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The
Story of Methodism in Great Britain John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, never visited Torrington but by 1788, there was a group of Wesleyan Methodist churches in Bideford. The Superintendent Minister at that time decided to visit Great Torrington and preach the Gospel; regrettably, he was badly treated (thankfully, things have since changed!) In 1807, the house of John Cook was licensed for services and by 1808, worship was being held in a cottage in Mill Street, which on one occasion was attacked by the mob!
A small Chapel was built in 1815 and there were 18 Members. Revival came to Torrington in about 1829/30 and a piece of land was purchased at the top of Mill Street where a new Chapel was built, 56 feet by 36 feet. The most prominent leader within the church at the time was a Mr Samuel Pearce. The Chapel was opened on Christmas Day, 1832, which seems a strange day to open a church until you consider it was the only day off in the year for many people.
Another Methodist group, the Bible Christians, began in Shebbear in 1815 and they also came to Torrington, building a Chapel in what is now New Road and later the larger Chapel in South Street. One of their leading members was William Vaughan, the glove maker. In 1861, the Wesleyan Chapel was enlarged and the schoolroom added. By 1932, the Wesleyan and Bible Christian churches had joined together in England to form the Methodist Church and soon after, the two Methodist churches in Torrington united, using the Mill Street premises. The South Street Chapel became the Torridge Vale Social Club. In 1990, the opportunity to purchase a piece of land adjacent to the Schoolroom allowed the building of a fire escape to the upper floor and its renovation for the Jack and Jill Pre-school group. In 2000/01 the premises were completely refurbished at a cost of £370,000. When the church was re-opened in June 2001, less than £30,000 was needed to clear our debt. This was due to a large group of people who were committed to the project of refurbishment and stepped out in faith. The debt was cleared 2 years early.
Portrait of a Methodist
by John
Wesley
A Methodist is one who
has the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Spirit given
unto him.
One who loves the Lord his God with all his heart and soul
and mind and strength.
He rejoices evermore, prays without ceasing,
and in everything gives thanks.
His heart is full of love to all
mankind and is purified from envy, wrath, malice, and every unkind
affection.
His one desire and the one design of his life is not to
do his own will but the will of Him that sent him.
He keeps all
God's commandments from the least to the greatest.
He follows not
the customs of the world, for vice does not lose its nature through
becoming fashionable.
He fares not sumptuously every day.
He
cannot lay up treasures upon earth, nor can he adorn himself with gold
and costly apparel.
He cannot join in any diversion that has the
least tendency to vice.
He cannot speak evil of his neighbour any
more than he can lie.
He cannot utter unkind or evil words.
He
does good unto all men, unto neighbours, strangers, friends and enemies.
These are the principles and practices of our sect.
These are
the marks of a true Methodist.
By these alone do Methodists desire
to be distinguished from all other men.
 John
Wesley, the celebrated preacher and founder of the Methodist Church, was a
life-long opponent of slavery. His biography is well known, and is told in many
places, both on the web and in many published works, so this article will focus
mainly on his activities as a campaigner against slavery. His opposition to
slavery and the slave trade began long before the issue had received widespread
attention, and was sustained throughout his life. Indeed, his attitudes to
slavery were formed early. In 1736-7 Wesley visited the then British colony of
Georgia in North America where he came into contact with slaves. At the same
time, he read Thomas Southerne's play Oroonoko, which was based on Aphra
Behn's novel of the same name, and which related the tragedy of Oroonoko, an
African prince kidnapped and sold into slavery. On his return to England, he
passed the time on the long transatlantic voyage by teaching a young black man,
presumably a slave, how to read and write.
