Wesley as a Writer

Wesley as a Writer

Wesley as a Writer A. Skevington Wood ~ Although his literary output was considerable, John Wesley did not set out to make his name as a writer. What he published was in the interests of the nationwide mission which engrossed his attention. He was concerned with the communication of the Christian message and regarded his writings as an extension of that ministry. He was no mere dilettante who fancied himself as an author and so dabbled in the art to satisfy his own inclinations.

Although, as we shall see, he was not lacking in facility, he directed his talent towards a specific goal. As George Lawton points out, almost everything Wesley wrote 'was intended to communicate or to vindicate, to convince, to persuade, and to move'.' However, as Lawton insists, it is unjustifiable to assume that because a work has a functional origin it is disqualified from securing recognition for its literary merit. Wesley did not aim to be a man of letters, but the calibre of what he wrote has nevertheless ensured that he deserves honourable mention in any comprehensive survey of eighteenth-century English literature.

Wesley's reputation as a writer has been enhanced of late as critics have increasingly recognized his gifts. Not long before the two hundredth anniversary of Wesley's evangelical conversion

Henry Bett, in his Fernley-Hartley lecture on The Spirit of Methodism, felt compelled to complain that the contribution of John Wesley, along with that of his brother Charles, had been unjustifiably underestimated, if not entirely overlooked, by literary reviewers." There were, in fact, notable exceptions even then as, for example, in favourable assessments from such distinguished connoisseurs as Oliver Elton and Louis Cazamian.3 The space devoted to Wesley in The Cambridge History of English

Wesley as a Writer 1g!

Literature may not have been as extensive as some might have wished, but Archdeacon W. H. Hutton's comments were sufficiently laudatory when he saluted the founder of Methodism as 'a master of direct English and simple strength'.*

In recent years, however, several surveys have contained appreciative references, including the relevant volume in The Oxford History of English Literature.» An up-to-date sample is to be found in James Sambrook's evaluation in the Longman Literature in English series.° On the other hand, Wesley is dismissed with no more than a brief, incidental comment in some modern accounts — as, for instance, those by David Daiches and Maximillian Novak.'

But overall it would be true to say that any adverse balance has now been largely redressed and that Wesley's stature in the realm of literature stands as high today as it ever has done. There are competent judges who claim that, at its best, his prose may bear comparison with anything produced in the eighteenth century and that for clarity and effectiveness he is indeed superior to some of his more fashionable contemporaries.

Conditions of writing Considering that he wrote so much so regularly, and invariably with little leisure to polish or prune his style, it is remarkable that Wesley maintained such a consistent standard. For it must be remembered that the bulk of his writing was done while, like the apostle Paul, he was 'in journeyings often' as well as preoccupied with the care of the Methodist societies. It was only on comparatively rare occasions that he was able to spend a few consecutive days in some undisturbed retreat. More frequently he seized an opportunity to put pen to paper in a short interval between preaching and riding on to the next stopping place in his relentless itinerary. His only library consisted of the few books he could carry with him on horseback or latterly in his chaise. In these circumstances, it is surprising that he was able to write at all, let alone leave behind him such a large legacy of printed works.

An entry in his Journal for 6 January 1754 gives us some idea of the pressures which normally made it difficult for Wesley to squeeze out enough time even for minor and occasional projects, and why he needed a longer span if a more substantial production was envisaged. 'I began writing Notes on the New Testament —a work which I should scarce ever have attempted had I not been so ill as

John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives not to be able to travel or preach, and yet so well as to be able to read and write.'® Towards the end of 1753 he had been compelled to suspend his mission in order to recuperate from a consumption which brought him so near to death that he actually composed his own epitaph. Even while under doctor's orders not to write he nevertheless transcribed a section of his Journal for the press; then, soon after arriving at Hotwells near Bristol to take the waters there, he set about the task of preparing the Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament for the benefit of his preachers. 'I went on now in a regular method, rising at my hour, and writing from five to nine at night; except the time of riding, half an hour for each meal, and the hour between five and six in the evening.'? We can only wonder at Wesley's stamina if as a convalescent he could adhere to such a demanding schedule. As if this was not enough, he soon added a brief exhortation to his conduct of family prayers each evening when a number of neighbours asked if they might attend.

