The connection of Oxford and Lincoln College with Wesley and his
movement is no accidental one, based merely on the fact that he
resided there for a certain time. Humanly speaking, Wesley's
connection with Lincoln was a determining factor in his spiritual and
mental development, and it was while he was there that his followers
received the name of "Methodists," a name given in scorn, but one
which has become a thing of pride to millions. Wesley was a fellow of
Lincoln for nine years, from 1726 to 1735. During the most
impressionable years of a man's life--he was only twenty-three when
he was elected fellow--he was developing his mental powers by an
elaborate course of studies, and his spiritual life by the careful
use of every form of religious discipline which the Church
prescribed. A college, with its daily services and its life apart
from the world, rendered the practice of such discipline possible. It
was because Wesley and his followers, his brother Charles, George
Whitefield and others, observed this discipline so carefully that
they obtained their nickname. It is with good reason that Lincoln
Chapel is visited by his disciples from all parts of the world; it
has been little altered since his time, his pulpit is still here, and
the glass and the carving which make it very interesting, if not
beautiful, are those which he saw daily.
The chapel is the memorial of the devotion to Lincoln of another
churchman, more successful than Wesley from a worldly point of view,
but now forgotten by all except professed students of history. John
Williams, Bishop of Lincoln from 1621 to 1641, was the last
ecclesiastic who "kept" the Great Seal of England. He had the
misfortune to differ from Laud on the Church Question of the day, and
was prosecuted before the Star Chamber for subornation of perjury,
and heavily fined. There seems no doubt that he was guilty; but it
was to advocacy of moderation and to his dislike of the king's
arbitrary rule that he owed the severity of his punishment. Whatever
his moral character, at all events he gave his college a beautiful
little chapel, which is often compared to the slightly older one at
Wadham; that of Lincoln is much the less spacious of the two, but in
its wood carvings, at any rate, it is superior.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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