies. The question, then, was, how could they be instructed? They needed leaders; they might be good men but still they would not know how to handle people. Well, Williams wrote the book in order to instruct them and to guide them as to how to do this all-important work.
There, then, are the outstanding characteristics of this man. He was born, as I have said, in 1717, and was converted while quite young under the ministry of the great Howel Harris. Williams intended to be a doctor, and he was preparing to become a medical student. As he was going home one day, quite heedlessly and thoughtlessly, he saw a crowd of people listening to a man. He joined them; it was Howel Harris preaching. There and then he was converted and immediately, almost, felt a call to the ministry. Eventually he was ordained as a deacon in the Church of England, and as such he was one of the men present at the first great Association held by the Calvinistic Methodists in Wales in 1743 with Whitefield presiding.
These are the main facts about Williams. You can see how easily one could spend the whole time with him, but I propose to look at him as one of the leaders of the Calvinistic Methodists, and particularly in Wales. Our theme, then, is going to be ‘Calvinistic Methodism’.
I have often found during the years that people, both Arminians and Calvinists, have regarded this term as a contradiction in terms. ‘Calvinistic Methodism?’ they say; ‘this is impossible, it is a contradiction’. I remember speaking at an anniversary in a church not so far from here about 25 years ago. I said I was glad to be present as a Methodist and as the representative of Whitefield arid Calvinistic Methodism. And the then minister of that church said that he regarded this as a contradiction in terms. Well, that was because he was seriously defective in his understanding of the term Methodism. But there are others, on the other side, who have been astounded at this. The term ‘Methodism’ on the Continent in particular is a dirty word, and there are Calvinists who dislike any association between Calvinism and Methodism. Again this is due to a serious defective understanding, as I hope to show, of both Calvinism and Methodism. So it is clear that this is a subject that has a good deal to tell us at the present time.
The best way of approaching it, I think, is for me, first of all, briefly to outline how Calvinistic Methodism ever came into being. We have to start, of course, with the rise of Methodism. Consider first the condition of England at that time, when Methodism really began in the 1730’s. The Church of England was generally Arminian. You remember the famous dictum of the great Lord Chatham with respect to the condition of the Church of England. He said that she had a Calvinistic creed, a Popish liturgy, and an Arminian clergy. And that was an accurate description. She was not only Arminian but also spiritually asleep.
What about the other Churches? Presbyterianism had ceased to be. There had been a Presbyterianism in England, but it had become Arian in its doctrine. The Westminster Confession of Faith does not guarantee that you cannot go wrong doctrinally. It was the Presbyterians who went most astray and became guilty of Arianism, and Presbyterianism literally died. The Presbyterian Church of England which we have today is something quite new which only started in the last century. As regards Congregationalism, these Arian tendencies for a while even affected people like Isaac Watts and Philip Doddridge. The Congregationalists had also been affected by the Hyper-Calvinism, to which reference has been made, and we have been reminded also that among the Baptists there was this Hyper-Calvinistic teaching.
That was the condition in England in general. In Wales it was very similar. The Church of England was in the same condition in Wales as in England. In the Nonconformist bodies there was an occasional good man here and there; we must not depreciate them. The Methodists in their enthusiasm, and perhaps William Williams himself, tended to do so. In his ‘Elegy’ on the death of Rowland and of Harris he tends to give the impression that there was no light at all. There were good men, but unfortunately these good men were given to argumentation and disputation among themselves. So that from the standpoint of a live spirituality they did not count very much.
It was into that kind of condition in England and in Wales that Methodism came. How did it come? I cannot, obviously, go into detail. As regards England the real origin and genesis is to be found in the Holy Club that was founded in Oxford, mainly at the instigation of Charles Wesley. The story is well-known. However, the Holy Club in and of itself would never have led to Methodism. The real beginning of Methodism is found in the mighty experience through which Whitefield passed in 1736, and through which the Wesley brothers passed in May 1738. In Wales Methodism was quite independent and spontaneous. Welsh Methodism owes nothing to English Methodism. It started before that in England, in 1735, with the conversion of both Howell Harris and Daniel Rowland, and again, quite independently. They had never heard of each other and knew nothing at all about one another. But the Spirit of God dealt with these two men in a most amazing way, and it was only in 1737 that they met and came together.
That is how Methodism began. At first they were all one – in England and in Wales when they eventually met and came together. There was one Methodism, including all these men to whom I have referred. But then, as we have already been reminded, a division came in and Methodism divided into two groups, Calvinistic and Arminian. In Wales they were all Calvinists. In England they were not all Calvinists. On the Calvinistic side you have the great names, Whitefield, Berridge, Toplady, Romaine, and the two Hill brothers, Rowland Hill and Sir Richard Hill, and also the Countess of Huntingdon. On the Arminian side there were the Wesleys, John Fletcher, Thomas Olivers, and various others.
These are historical points which are of considerable interest. The Methodism in Wales was entirely Calvinistic. The Wesleys visited there but they did not have any churches there until the beginning of the 19th century. But again I would emphasize this fact – that we have a Methodism that is common to both. This is a basic point. Actually the term ‘Calvinistic Methodist’ in Welsh emphasizes this very strongly, for it is not Calvinistic Methodism, but Methodism-Calvinistic. And so you have Methodism-Wesleyan. The Methodism comes first, and the other is all adjective describing the particular type. At first they all worked together, but, owing to the division, it was Whitefield who became most intimately associated with the men in Wales, and he was actually the Moderator of their first Association in 1743.
========================================================================================================================
That ends this week’s portion of the speech of Dr. Lloyd-Jones.
Dewey Roberts, Pastor of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Destin, FL
www.vanguardpresbyterianchurch.com
Please send any donations to: Vanguard Presbytery, PO Box 1862, Destin, FL 32540