At the end of February 1754 Charles Wesley travelled down from London and the brothers spent several days together examining the Greek text of the New Testament and consulting

Philip Doddridge's Family Expositor and John Heylin's Theological Lectures.'° In ten weeks the rough draft was completed and John

Wesley began transcribing the comments on the four Gospels. It was not, however, until the autumn of the following year that he was able to finalize his work and despatch it to the printers. On 25

August 1755 Wesley embarked on a tiring tour of Cornwall, eventually returning to Bristol at the end of September. 'I was weary enough when we came to Bristol,' he admitted, 'but I preached till all my complaints were gone, and I had now a little leisure to sit still, and finish the Notes on the New Testament.''' The Notes, of course, were officially recognized, along with the Standard Sermons, as indicative of Methodist doctrine. Not all who value them as such are perhaps aware of the personal sacrifice involved in their compilation, even though in the main they represent a compacted translation from the Latin of Bengel's

Gnomon rather than a wholly original composition.

Extent and range The sheer magnitude of Wesley's literary achievement is impressive in itself. Richard Green's Wesley Bibliography lists no less than

233 works —many quite short — directly from his pen, together with

Wesley as a Writer

100 more which he edited and abridged or from which he selected extracts, 8 for which he supplied a preface or annotations and 30 in which he assisted or was assisted by his brother Charles. This makes a total of 371. titles altogether — a substantial contribution indeed in quantitative terms to eighteenth-century literature. The sermons alone constitute a formidable body when compared with those of other prominent preachers of the period which have survived in print. As arranged in the latest edition of Wesley's works they number 151. Only 78 of George Whitefield's sermons are extant and no more than a handful from such celebrated figures as George Berkeley, Joseph Butler and Jonathan Swift.'? It was in 1771 that Wesley initiated the republication of all his prose writings to date with certain specified exceptions. In 1808 the Conference directed Joseph Benson to supervise the preparation of a new edition which appeared in 17 volumes from 1809 to 1813.

A more authentic text was aimed at by Thomas Jackson in his 14 volume set published between 1829 and 1831 and since reprinted.

The critical edition currently in progress from Abingdon Press is planned to comprise 34 volumes when complete.

The range of Wesley's writings is as unusual as their extent.

'Few English literateurs played so many parts as Wesley did', declares Lawton.'? Both Lawton and Elton have attempted to classify the material.'t Wesley is no doubt best known as a journalist, in the strict sense of that term, for he kept and published part by part a daily record of events in his life as a missioner to the nation. His collected letters and Standard

Sermons are reasonably familiar, especially to Methodist readers.

But Wesley was also a controversialist, an educator, a translator and an editor. He chronicled the rise of Methodism and produced a series of popular tracts. He even ventured into the realm of biography with his life of Fletcher which Elton described as 'a plain and graceful record'.'® We must therefore look a little more closely at some of Wesley's variegated compositions before briefly assessing the quality of his English style.

Journal John Wesley's Journal has for long been regarded as a classic of its kind. According to George Sampson, it 'has something of the charm of Pepys'.'® In its passages of spiritual autobiography it can be placed alongside John Bunyan's Grace Abounding and George

John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives Fox's Journal.'? As a record of revival it is of the same genre as Jonathan Edwards's Narrative of Surprising Conversions in the American awakening — an account which aroused Wesley's interest in the possibility of a similar movement of the Spirit in Britain. As reflecting the personality and outlook of a prominent eighteenth-century figure, it matches the diaries of less widely influential churchmen like James Woodforde and William Cole.

And viewed simply as a travelogue it provides a fascinating picture of the contemporary scene which complements such acclaimed reports as William Cobbett's Rural Rides, Arthur

Young's Journeys and John Byng's Torrington Diaries. Wesley's descriptive powers have called forth the admiration of literary critics in the past and still do so today. Elton went so far as to affirm that in this respect Wesley is the equal of Horace Walpole or James Boswell and that his fertility of thought rivals that of Daniel

It was through reading Jeremy Taylor's Rule and Exercises of Holy Living and Holy Dying that, while studyang at Oxford, Wesley was first persuaded to check his stewardship of time by keeping a shorthand diary. During his visit to Georgia he began to expand his private jottings into what developed into a published Journal. It was to run to twenty-one parts, covering the years from 1735 to 1790. 'I had no design or desire to trouble the world with any of my little affairs,' Wesley explains in the Preface to the first extract.'9

He did not intend to reproduce what he had written only for his own use but 'which would answer no valuable end to others'."° He was concerned with information and edification rather than merely with self-expression or even self-justification.

