(portrait by Richard Douglas)

John Wesley and Oxford
(See also A history of Wesley Memorial)

John Wesley entered Christ Church as an undergraduate at the University in June 1720. At that time, Christ Church had a reputation for the loose living of its students, but Wesley does not seem to have been guilty of any great sins while he was living there.

He graduated in 1724 and on 19 September 1725 was ordained deacon by Bishop Potter. He delivered his first sermon shortly thereafter at Fleet-Marston, a small village east of Oxford. Before his ordination, he made a stern effort to reform himself, drawing up a plan to regulate his waking hours, and beginning a diary in which he kept track of his life, and noted, among other things, the sins he committed such as careless anger, levity and intemperate sleep.

In March 1726 his father was able to announce with pride, "My Jack is a Fellow of Lincoln". Lincoln College, unlike Christ Church, had a reputation for religion, and Wesley welcomed the change. As a Fellow, he received free board and lodging, with a small stipend, which was increased when he became Greek Lecturer and Class Moderator. Already Wesley had begun to show a zeal for souls, and to this period belongs his first conversion. He and Robin Griffiths were in St Mary’s Church. He asked his companion if he would become an even closer friend by becoming a "whole Christian". To his joy, Griffiths agreed.

Wesley was ordained priest in 1728, having left Oxford the previous year to assist his father in his ministerial duties at Epworth and Wroote. In 1729 his college recalled him. On his return, he found that his brother Charles, then an undergraduate of Christ Church, had become a serious student of the Faith. John joined with him and William Morgan, also of Christ Church, in studying the Greek Testament and in attending the Sacrament on Sundays. They were joined by Robert Kirkham of Merton College, and began a regular schedule of study. This was the beginning of the "Holy Club", and was looked back upon by Wesley as the "first rise of Methodism".

Morgan introduced them to the social work for which the group became notorious. In August 1730, Morgan described to the Wesleys how he visited in prison a man condemned to death for killing his wife. He told them of the sorry state of those in the city gaol. The two brothers, with Morgan, visited the Castle Prison on 24th August 1730, and after this, became frequent prison visitors.

Besides this social work, the Oxford Methodists became well known for their religious observances. They took the Sacrament as often as possible, fasted twice a week, and recited a collect at the hours of 9, 12 and 3. They tried to spend a portion of each day in meditation. As a result they were known by a series of unflattering names : Holy Club, Godly Club, Bible Moths, Supererogation Men and Methodists, the name that finally stuck in 1732.

As a college Fellow, Wesley was called upon at intervals to preach the University sermon in St Mary’s Church. A lost sermon preached in 1734 was called the "Jacobite" sermon because it criticised the House of Hanover. Several others, including one from 1733, The Circumcision of the Heart, are now included in the published collection of his sermons.

In 1735 Wesley sailed for Georgia as a volunteer missionary. After his return in 1738, he felt his heart "strangely warmed"; his spiritual life manifested a sense of assurance and his ministry assumed a new confidence. "When I was at Oxford," he wrote later, "I lived almost like a hermit. I saw not how any busy man could be saved. God taught me better by my own experience." However, he no longer felt his mission was to the University. Henceforth, until the first Methodist preaching house was used in 1738, Wesley preached in private houses when he visited Oxford. Although undergraduates often came to hear him preach, he was largely ignored by the University that he had once loved so well.

On 11 June 1738 he preached a University sermon on Salvation by Faith, and on 25 July 1741 he preached on The Almost Christian. Scriptural Christianity, of 24 August 1744, was his last University sermon: he criticised the University for its sluggishness and spiritual apathy. The Vice-Chancellor sent for Wesley’s sermon notes but took no action. For Wesley it was the end of his University connection. "I preached, I suppose, the last time at St Mary’s," he wrote in his journal. "Be it so; I have fully delivered my soul." He resigned his fellowship at Lincoln College upon his marriage in 1751.

(Acknowledgements to Professor Richard Heitzenrater for his assistance with this text)