The summer months bring many to thoughts of matrimony. Wedding invitations arrive daily. The daughter of the dean of our faculty is all consumed with plans for a mid-June wedding. June seems to be the most popular month, but they occur throughout the summer. 

Marriage is a difficult assignment for anyone. It seemed to have been particularly difficult for John Wesley. He not only had difficulty with his own marriage, he seemed to have trouble with the marriages of others. Wesley’s journal records very few instances of Wesley officiating at the wedding of others. Of course he married brother Charles to Sarah Gwynne, but very few other references are made to the weddings he may have performed.

It appears Wesley was conflicted on the subject of marriage his entire life. In February 1751 before he married Molly Vazeille, he wrote in his journal: “For many years I remained single, because I believed I could be more useful in a single, than in a married state. ... I now as fully believed, that in my present circumstances, I might be more useful in a married state.” After a month of marriage, Wesley then lay down a rule that would shatter all but the most spiritual of bondings — Wednesday, March 27, 1751: “I cannot understand, how a Methodist Preacher can answer it to God, to preach one sermon, or travel one day less, in a married, than in a single state. In this respect surely, it remaineth, that they who have wives be as though they had none.”

Late in life Wesley decided that it was possible to be married and still walk with God. He had been reading about Enoch (Gen 5.21 ff.) and decided that if Enoch could be married and still “walk with God,” then “our souls ... might attain the highest degree of holiness in a similar state”. President
Greensboro College