The poet Edward Fitzgerald, who translated the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, had occasion to compare three of his favourite books — Walpole's Letters, Boswell's Life of Johnson and Wesley's

Journal. After he had first discovered the Journal, he shared his excitement with his friend Edward Cowell, from 1867 Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Cambridge. 'Another book I have had is Wesley's Journal .

. If you don't know it, do know it; it is curious to think of this Diary of his running almost coevally with Walpole's Letter-Diary; the two men born and dying too within a few years of one another, and with such different lives to record.

And it is remarkable to read pure, unaffected, and undying English, while Addison and Johnson are tainted with a style which

Wesley as a Writer

all the world imitated.'*' Fitzgerald later learned that Thomas Carlyle knew Wesley's Journal and shared his high opinion of it."

Letters Wesley's contemporary, Samuel Johnson, believed that 'the cool of leisure, the stillness of solitude' were essential for the production of a good letter.*3 As we have seen, such ideal conditions were rarely available to Wesley and, more perhaps than the rest of his writings, his letters were composed in odd moments sandwiched between other assignments. 'Considering that I am _ usually obliged to write in haste,' Wesley told Mary Cooke (later to be

Adam Clarke's wife), "I often doubt whether my correspondence is worth having.'** He was, moreover, diffident about his accomplishments in this area. 'I have often wondered that you were not weary of so useless a correspondent', he candidly confessed to Lady Maxwell, 'for I am very sensible the writing of letters is my brother's talent rather than mine.'*> Despite his modest estimate of his own effectiveness and the fact that he invariably wrote hurriedly with little time to remove any infelicities of expression,

John Wesley's letters are still well worth reading. The collection in the most recent edition of his works will total 3,500 but that, according to Frank Baker, represents only a fraction of what he originally penned."° The earliest letter which has survived was written from Oxford in 1721 and addressed to Ambrose Eyre, Treasurer of Charterhouse School, where Wesley had been a gown-boy. As Telford points out, his style is as clear and direct as in his maturity.*" His last extant letter, almost seventy years later, urged William

Wilberforce to press on with his campaign for the abolition of slavery. Between these dates Wesley wrote to a host of recipients, from the great in the land to the poor and disadvantaged, and even on occasion to criminals. He covered a remarkable variety of subjects but his letters of pastoral counsel are of particular value.

He acted as a spiritual director to scores of his followers — more especially women, it must be acknowledged — and if to the modern mind his tone seems at times to be unduly inquisitorial and demanding, his advice is usually sound and scriptural. Throughout his prolific correspondence Wesley wrote as he spoke. As his

Irish friend Alexander Knox testified, he in effect talked on paper."® That no doubt is why he proved to be such a helpful

John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives postal counsellor. Those who received his letters felt that somehow he was actually speaking to them. As a result, present-day readers tend to agree that they are introduced to the real Mr Wesley through this medium more than through anything else he wrote, even including the Journal.

Sermons It is difficult for us to understand the enormous popularity and influence of published sermons in the eighteenth century. A major proportion of printed material during the period of the evangelical revival consisted of such discourses. They proved to be bestsellers, and publishers vied with each other to obtain copy from the foremost preachers. Some clergymen saw here an opportunity to supplement their income. Laurence Sterne, for example, expected to be paid more for a set of sermons than for his novel

Tristram Shandy, even though that turned out to be by no means unprofitable."9 When John Wesley entered the field it was certainly not for financial gain, since the proceeds from the sale of all his works were devoted to charitable causes. His aim was to spread the message of universal salvation and scriptural holiness, while at the same time providing his preachers with a standard of doctrine and homiletical method.

Wesley was second only to Whitefield as the voice of the revival.

But whereas Whitefield's dramatic and impassioned sermons must have made more impression when they were delivered than perhaps they do when read, that is not the case with Wesley. What

Wesley proclaimed was more readily transferred to print, and still retains something of its original impact by reason of its lucidity and logic. Scholars are not altogether of one mind as to whether the printed sermons were preached more or less as they stand or had been studiously edited and altered for the press. James H.

Rigg and W. Lamplough Doughty thought that the substance was much the same but that the language was adapted to appeal to readers rather than hearers.*° John Lawson disagrees and insists that what we are left with is 'not a collection of dummy sermons'.3!

