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The Great Controversy
Rome. All who refused to renounce the truth were forced to flee.
Some of these, finding refuge in Saxony, there maintained the ancient
faith. It was from the descendants of these Christians that light came
to Wesley and his associates.
John and Charles Wesley, after being ordained to the ministry,
were sent on a mission to America. On board the ship was a company
of Moravians. Violent storms were encountered on the passage, and
John Wesley, brought face to face with death, felt that he had not
the assurance of peace with God. The Germans, on the contrary,
manifested a calmness and trust to which he was a stranger.
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“I had long before,” he says, “observed the great seriousness of
their behavior. Of their humility they had given a continual proof, by
performing those servile offices for the other passengers which none
of the English would undertake; for which they desired and would
receive no pay, saying it was good for their proud hearts, and their
loving Saviour had done more for them. And every day had given
them occasion of showing a meekness which no injury could move. If
they were pushed, struck, or thrown about, they rose again and went
away; but no complaint was found in their mouth. There was now an
opportunity of trying whether they were delivered from the spirit of
fear, as well as from that of pride, anger, and revenge. In the midst
of the psalm wherewith their service began, the sea broke over, split
the mainsail in pieces, covered the ship, and poured in between the
decks as if the great deep had already swallowed us up. A terrible
screaming began among the English. The Germans calmly sang on. I
asked one of them afterwards, ‘Were you not afraid?’ He answered,
‘I thank God, no.’ I asked, ‘But were not your women and children
afraid?’ He replied mildly, ‘No; our women and children are not afraid
to die.’”—Whitehead, Life of the Rev. John Wesley, page 10.
Upon arriving in Savannah, Wesley for a short time abode with the
Moravians, and was deeply impressed with their Christian deportment.
Of one of their religious services, in striking contrast to the lifeless
formalism of the Church of England, he wrote: “The great simplicity
as well as solemnity of the whole almost made me forget the seventeen
hundred years between, and imagine myself in one of those assemblies
where form and state were not; but Paul, the tentmaker, or Peter, the
fisherman, presided; yet with the demonstration of the Spirit and of
power.”—Ibid., pages 11, 12.