These
experiences fostered in Wesley an abhorrence of slavery, but it was not an
abhorrence he felt able to act upon. In his journal, Wesley records meeting with
people involved in the slave trade - including the slave-ship captain John
Newton, now more famous as the author of the hymn "Amazing Grace". Newton's
conversion to Christianity was later followed by a conversion to anti-slavery,
but it is not recorded if he and Wesley discussed the issue. In 1772, the
Somerset case, brought before the courts by Granville Sharp, put slavery in the
news. Wesley, putting aside Laurence Sterne's Sentimental
Journey (a book he described as marked by: "oddity,
uncouthness, and unlikeness to all the world") took up instead
Some
historical account of Guinea, a work of anti-slavery by the Philadelphia Quaker,
AnthonyBenezet. Wesley recorded his thoughts in his journal:
Wed.
12.-In returning I read a very different book, published by an honest Quaker, on
that execrable sum of all villanies, commonly called the Slave-trade. I read of
nothing like it in the heathen world, whether ancient or modern; and it
infinitely exceeds, in every instance of barbarity, whatever Christian slaves
suffer in Mahometan countries.
Clearly
Benezet's work, and Lord Mansfield's deliberations in the case of James
Somerset, gave Wesley some disquiet for, two years later, in 1774, he issued a
short pamphlet called Thoughts Upon Slavery which went into four
editions in two years. The pamphlet follows Benezet's work in many respects,
discussing African topology and society, the method of procuring and
transporting slaves, and the brutality of plantation life before advancing legal
and moral arguments against both slavery and the slave trade. Wesley shows "that
all slavery is as irreconcileable to Justice as to Mercy" before concluding,
first with a direct address to the slave-trader and slave-owner, and finally
with a prayer. The direct address is worth reproducing at length, as Wesley
attacks the slave-trader with considerable passion:
Are you
a man? Then you should have an human heart. But have you
indeed? What is your heart made of? Is there no such principle as Compassion
there? Do you never feel another's pain? Have you no Sympathy? No sense of human
woe? No pity for the miserable? When you saw the flowing eyes, the heaving
breasts, or the bleeding sides and tortured limbs of your fellow-creatures, was
you a stone, or a brute? Did you look upon them with the eyes of a tiger? When
you squeezed the agonizing creatures down in the ship, or when you threw their
poor mangled remains into the sea, had you no relenting? Did not one tear drop
from your eye, one sigh escape from your breast? Do you feel no relenting
now? If you do not, you must go on, till the measure of
your iniquities is full. Then will the Great GOD deal with
You, as you have dealt with them, and require all their
blood at your hands.
 Wesley
remained actively opposed to slavery until his death. In August 1787, he wrote
to the  Abolition Committee to express his support, and he pledged to reprint
Thoughts Upon Slavery in "a new large edition".
For some reason this fifth edition did not appear until 1792, a year after
Wesley's death. In 1788, when the abolition campaign was at its height, he
preached a sermon in Bristol, one of the foremost slave trading ports. In such a
location, at such a time, an anti-slavery sermon could not have been preached
without considerable personal risk to the preacher. Indeed, during the sermon a
disturbance took place which Wesley recorded in his journal:
About
the middle of the discourse, while there was on every side attention still as
night, a vehement noise arose, none could tell why, and shot like lightening
through the whole congregation. The terror and confusion were inexpressible. You
might have imagined it was a city taken by storm. The people rushed upon each
other with the utmost violence; the benches were broke in pieces, and
nine-tenths of the congregation appeared to be struck with the same panic.
 Wesley
ascribed the confusion to "some preternatural influence. Satan fought, lest his
kingdom should be delivered up." A more likely cause, perhaps, was a plot by
slave-traders, anxious to disrupt a piece of abolitionist rhetoric being sounded
deep in their territory. How strong this rhetoric was is impossible to tell as
the 1788 sermon has not survived. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to assume that
it was based in some measure on his pamphlet Thoughts Upon
Slavery which was strongly argued. Wesley maintained an
interest in the abolition movement until the end: on his death-bed, he was
reading the Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, a text which
Wesley discussed in his last letter - to William Wilberforce - written six
days before he died, on 2 March 1791.
©
Brycchan Carey 2002 |