Both George Lawton and James Downey come down on Lawson's side.*" In the Preface to the first selection of sermons, made in 1747, Wesley announces that he designed 'plain truth for plain people'.*3 He had endeavoured to adapt his presentation to the capacities of the rank and file who constituted the majority of his

Wesley as a Writer

congregations, especially in the open air. 'I now write', he declares, 'as I generally speak, ad populum — to the bulk of mankind.'34 His statement would seem to justify the assumption that there was little or no difference in language between his preached and printed sermons.

This conclusion appears to be confirmed by the single instance where we can compare a report of one of Wesley's oral sermons with its written counterpart. It is No g1 in the revised list, 'On Charity', with I Corinthians 13.1—3 as the text. It was written in London in 1784 — a year in which it had been preached a dozen times. A manuscript now housed in Drew University Library in Georgia contains an eye-witness account of a service in St John's,

Clerkenwell, on 16 December 1787, when Wesley used the identical message. The précis suggests that the sermon as delivered was virtually the same both in content and expression as the printed version.*> Moreover, William Gurley recalled that in May 1785, during one of his brief visits to Ireland, Wesley had preached from I Corinthians 13 as he stood on a table at the end of the Mall in Waterford. 'It was a most able discourse,' Gurley commented, and then added significantly, 'just the same as printed.'3° Although Wesley's sermons are usually couched in language that he hoped was intelligible to the uneducated masses of the people, he could modify it to suit a special occasion. On 23

November 1777 he preached on "The Reward of the Righteous'

(Matt.25.34) before the Humane Society in Lewisham Parish Church. In it, so Albert Outler demonstrates, he raised his rhetoric and expanded the scope of his classical and literary allusions.3'" Wesley had made a similar adjustment when he prepared what was to be his only published sermon addressed to a civil court, at the opening of the Assizes in St Paul's Church,

Bedford, in 1758. But even in his regular messages to congregations composed largely of very ordinary hearers, the scholar in him kept breaking through, however hard he tried to simplify his utterance. The range of his vocabulary and references and the depth of his theological insights combined to constitute a brand of eloquence which Dante characterized as 'the illustrious vulgar' — vernacular speech which nevertheless conveys an air of distinction and authority.3° Although some modern readers apparently find them rather hard to absorb — hence recent attempts to bring their

John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives language up to date — set alongside the ornate oratory which flowed from many eighteenth-century pulpits, Wesley's sermons emerge as models of clarity and cogency.

It is as such that they retain their status today. In terms of their content, they embody the heart of the evangelical faith. These are the messages which helped to inspire and sustain a revival. In terms of their form, despite some lapses, they represent a notable contribution to homiletical literature. Indeed, Dgwney can go so far as to contend that 'no other English sermons, not even those of Donne, Tillotson, or Butler, have enjoyed such widespread attention and influence'

.39

Controversial writings The eighteenth century has been dubbed the age of controversy. A spate of pamphlets and lengthier treatises poured from the printing presses, in which the contestants advanced their arguments and counter-arguments, often in the language of bitter and biting invective. Most of such polemic was political or between academics, but the Church was not spared the spectacle of internecine conflict of this kind. John Wesley was himself a reluctant controversialist. He frankly admitted that theological debate was uncongenial to him and was content where possible to leave it to others to take up the cudgels to defend the Christian faith or the Methodist interpretation and practice of it when these were under attack. He described defensive apologetic as 'heavy work, such as I should never choose; but sometimes it must be done'.*° As Gerald R. Cragg explains, some misconceptions might be ignored but fundamental errors in the understanding of the Gospel had to be corrected. Silence on Wesley's part could have implied consent. "By giving free course to falsehood, he might have diminished the impact of truth' .*"

'I have no time to write largely in controversy,' Wesley confessed.*" He felt that there were more profitable ways of employing his gifts and promoting God's glory. As a consequence, he dealt with his critics briskly and even peremptorily. 'If short answers to opponents will not suffice, I cannot help it; I will not, I cannot, I dare not spend any more time in that kind of writing than

I do.' Yet, despite his reticence, Wesley proved to be a formidable debater. His training in logic at Oxford stood him in good stead. He quickly identified the vulnerable areas in his

Wesley as a Writer

antagonists' arguments and with razor-sharp incisiveness exposed their fallacies. He steered clear of abuse and slander and always tried not to misrepresent those with whom he disagreed, although it must be conceded that he did not always reproduce extracts from their writings with absolute accuracy.

