Devotion to the wounds of Christ was actually a very common element in
the piety of Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf who led the "Herrnhuter"
community (with ties back to the Hussites) in the early 18thc. John
Wesley, of course, met some of these "Moravian Brethren" on his voyage
to Georgia.
In general, the pietists of the 17th and 18thc in Germany and the Low
Countries were in conversation with Catholic spirituality--both the
orthodox variety and the heterodox (e.g., Madame Guyon). Gottfried
Arnold, a "free church" (anti-state church) Pietist was very familiar
with medieval mysticism and wrote a handbook on it--Tauler, Gerson
etc.
But it is true that John Wesley was very familiar with and drew
heavily on patristic Christianity, especially the Greek tradition.
Methodism began very much within the learned Anglican tradition; it
only became the religion of the poor and uneducated as time went
on--in part because of rejection from the cultural elites in
England---John Wesley did not set out to pursue that direction. In
the United States it became the religion of the broad middle because
of its flexibility on the frontier, its ability to organize itself
into "classes" without requiring a classically trained minister as the
Presbyterians and Congregationalists did throughout much of the 19thc.
Since the frontier was where the emerging American mainstream was to
be found (especially after the Jacksonian coup d'etat), Methodism
eventually became the "church on the square" for much of Midwestern
United States.
Dennis Martin
>>> "Paul F. Schaffner" <[log in to unmask]> 01/26 11:23 AM >>>
> I have myself been surprised by the theological broadmindedness of
a lot of
> Wesley's hymns - verse 3 of 'Lo he comes with clouds ascending' is
a
> magnificent exposition of the cult of the 5 wounds.
Probably just shows my (computer) age, but one of Jim Marchand's
first
threads, as I recall, over on the MEDTEXTL list, concerned Wesley's
abundant use of the medieval motif of 'taking refuge in Christ's
wounds.'
It appears in dozens of the Wesleyan hymns; there may have been some
thought that it came to him via the German pietists, but I may be
wrong
about that.
Paul Schaffner
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