Historical and biographical articles
William Wilberforce –
a trophy of grace
On 23 March 1807, a Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade passed the debate on the third reading in the Lords, receiving the Royal assent two days later (25 March), and passed into law. William Wilberforce exclaimed, 'Oh what thanks do I owe the Giver of all good, for bringing me in His gracious providence to this great cause, which at length, after almost nineteen years' labour, is successful!' The story of his parliamentary struggles will be detailed elsewhere (Evangelical Times, March 2007), but the struggles of his soul are no less fascinating and instructive.
Early influences
Wilberforce was born on 24 August 1759, in a prestigious
mansion on Hull High Street. His family's wealth derived mainly from the Baltic
sea-trade, and they sought great things from their only son. His parents were
nominal Christians and members of the Church of England. He would later describe
his mother as an 'Archbishop Tillotson Christian' but she became more spiritual
during her final years. John Tillotson, who was Archbishop of Canterbury from
1691-4, had promoted a respectable ethical Christianity by his writings, which
later came under the severe censure of George Whitefield, the 'Methodist'
evangelical Anglican, who called them 'bad books’.
Schooldays
At the age of eight, he began his formal education at Hull Grammar School as a dayboy under a young headmaster, Joseph Milner, the son of a humble weaver, who had won the Chancellor's medal at Cambridge. Joseph also installed his clever, but rather uncouth giant of a brother, the eighteen-year-old Isaac, as a temporary teaching assistant. Isaac was destined by God to become an instrument of grace towards Wilberforce in the future.
The following year, 1768, saw the death of his sister Elizabeth, followed soon after by the unexpected death of his father at the early age of forty. The next year saw his mother become seriously ill while expecting his sister Anne, who later died in infancy, leaving just his sister Sally, a year older than himself. It was therefore decided to send him to his aunt and uncle, Hannah and William Wilberforce, who had a large villa in Wimbledon, and also possessed a London house in St. James's Place.
Evangelical relations
Hannah and William were 'Methodists,' that is, not members of the Methodist connexion which did not emerge until the next century, but followers of evangelical Anglican preachers like Whitefield, Wesley and John Newton. It is doubtful if Wilberforce ever heard Whitefield, who at this time left on his sixth and last visit to America on 4 September 1769, but he definitely heard John Newton, the ex-sea captain and slaver, and evangelical parson of Olney in Buckinghamshire, who often preached in London. He later spoke of 'reverencing him as a parent when I was a child’. Hannah's brother John Thornton, son of Robert Thornton the Director of the Bank of England, had submitted to Christ in 1754 under Whitefield's gospel preaching. While on a visit, John gave Wilberforce a generous gift of money, on condition some should be given to the poor. This sowed the seeds of a principle of benevolence which were to be a marked feature later in his life.
Although Wilberforce's later beliefs and actions accorded with general Methodist principles, God was preparing him to reach people of much broader beliefs with the gospel. Thirty years later he reckoned that if he had stayed with these relations he would have been a 'bigoted despised Methodist’. His mother was alarmed that he was 'turning Methodist,' and took a coach to London to fetch him back home. He records, 'Being removed from my uncle and aunt affected me most seriously. It almost broke my heart; I was so much attached to them’.
Worldliness
She now had another problem – Joseph Milner had become a Methodist, so Wilberforce was enrolled at Pocklington Grammar School, thirteen miles from York. The boys here were 'a sad set' and he did very little. In the holidays, his family and friends seduced him by gaiety and self-indulgence in a society full of theatres, balls, banquets and card-parties. He was welcomed everywhere and asked to sing, having a fine voice and love of music. The world was stifling his early promise of spirituality, and insinuating a habit of idleness, as regards academic study, which he never really shook off. His mother encouraged him in his worldly socialising, expostulating that Enthusiasts call it a wicked world, but that she never will.
Wilberforce entered St John's College, Cambridge, at the age of seventeen and with his pockets full of money. He carried on frittering away his time with card parties and socialising, with his love of classics getting him through with a pass degree, but he later came to deeply regret the way he had wasted time and opportunities. He was barely 21 years old when, in the General Election of 1780, he gained the seat of Hull, having spent £8-9000 in the campaign, about £1 million in today's currency.
