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“repentance resulting in a changed life”

In a Previous post on Wesley and Men Who Followed, I offered my impression of John Wesley as “an Arminian unlike most Arminians I have known.” The “men who followed” seem to fit that description as well. Among those men was William Bramwell (1759–1818). Bramwell was zealous for the purity of the church, and lamented the fact that, in some instances, individuals were being received into membership without having proven the genuineness of their conversion. He deplored such lack of discipline, and avoided practices which might encourage false professions of faith.

In regard to seekers and the distressed there is a significant difference between Bramwell’s practice and that of a later generation. Whereas he would sometimes invite the awakened and the concerned to meet with him separately for spiritual advice, there is no record of his calling people to meet at the communion rail or ‘the penitent’s bench’ at the end of a service. When the latter practice was first adopted by the Methodists it was only as a means to make counseling more easy and immediately available; but this was to prove a half-way to the practice of making coming to the front necessary for securing immediate professions of conversion. When that final stage came, the prevailing understanding of evangelism was very different from that of Bramwell’s generation. And the final development encouraged the very danger of a premature profession that the earlier generation had tried to avoid. Bramwell’s generation wanted to see repentance resulting in a changed life before they accepted any Christian profession.