need. In these ways one hoped to bolster the nation’s economy. In a sense the Poor Relief Act humanized some aspects of dealing with the poor, as earlier laws had allowed for beggars and vagrants to be branded and enslaved for at least two years. Beggars could be whipped, or even executed if they were caught in a third offense. “The Poor Laws were designed to take care of the infirm and to furnish work for the underemployed, not to provide maintenance for the unemployed. The original theory and design may have been admirable to some, but in practice it failed miserably.”1
The Workhouse Act of 1723 mandated local parishes to erect workhouses for the poor. Even so, the requirement was generally not followed due to the high costs involved for such a building. Some parishes sought less expensive ways to assist the poor.
Workhouses tended to become havens for the sick, senile, and infirm. Orphanages were to be places of security for destitute and often abandoned children, who were to become apprentices in various jobs. Nevertheless, both often became hovels of illiteracy, thievery, corruption, sickness, and abuse. As there were no child labor laws, children were often exploited and abused in despicable ways in the labor market of eighteenth-century England. Many aspects of the exploitation of children have been chronicled in some of the plates of the eighteenth-century graphic artist William Hogarth.
The treatment of the poor and the Poor Laws were not without their critics,2 both negative and positive, and while there were some efforts to improve the living and working conditions of the poor, on the whole these efforts failed.
Those controlling the economy did not really want the poor to move upward out of their poverty. Joseph Townsend3 in large measure saw the Poor Laws as providing guaranteed welfare for the indigent and those who had no desire to work and deemed it healthy and essential for the English economy to maintain the servant/master relationship.
It should not be assumed, however, that there were no philanthropic endeavors to aid the poor and destitute. There were, but they were often the efforts of individuals (or groups of individuals) such as Captain Thomas Coram, who, with the aid of public subscriptions, enabled the establishment in 1742 of the Foundling Hospital, which became a place of refuge for unwanted and abandoned infants and children. One should mention as well the Greenwich Hospital, which was opened in 1705 to receive wounded sailors of the Royal Navy and Mercantile Marine and was praised for its cleanliness, watchful care, and provisions for the patients.
The legal and penal system of the eighteenth century readily enabled the exploitation of the poor. There was no organized police force, and constables, if they could be found, were often unpaid. Once convicted of a crime, one could be hanged, transported to the New World and there sold into servitude, or possibly pardoned. One’s indentured servitude might be limited according to the nature of the offense. After 1776, those not held in jails and doomed to transportation might have been confined to an old ship stripped of its fittings and moored on the Thames or even shipped out to Australia. The transportation scheme was fraught with difficulties and essentially failed at first because the government refused to fund it. After 1718 the government agreed to pay £3 per convict, which seemed to give the system a brief reprieve.
Defense of the poor in a legal system that favored the elite and successful was practically impossible without a connection to someone in a position of authority.4
Much has been written about John and Charles Wesley’s life and ministry with the poor. It is common knowledge that they spent much of their ministry among the marginalized peoples of Great Britain—in the workhouses of major cities and with the colliers of the hearths of Newcastle and elsewhere. John Wesley expressed his concern for medical care for the poor by opening a clinic at the Foundery5 in London, which he purchased in 1739, and his little book Primitive Physic was written to provide medical advice at no cost to the owner of the book. Both brothers preached to the less fortunate throughout England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. They started schools for children who had no educational opportunities and established orphanages to care for destitute and abandoned children.
All of these activities are well known, but what was it within the depth of their faith and ethical commitment that inspired them to such action? In the last two decades much has been written about this subject, particularly from the perspectives of John Wesley.6 In this study, however, the focus is primarily on Charles Wesley.
While the two brothers are often linked in their thought and faith posture, Charles grew up more under the influence of his eldest brother Samuel, than John. Charles attended Westminster School where Samuel was an usher, and John attended Charterhouse School. Samuel too became an Anglican priest with a high regard for the Church of England, its Articles of Religion, and its liturgies. He was also a gifted poet, and Charles records that after Samuel became the head of Tiverton School, he would often visit in his home and make copies of his poems. It is interesting that the idea of a medical dispensary for the poor in the Westminster section of London was first suggested by Samuel, and this may have had a strong influence on his brothers John and Charles.
The primary sources for this study are Charles’s comments in his sermons and Manuscript Journal regarding life and ministry with the poor, and those of his poems that articulate the ethical responsibility and the theological raison d’être for reaching out to and caring for the poor. We begin with the sermons.
1. Heitzenrater, Poor and the People Called Methodists, 213. See Woloch, Eighteenth-Century Europe.
2. See M’Farlan, Inquiries Concerning the Poor; Townsend, Dissertation on the Poor Laws; Holroyd, Earl of Sheffield, Observations on the Impolicy, Abuses, and False Interpretations of the Poor Laws; Bailey, Treatise on the Better Employment, and more Comfortable Support, of the Poor in Workhouses. See also Appendix 3 in Heitzenrater’s Poor and the People Called Methodists for an annotated description of each of the above volumes.
3. Dissertation on the Poor Laws.
4. See Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England, 1660–1800, and King, Crime, Justice, and Discretion in England, 1740–1820.
5. For background on the Foundery and its multifaceted use by Wesley, see Kimbrough and Young, John Wesley’s First Tune Book, ix–xiv.
6. Marquardt, Praxis und Prinzipien der Sozialethik John Wesleys [John Wesley’s Social Ethics]; Jennings, Good News to the Poor; Meeks, Portion of the Poor; Heitzenrater, Poor and the People Called Methodists; Walsh, “John Wesley and the Community of Goods”; Tamez, “Wesley as Read by the Poor”; Miles, “Works of Mercy as Spiritual Formation.” See also Hughes, “Wesleyan Roots of Christian Socialism”; Rieger, Remember the Poor; Warner, Wesleyan Movement in the Industrial Revolution; Meeks, God the Economist.
I. The Sermons
While I have maintained elsewhere1 that Charles Wesley was a lyrical theologian as reflected in his poetry, clearly Kenneth G. C. Newport has made anew the case, based on Charles’s sermon corpus, that he was a theologian in his own right who, as a biblical interpreter, employed exegetical methods of his own day and was a serious