Rise and progress
Wilberforce needed something to do in the long summer parliamentary recess, so in the summer of 1784 he asked Isaac Milner, now a gifted mathematician, scientist, and tutor at Queen's College Cambridge (later becoming Dean of Carlisle), to accompany him on a continental tour, replacing another friend who had had to cancel unexpectedly. He joined his mother, sister, a maid and a female cousin, Bessie Smith. Wilberforce had no idea Milner had become an Evangelical, and later abmitted: 'If I had known his character, we should not have gone together’. Just before leaving Nice he spotted the little volume Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul (1745), which had been brought along by Bessie's mother. He questioned Milner about it: ‘It is one of the best books ever written’, was his answer; ‘let us take it with us and read it on our journey’. He debated the contents with Milner and admitted an intellectual assent to the gospel. The following summer he again toured with Milner, this time reading the Greek Testament, checking whether it substantiated Doddridge's teaching.
Philip Doddridge (1702-1751) was the twentieth child (eighteen of whom died in infancy) of a nonconformist London oil merchant. He was laid aside at birth being assumed to be dead, but a caring nurse revived him. With Isaac Watts, he became a leading Dissenter of the eighteenth century, and was minister of Castle Hill Congregational Chapel in Northampton, where he ran an academy for training nonconformist ministers. He wrote 400 hymns, including ‘O happy day!’ and ‘Grace! 'tis a charming sound’. It was a happy day indeed when Wilberforce discovered his book.
Conviction of sin
Wilberforce had been attending the Essex Street chapel founded by the father of modern Unitarianism, Theopilius Lindsey, who preached merely a Christian ethic. Doddridge had recovered the doctrines of grace, and these were now being impressed on Wilberforce's heart by the Holy Spirit. He came under a conviction of sin for much of the winter. In October 1785 he got up very early to think and pray alone: 'The deep guilt and black ingratitude of my past life forced itself upon me in the strongest colours, and I condemned myself for having wasted my precious time, and opportunities, and talents’. He was affected with 'a sense of my great sinfulness in having so long neglected the unspeakable mercies of my God and Saviour’.
Assurance
Wilberforce now had a dilemma. He could no longer be a Party man in any sense – he had to speak and vote according to Christian principles. Should he retire from politics and enter the Church? He sought the advice of old John Newton, who had transferred from Olney to St Mary Woolnoth, London, in 1779. He held the opinion that 'the Lord has raised you up for the good of His church and for the good of the nation’, and that Wilberforce should remain in his political calling. He resigned from all his London clubs and associated with the evangelical John Thornton, a friend of Newton as well as his uncle. He finally came to a measure of assurance by the spring of 1786. Wilberforce's mother had heard of his conversion and was prepared to mourn his eccentric manners and enthusiastic principles. All she observed was 'greater kindness and evenness of temper’. She became more spiritual nearer the end of her days, when she asked her son to remember her in his prayers.
In October the following year, 1787, he made his great declaration, 'God Almighty has placed before me two Great objects – the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners’. His first objective was achieved in 1807, but the abolition of slavery itself was only finally achieved on his deathbed in 1833. The reformation of manners was a national campaign against vice, his motivating principle being that God will bless a nation that seeks to keep his laws, and brings judgement and unhappiness on one which flouts them.
Clapham and beyond
From 1792 to 1808 Wilberforce lived at Clapham, where there developed a small community of evangelical Anglicans. They used to meet for discussions on how to promote Christian causes including the Abolition of the Slave Trade. The Clapham circle, much later termed the Clapham Sect, included Henry Thornton, MP for Southwark, Zachary Macaulay, James Stephen, Lord Teignmouth, Charles Grant, Charles Simeon and John Venn.
They had procured John Venn, a like-minded clergyman, as Rector of Holy Trinity, where they worshipped. Venn was the son of the distinguished Evangelical vicar, Henry Venn, who had been a leader of the evangelical revival, and well known as the author of The Complete Duty of Man (London, 1763). In 1771, Henry became vicar of the rural parish of Yelling near Cambridge, taking under his wing a succession of students at the university, of whom Charles Simeon was the best known. Early in 1797 he left Yelling and went to Clapham where he died on 24 June 1797, and was buried in the old churchyard. In 1799 John Venn, John Newton, Thomas Scott, and Wilberforce became founders of a society which became the Church Missionary Society. Wilberforce already subscribed to the Baptist Missionary Society, which sent Carey as the first missionary to the East, and they desired a Church of England equivalent. They had a vision to spread the gospel in Africa and the East by means of sending clergymen and teaching these people the Scriptures.
(To be continued)