Thank you Geraint Tudur

I've been reading Geraint Tudur's scholarly biography of Howell Harris*, one of the founding fathers of Calvinistic Methodism out of which Welsh Presbyterianism grew. I have a natural interest in this subject because that is the way I came, historically speaking.

As things turned out the parent body was greater than the child for what the Presbyterian Church of Wales seemed to gain in terms of structure, organisation, training institutions, and indeed favour with men it lost in terms of spiritual life and doctrinal soundness. The Calvinistic Methodists were well organised but also highly motivated, serious-minded, experimental Calvinists, who in the 18th & 19th centuries, together with reborn Baptists, Independents and a few good Anglicans, helped turn Wales upside down.

Harris appeared fearless in propagating the gospel but Tudur, using Harris' diary, shows that his treasure was in a genuine earthen vessel. Harris' vulnerability, which in the end, served to ensure that the excellence of the power was from God and not men, was apparent in his view of revelation, his early Arminianism and his struggle with assurance.

In regard to the first, he showed an early and abiding- predilection for personal signs & messages from heaven and also, between 1735 & 1737, an apparent disdain for the Bible. The ability to invoke divine authority for indiosyncratic ideas and behavioral abberations speak more of a strong ego than a teachable spirit and is as prevalent now as then. Some aspects of 'enthusiasm' are distinctly unrreformed and unhelpful . In Harris' case they might well have contributed to the division between him and the other Welsh Methodists. The Bible came more to the fore as a he grew in faith, but he always looked back to those early days of unrehearsed, extemporaneous exhortation as the standard for later years.

In regard to doctrine, I should have known that he shared the institutional Arminianism of the Church of England, but somehow it hadn't registered. It must surely have aggravated his lack of assurance. Like many of us, he took a while to understand more clearly the sovereignty of God, the nature of grace and the experience of new birth. However, in the words of Richard Bennett, 'there was a great difference between his theology and his faith', (understood subjectively). Later he would take a charitable stand with Calvinism against Arminianism.

As regards asurance, like many with a strong ego, he sometimes hovered between certainty and despair, even while affirming his love for Christ. The struggle, it seems, was between a works-based salvation in which 'duty' assumed great importance and full reliance on unmerited grace.

I suppose the clay feet of men like Harris, mirror not only our own feeble attempts to follow the Lamb, but also those of true 'greats', the men and women of Scripture, who in dependence on divine grace, fought the good fight and finished the course!

* HOWELL HARRIS From Conversion to Separation 1735 - 1750
UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS, 2000