William Bramwell

William Bramwell (1759-1818), English Methodist preacher and revivalist born of godly parents at Elswick Lancashire, England, received almost no formal education, and as a youth became an apprentice to work in tanning and dressing leather in the town of Preston. With his parents, he was a member of the Church of England. As a serious-minded teenager, he at first used rigid self-denial to find peace and forgiveness. But finally, under the preaching of an Anglican minister named Wilson, he was awakened and saved during a communion service in the Anglican church. “And ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13). On his days off work, he would go into the woods and climb a favorite tree and in his perch, “he usually remained there till evening, confessing his sins aloud in the presence of his Heavenly Father, and earnestly imploring forgiveness.”

After being born again, he soon discovered what it was to be treated like “off-scouring.” One day a neighbor stormed into William’s place and, among other unsavory things, accused William of being “a Methodist.” He concluded that if Methodists were hated the way he was hated, he would go hear them and discover the reason. Before long, he had leapt over the barrier of prejudice, and knit in with those despised Christians.

The frigid winds of scorn and derision began to fatigue William, and he went through a protracted period of depression. Finally, the clouds broke at one of Wesley’s meetings. Visiting Preston, the buoyant Wesley peered up at the troubled young man and said, “Well, brother! Can you praise God?” Bramwell was honest enough to give a chill, “No, sir.”

Wesley lifted up his hands, and smiling, said, “Well! but perhaps you will tonight.” By the end of that meeting, William Bramwell was able to see the rainbow in the cloud. He soon became an active worker for the salvation of souls and a class leader. John Wesley asked him to become an itinerant preacher in 1785. William trembled as he weighed the responsibilities of the gospel preacher. To a friend he unburdened himself, “Robert, Robert, what shall I do?”

“Billy,” said the old man, “I will tell thee what thou must do; thou must go into thy closet, lock thyself up, and there take a review of thy life. If thou canst find that God has blessed thee with a single mercy, praise Him for it.”

A mile and a half outside of Preston-Moor there was a hill by a large sand hole where he told a friend, “I once spent thirty-six hours together in prayer to the Lord that I might know His will concerning me.”

Later in life, he moved back to Preston, and made it his custom annually to secret himself for an entire month in a small hut in a wood near the moor, and avoid all social contact. There he devoted his whole attention to divine contemplation and fervent prayer.

William married Ellen Byrom in 1787. They were blessed with four children who all evidently went on for God. Bramwell worked a circuit that had been appointed to him. He labored in Preston, Liverpool, Colne, Dewsbury and elsewhere.

In apathetic Dewsbury, he began to preach and pray and plug away. “Having witnessed the powerful effects of prayer in other places, he now began to supplicate the God of all grace. He exhorted the people to join him in this important duty. He instituted prayer meetings at five o’clock in the morning.” This was in early 1792. He would later say that his first year in Dewsbury was “a year of hard labor and much grief.” It was a time of sowing in tears. It was in the second year that the awakening occurred, and he began reaping in joy. In November of 1792, souls began to enter in. At first, four were saved in a regular class meeting, then it was like the lapping waves on the lakeshore. Every week they heard of one or two conversions. In that year, Ann Cutler, known as “Praying Nanny,” visited Dewsbury. She habitually rose at three o’clock to “wrestle with God for revival.”

In Bramwell’s journal, he reported, “Several, who were the most prejudiced, were suddenly struck, and in agonies groaned for deliverance. On the Thursday, one who had been exceedingly pained for purity of heart for a fortnight, was delivered. The work continued almost in every meeting . . . Our love feasts began to be crowded, and people from every neighboring circuit visited us. Great numbers found pardon.”

No one was more startled by what was happening than Bramwell himself. “The more I consulted the Acts of the Apostles and Church History, the more I was convinced that this was no new thing, either in its manner or effects; but that in every great work of God, similar effects were produced. I consulted several of the senior brethren, who exhorted me to use every means to support the revival. Satan began to use his agents in different ways:–Some said one thing, and some another, but no man without the Spirit of God can properly judge the matter.”

At the close of his preaching, he would pause and gravely warn, “If any person goes from this place and attempts to scoff at the word of truth which he has heard –in the name of God I here charge that person to answer at the peril of his soul, for such an act of profanation, before the bar of the Great Judge of quick and dead!” This was well timed, for often there was some buffoon eager to express his low talent for foolishness.