Notable among his replies are those to Edmund Gibson, then Bishop of London, containing what Gordon Rupp regarded as some of the most moving paragraphs. Wesley ever penned; to George Lavington, Bishop of Exeter, rebutting his ill-informed charges of 'enthusiasm'; to William Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester, who sought to vilify Wesley as a fraudulent mountebank; to the pseudonymous 'John Smith' in what Rupp described as 'not so much a confrontation as a continuing conversation'; and to George Horne, Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, held in high esteem by Wesley and with reference to whom he declared,

'Oh that I might dispute with no man! But if I must dispute, let it be with men of sense.'** Wesley's longest theological work, A Treatise on the Doctrine of Original Sin, was a response to what he regarded as the insidious reductionism of Dr John Taylor. He refuted Taylor's contentions point by point in an exhaustive and indeed exhausting scrutiny. In his Appeals Wesley aimed to meet the charges brought against the Methodist societies during a campaign of pamphlet abuse in a way which he hoped would satisfy 'men of reason and religion'.4° With these and other controversies in mind, Elton said of Wesley: 'It was well that he could write, with so many good writers ranged against him.'?°

Educational purpose We can do no more than glance at other aspects of Wesley's literary activity. He was a determined educator. In an age when the majority were deprived of adequate schooling, Wesley was concerned that his preachers in particular and his followers in general should be given an opportunity to learn. He was convinced that the influence of the revival would decline in one generation if the Methodists were not a reading people. The Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament were compiled 'chiefly for plain, unlettered men' and were supplemented by an exposition of the Old Testament, drawn mainly from the commentaries of Matthew Poole and Matthew Henry.*' Wesley edited the fifty volumes of his Christian Library in order to make available such a

John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives collection of divinity as 'is all true; all agreeable to the oracles of God; as is all practical, unmixed with controversy of any kind, and all intelligible to plain men'.*® To achieve this end, he sometimes tampered with the text in such a drastic fashion as to shock the purists, although his motives were commendable.

But Wesley's educational concern extended beyond the spiritual sphere. He issued an English grammar for the use of pupils at Kingswood School, 'and followed it with similar textbooks to cover the Hebrew, Greek, Latin and French languages. His

English dictionary, if something ofa curiosity today, no doubt met a need when it was released. Works on philosophy, logic, history, natural science and medicine must be added to the list — most of them supplying a 'reader's digest' version of books by various authors. Wesley also displayed an unusual gift as a translator of hymns in the German Pietist tradition as well as composing some of his own.

, Literary style Wesley insisted that obscurity is an inexcusable fault in any writer on practical religion.*? As an instrument employed in the service of Christian communication, his prose is marked by clear thought and direct expression. 'I dare no more write in a "fine style" than wear a fine coat', he declared.°° He aimed to 'use the most common words, and that in the most obvious sense'.°' Hence, according to John H. Whiteley, 'his prose has the muscular form and incomparable vigour with which the bulk of the English people then spoke.'>** Downey emphasizes the same feature:

'Wesley's prose is best described as athletic.'>3 As an evangelist travelling up and down the land, constantly meeting a representative cross-section of society and especially the lower strata, Wesley was more familiar than were most writers with the everyday speech of the masses.

This contact with the vernacular was reinforced by the fact that Wesley's mind was saturated with the strong cadences of the English Bible. He told John Newton that the Bible was his standard of language as well as of sentiment.5+ He strove 'to express Scripture sense in Scripture phrase' for he believed that 'the Bible language is like Goliath's sword, that "'there is none like it'"''.°° According to Frank Baker, the sources of Wesley's style are to be traced to his classical education, his familiarity with the

Wesley as a Writer

Authorized Version and the Book of Common Prayer, and his call to communicate the Gospel to the poor.5° These determinative factors combined to produce distinctive prose which, however its literary merits may be assessed today, undoubtedly served the purpose for which it was intended in the circumstances of writing at the time.

But Wesley the writer cannot be summarily dismissed as a figure of merely antiquarian significance. He must surely not only be accorded a place among the more noteworthy authors of religious literature but also recognized as a craftsman whose style is still to be admired and indeed emulated. If good prose is that which 'allows the writer's meaning to come through with the least possible loss of significance and nuance, as a landscape is seen through a clear window', then John Wesley deserves to be included in the roll of those who have succeeded in producing it.°'

Bibliography Frederick C. Gill, The Romantic Movement in Methodism, Epworth Press

1937.

