Digging Out the Embedded Church - The Maranatha Community

Women were not usually members of the societies, but there was at least one for women; it
was at Wolverhampton and had 80 members.
In 1739 George Whitefield, on his second sea-voyage to America, wrote a Letter to the
Religious Societies in which he defined his view of the purpose and role of such groups. Once
printed the next year, it was „immediately translated into Welsh.‟ 68 This letter shows clearly
how the members of societies were to act and think, according to Whitefield. His views were
endorsed both in England and Wales by the Wesleys and Harris. He wrote:
„The end of your meeting is not that you may think yourselves more holy than your
neighbours, much less to form a sect or party, or to promote a schism or sedition in the
Church or State. No: such thoughts, I trust, are far from you; for they are earthly,
sensual, devilish. The only end which I hope you all propose by your assembling
yourselves together, is the renewing of your depraved natures and promoting the
hidden life of Christ in your souls.‟ 69
Elsewhere in the Letter, Whitefield stressed the importance of confessing one‟s sins to each
other in the societies‟ meetings, a practice of the Moravians and a feature of early
Methodism.
In Dr Woodward‟s account of the rise of these societies in London there is reference to a
stirring sermon by Dr Anton Horneck at the Savoy Chapel. Horneck was a German who
studied theology at Heidelberg University and came to London in 1661. He became an
Anglican, a member of Queen‟s College, Oxford, and in 1670 Prebendary of Exeter
Cathedral. The next year he became a Chaplain to King William III and a preacher at the
Savoy Chapel. He is credited with being among the first in London to organise young men of
the church into groups for weekly prayer and spiritual exhortation, and was therefore a chief
instigator of the Religious Societies.
One of the most famous of the spontaneous societies was the one founded at Epworth
Rectory in 1701 by the Reverend Samuel Wesley, father of John and Charles. His wife,
Suzannah, ran what was virtually a society in the kitchen of the Rectory. Little wonder that it
could be said that „John Wesley was born with religious societies in the blood,‟ 70 and that he
carried the idea into Oxford University. There the society, dubbed by his contemporaries at
the University the „Holy Club„, influenced a whole cohort of earnest young men, many of
whom were influential as leaders in the Evangelical Revival.
Later, on their return to England in 1738 from Georgia, where their attempts to stir holiness
in the hearts of the settlers and in their own hearts had largely been a failure, the Wesleys
found themselves drawn into helping to found a society in Fetter Lane, off Fleet Street. It was
at a similar and nearby society meeting that John Wesley found assurance of faith, salvation
68 Evans, Eifion, Daniel Rowland and the Great Evangelical Awakening in Wales, The Banner of
Truth Trust, 1985, p 87.
69 Evans, Eifion, Daniel Rowland and the Great Evangelical Awakening in Wales, The Banner of
Truth Trust, 1985, p 80.
70 Evans, Eifion, Daniel Rowland and the Great Evangelical Awakening in Wales, The Banner of
Truth Trust, 1985, p 80.
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