Truth from his lips prevail’d with double sway,
And fools, who came to scoff, remain’d to pray.

From this period on, Bramwell’s career was blessed with crowds of forty, sixty and one hundred converts at a time. In his letters, journal, and from the testimonies of competent witnesses, we read of blessing flowing. In Birstal, in 1793, a remarkable work of God occurred, and as always, there were critics. One, Thomas Crowther, publicly recanted: “We have long been praying for a revival, and now when it is granted to us, shall we be dissatisfied, and oppose its progress, because it does not exactly accord with our weak ideas?”

At the height of the work in Birstal, a sickly looking man approached one of the itinerant preachers, named William Stones, and told him a sad tale of privations. Greatly touched, Stones went through the district and gathered a considerable relief fund for the poor man. Just before the gift was delivered, Bramwell came to town. So Stones and Bramwell went to visit with the man. Stones tells what followed:

“I went with him to the house where the man had lodged. We found him within; for he was waiting to receive the money which the friends were collecting for him. The man very pathetically related his tale of woe to Mr. Bramwell. His account appeared to me to be quite rational, accurate, and ingenious: it pierced to the bottom of my heart. While the man was rehearsing his troubles, Mr. Bramwell had his eyes closed, and frequently groaned. At length, he lifted up his head and looked at the man with an eye that seemed to pierce him through. ‘Tell me! Is there not a bastard child in all this?’ The man appeared to be thunder-struck: He began to tremble, faltered in his speech, and at length confessed that he had left home to avoid the payment to an illegitimate child which the law exacted. Mr. Bramwell faithfully warned him of his sin and danger, and advised him to go home, desist from his evil practices, and turn to God with purpose of heart. The man, expressing some reluctance about returning home, Mr. Bramwell threatened to have him taken up as an impostor if he did not leave the town immediately. We watched him out of the town, and were glad that he had gone away without his booty.”

From what we already know, do we need to ask what was the secret of his power? No one ever mentioned his outward appearance as being remarkable. Bramwell was a reader, he spoke French and dabbled a bit with Greek and Hebrew, but his learning never won him the admiration of his hearers. Nor was it natural eloquence. If Bramwell ever read a manual on homiletics, it was not evident in the way he structured, or failed to structure, his messages. An aged Lutheran preacher named Triebner frequently went to hear Bramwell when he spoke in Hull. Someone asked Triebner, “How do you like Mr. Bramwell’s preaching? Does he not often wander from his subject?” “Yes,” replied the old gentleman, “he do wander most delightfully from de subject to de heart.”

Bramwell was a man of prayer and faith; he lived close to God. Henry Logden, a co-laborer, says, “In several houses where he lodged, his prayers and intercessions were often heard during the night. He uniformly left his bed at four in the morning to enter the duties of the day.”

James Sigston, his close friend, testified, “he seemed to carry with him a consciousness of the divine presence, which influenced the whole of his conduct. His visits were generally short. Levity and trifling could never appear in his presence. Frequently when at prayer, so powerfully did he wrestle with God, that the room seemed filled with the divine glory, in a manner the most extraordinary; which made some persons imagine, that the very boards shook under them.”

Nearing the end of his career, he was afflicted with arthritis and heart trouble. One evening, he collapsed in the living room of a friend. Unable to lift him off the floor, he blurted, “Oh, Mr. Bramwell, what must I do?” As soon as he could talk, he groaned, “Pray. That always brings me out on the right side.” Prayer was offered up, Bramwell joined in, and when finally raised up and moved into a bed, the old warrior, in pain but still pleasant, said, “Continue to pray; we shall never sink while engaged in that exercise.”

He died of a stroke in his sixtieth year after a year or two of expectant and constant waiting for the Lord to call him home.
Abel Stevens, the Methodist historian, said, “The records of Methodism are crowded with examples of saintly living; but from among them all, no instance of profounder piety can be cited than that of William Bramwell. Thus furnished for every good word and work, for more than thirty years he was one of the most successful preachers of English Methodism.” “Great power was given him. Thousands were converted to Christ in his meetings . . . and remarkable discernment was given him to see and know the spiritual condition of others.”

For Further Reading:

The Life and Ministry of W. Bramwell by James Sigston
The History of Methodism Vol. 2 & 3 by Abel Stevens

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