Richard Green, The Works of John and Charles Wesley: A Bibliography, Methodist Publishing House *1906.

Thomas W. Herbert, John Wesley as Editor and Author, Princeton University Press 1940.

George Lawton, John Wesley's English: A Study of His Literary Style, Allen and Unwin 1962.

Thomas B. Shepherd, Methodism and the Literature of the Eighteenth Century, Epworth Press 1940.

George H. Vallins, The Wesleys and the English Language, Epworth Press 1957-

Wesley the Communicator » Pauline M. Webb Dear Mr Wesley, This letter is to invite you to broadcast a series of 'Reflections' on the BBC World Service. These daily talks reach a worldwide radio audience and are intended to set current issues in the context of religious faith. They need to be simple, direct and concise, lasting not more than four minutes and pitched at a popular level. Would you please let me know as soon as possible whether you are willing and able to accept such an assignment?

I would have had no hesitation in sending such an invitation to the Rev John Wesley, if only our lot had been cast in the same age and place. There is little doubt either what his reply would have been.

Yes, he would have been willing and certainly he would have been able to speak through a medium which would have given him the opportunity of addressing in one four-minute span an audience a thousand times greater than those he addressed in a lifetime of travel or through volumes of published sermons. For he was preeminently a mass-media man, in all the best meaning of that phrase. He enjoyed speaking to the masses, he saw the value of a variety of media and he cherished the gift of plain, direct speech which could truly communicate, that is, share with all the people information or experience which everyone has a right to know and which can bind us together in one (the root meaning of the word

'communicate'

Unfortunately, without a time machine, which not even John Wesley could invent, we cannot bring him to the microphone. But we can through his journals and letters and published works, and

Wesley the Communicator

above all through other people's recorded memories, recall what an excellent communicator he must have been. Even his very presence, slight and slender of stature though he was, seems to have radiated a charisma that charmed his friends and disarmed his enemies. A fellow man of letters and biographer of Wesley,

Robert Southey, wrote of him, 'His presence excited a stir among strangers and made a festival among his friends.'

So I can imagine what a delight it would have been to have him coming into a radio studio, his script already penned in that scrawling handwriting of his, with many crossings out as he had laboured to find exactly the right word to express what he wanted to say. He would have had no difficulty in obeying the advice to keep it simple. He was himself a lover of plain and direct speech, despite his great learning, and once said,

I dare no more write in a fine style than wear a fine coat. Even had I time to spare I should still write just as I do. I should purposely decline what many admire — an highly ornamental style. Let who will admire French frippery: I am still for plain, sound English.

This was no mere precept. Wesley's own writings afford abundant examples of his ability to translate complex ideas into simple language. Take, for example, his definition of the very word religion. It comes in that sixty-page pamphlet entitied An Earnest

Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, which spoke so directly to the heart of the distinguished layman, Nathaniel Gilbert, Speaker of the House of Assembly in Antigua. While searching for peace of mind himself, he picked it up almost by chance and was so impressed that he was prompted to travel especially to Britain to hear this man preach and there, together with two of his accompanying slaves, he was converted. So that pamphlet became as it were one of the founding documents of the Methodist Church in the Caribbean. In it, Wesley had written so simply, using no word of more than two syllables, Religion is no other than love, the love of God and of all

- mankind; the loving God with all our heart and soul and strength, as having first loved us, as the fountain of all the good we have received, and of all we ever hope to enjoy; and the

John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives loving every soul which God has made, every man on earth as our own soul.

Such directness of speech was also used on occasion with devastating effect, for Wesley could pack into one brief sentence a world of meaning. Take his oft-reiterated claim that he had no intention of separating from the Church of England. Sometimes he wrote long, closely argued documents on the theme, but in one brief sentence he conveys all that this had cost him in terms of his own inner struggle. In a letter to his brother Charles near the end of his life, he wrote, 'I submit still, though sometimes with a doubting conscience, to mitred infidels.' You can almost hear him wickedly relishing that choice of phrase, possibly written with tongue in cheek as a polite way of putting his tongue out at the bishops who had treated him badly. Or there was the occasion when he was fiercely criticised by Augustus Toplady, but refused to enter into controversy and simply commented in a letter to George Merryweather dated 24 June 1770, 'Mr Augustus Toplady I know well but I do not fight with chimney sweepers.

