Methodist enthusiasm = madness

1758
(Wellcome Library)

The "enthusiasm" of early Methodists included passion about piety, a personal relationship with God, and that faith affected the rest of one's life totally.  Their perceived excesses were often defined by the Church of England followers as madness.  Not just the joking, "oh, you're crazy!" kind of perception, but truly being insane (Laffey, 468).  John records in his journal several situations where families sought medical treatment for newly converted Methodists in an attempt to cure them (Maddox, "Health," 12).  The word "enthusiasm" roughly meant "insanity" by the mid 18th century, as demonstrated by Samuel Johnson in his 1755 Dictionary as he quoted John Locke: "Enthusiasm is founded neither on reason nor divine revelation but ruises from the conceits of a warmed or overweening brain." (Laffey, 478.)  By 1792 Johnson defined enthusiasm as "1. A vain belief of private revelation; a vain confidence of divine favour.  2. Heat of imagination; violence of passion.  3. Elevation of fancy; exaltation of ideas." (Johnson.)  Not the labels we give Methodists today!

 



"Enthusiam Displayed at the Moor-Fields Congregation"
(not very flatteringly)
(Wellcome Library)

John responded in a 1750 sermon, pointing out that of course the world thought enthusiasm to be madness!  Worldly persons did not understand faith as "... that utter contempt of all temporal things, and steady pursuit of things eternal; that divine conviction of things not seen; that rejoicing in the favour of God; that happy, holy love of God; and that testimony of his Spirit with our spirit that we are the children of God."  (Wesley, John. The Works of John Wesley -- Sermons, edited by Albert Outler (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1987), vol. 2, sermon 37, 46.)  He continued, "Every enthusiast then is properly a madman.  Yet his is not an ordinary, but a religious madness.  By religious I do not mean that it is any part of religion.  Quite the reverse: religion is the spirit of a sound mind, and consequently stands in direct opposition to madness of every kind." (Wesley, Works, vol. 2, sermon 37, 50.)

 

Paul Laffey states that John wrote more about interactions with mad persons than any other religious leader of the time.  In fact, he says, "Wesley's writings provide the richest stock of source material detailing eighteenth-century religious understandings of insanity."  (Laffey, 468.)