Kenneth G.C. Newport, who co-edited the recently published Manuscript Journal of Charles Wesley (which I’m currently reading), has a lecture available for online viewing at Gresham College.
His lecture revisits one of the more interesting poems recently uncovered in the Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley collection. When Wesley consecrated Thomas Coke as a bishop, who in turn consecrated Francis Asbury, CW was incensed at the break in apostolic succession/historic episcopacy. Regarding the first illegitimate consecration (of Coke), CW wrote:
So easily are bishops made
By man’s or woman’s whim?
Wesley put his hands on Coke
But who put hands on him?
And regarding the latter (Coke’s consecration of Asbury), CW drew an analogy with Caligula:
A Roman emperor ’tis said
His favourite horse a consul made
But Coke brings greater things to pass
He makes a bishop of an ass.
(Both poems are in the third volume of Kimbrough & Beckerlegge’s Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley [1992].)