. I read his title page and trouble myself no further.'

Despite the length of many of his own pamphlets and his prolific letter writing, I would have no fear that our broadcasting Mr

Wesley would find it difficult to keep within the time limits prescribed for him. He frequently advised his preachers not to go in for long sermons and warned against what he called 'the lust of finishing'. In other words, he wanted people both in their studying and in their preaching to keep to the times allotted to them without drawing things out beyond the limit.

Wesley even specifically advised one of his women helpers, whom he felt unable to recognise as preachers as such, 'Keep as far from what is called preaching as you can; therefore never take a text; never speak in a continued discourse without some break over four or five minutes.' Yet he became persuaded that certain of these women speakers did clearly have 'an extraordinary call' and comments in a letter to Mrs Crosby:

I do not wonder if several things occur which do not fall under ordinary rules of discipline. St Paul's ordinary rule was, 'I permit not a woman to speak in the congregation'. Yet, in extraordinary cases he made a few exceptions, at Corinth in particular.

Wesley the Communicator

So no doubt we would have had a lively discussion in the studio on the current Anglican debate on women's ordination!

Nor would I have any fear that Wesley the broadcaster would not take well to production. He frequently sought the advice of others, particularly on matters of communication. One of the most striking occasions was when he had been invited to preach the University Sermon at Oxford and worked for some days in the Library of Lincoln College on a manuscript in which he set out to denounce the many vices he found in the city and the decline in values he felt there since his own days as a student. So he prepared a scathing attack on the theme 'How is the faithful city become a harlot!' But the sermon was never preached.

Its mutilated manuscript, dated 24 June 1741, was found among Wesley's papers after his death, and he began another sermon, one which was to become one of his most popular, on Acts 26, 28, 'Almost thou persuadest me to become a Christian'. This change from a negative to a positive approach would seem to have come about on the advice of the Countess of Huntingdon, to whom, Wesley recalls in his journal for 28 June of that year, he read a sermon

(presumably the harlot one), and she persuaded him not to preach it.

Wesley was well aware of one of the perils of all public communicators, that of being misrepresented or misunderstood.

So, even after preaching a sermon, he would still edit it to ensure that any permanent record would represent exactly what he wanted to say. In that he was like many modern preachers who still want to amend transcripts of their own recorded words before allowing them to be published. There is an interesting footnote at the beginning of the pamphlet publishing the famous sermon on 'Scriptural Christianity', again one of Wesley's university sermons which had been very hard-hitting at the prevalent vice in Britain. It was a sermon that was heavily criticized, not least by Bishop Gibson, whose handwritten notes on the subject can still be seen in the Library at Lambeth Palace, where he complains that Wesley is saying that there is no such thing as Christianity in Britain. The sermon was subsequently included in a collection of twelve, among them three others also preached at St Mary's before the University of Oxford, in Wesley's first volume of Sermons published in 1746. In this volume too the footnote is kept, where

Wesley answers his critics saying,

John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives It was not my design, when I wrote, ever to print the latter part of the following sermon; but the false and scurrilous accounts of it which have been published, almost in every corner of the nation, constrain me to publish the whole, just as it was preached: that men of reason may judge for themselves.

So Wesley clearly knew what it meant to be the victim of the media as well as a participator in them. However, none of that deterred him from his prophetic role as a publi¢ communicator.

He often himself entered the lists of debate in what was then and still is the powerful mass medium of the newspaper world. Lloyd's

Evening Post over the years carried many letters to the Editor penned by John Wesley on contemporary social issues, one of the most lengthy and remarkable of which was published in the Leeds

Mercury and several other leading papers. It was written on 21 December 1772 and addressed the then, as now, urgent question of unemployment and rising prices. Wesley goes into a lengthy analysis of the economic state of the nation, particularly as it affects the rural areas. He adopts a frequent technique of his, that of asking and answering a series of questions, in very frank terms.

Thus he writes:

Why are pork and poultry and eggs so dear? Because of the monopolizing of farms, as mischievous a monopoly as was ever introduced into these kingdoms. The land which was formerly divided among ten or twenty little farmers enabled them comfortably to provide for their families but is now generally engrossed by one great farm...

Where is the remedy? Perhaps it exceeds all the wisdom of mien totclr. ..*.

How can the price of wheat be reduced? By prohibiting for ever that bane of health, that destroyer of strength, of life, and of virtue, distilling. Perhaps this done will answer the whole design. '

Reading that, I only wish we could have heard Wesley on a phone-in following the same theme!

Another theme on which Wesley frequently wrote to the press was when he wished to appeal for support of various charitable works. During the wars against the French in 1759 he published a powerful appeal in Lloyd's Evening Post on behalf of French

Wesley the Communicator

prisoners of war, and later wrote regarding the services celebrating the victories at Minden and Quebec, 'The prayer for our enemies in particular was extremely striking; perhaps it is the first instance of the kind in Europe.' Eight years later he appears again in Lloyds Evening Post raising funds for people in Britain suffering as a result of an exceptionally severe winter.

Wesley clearly believed in the value of the medium of print. He has been called 'the best gatherer and scatterer of useful knowledge that Georgian England knew'. He became the precursor of all publishers of paper-backs, as he introduced his popular Christian Library, making available to the general public not only cheap versions of religious classics, but also his own publications on innumerable topics. Writing to Thomas Blackwell of Lewisham, on 14 August 1748, he describes the plan for the Library:

I have had some thoughts of printing on a finer paper with a larger letter not only all that we have published already but, it maybe, all that is most valuable in the English tongue, in threescore or fourscore volumes in order to provide a complete library for those that fear God ... whenever I can procure a printing press, types and some quantity of paper I can begin immediately.

He took very seriously the task of editing and marketing his books and made an extensive list of authors and subjects he thought worthy of inclusion. His biographer Southey remarks somewhat laconically, 'Many a folio was brought down to the limits of Wesley's favourite duodecimi'. This publishing venture eventually proved a great success; it has been estimated that Wesley could have made some £30,000 from the sale of books, but typically gave it all away to charitable causes. Certainly, eighteen years after his publishing enterprise began he was summing up his accounts and recording that rather than having made any profit he now had a debt of over £1000. He ran into several publisher's difficulties, such as arguments over copyrights and other people trying to get in on the act. Some of his preachers, emulating his example, eagerly began publishing their own sermons, but were severely reprimanded for doing so, lest they lowered the high standard Wesley set for all published work. So in the Minutes of the Conference of 1749 appears the question: 'Shall we require

John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives every Helper to answer that question, "Will you print nothing until we have revised it?" The answer is "By all means''.' Thomas

Butts and William Briggs were appointed as the first Book Stewards, and all printed literature thenceforward bore the imprint, 'Printed and Sold at the Foundery near Upper Moorfields'.

Wesley's own publications proliferated, ranging from Addresses on the Rights and Wrongs (mainly the wrongs in his view!) of the American Revolution, through Letters to a Smuggler, Letters to a Freeholder, Letters to a Swearer, right on to his own four volumes of sermons and his comprehensive Study Notes on the New Testament. In his Preface to this latter work, he gives a profile of the kind of readership he intends to cater for, 'I write for plain, unlettered men who understand only their mother tongue and desire to save their souls.' He himself knew at least eight other languages —

French, German, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, New Testament Greek, Hebrew and Latin — the sure sign of an eager communicator, and he encouraged even the least educated of his lay preachers to study Greek so that they might read the New

Testament in its original tongue. He felt very keenly the need for linguistic skills. On one of his visits to Wales in 1748, he records in his Journal:

O what a heavy curse was the Confusion of Tongues! And how grevious are the effects of it! All the birds of the air, all the beasts of the field, understand the language of their own species. Man only is a barbarian to man, unintelligible to his own brethren.

As that Journal extract well illustrates, literature is also indebted to Wesley's skills as a communicator in his unpublished work as well as in his books. His own Journal ranks alongside those on Pepys and Evelyn in its lively portraits of the contemporary scene, when he delights in recording not only the great preaching events, but even tiny and amusing incidents that occur along his journeys.

As a very old man, in 1799, he tells an anecdote about a man who had a large Newfoundland dog and an old raven who had fallen in love with each other. He records in his Journal:

The bird has learned the bark of the dog so that few can distinguish them. She is inconsolable when he goes out, and if he

Wesley the Communicator

stays out a day or two, she will get up all the bones and scraps she can and hoard them up for him till he comes back.

Though obviously an excellent raconteur himself, and fond of a tall story, Wesley warns his preachers never to give in to 'that hateful custom of painting things beyond the life. .

. Let us rather speak under than above the truth. We of all men should be punctual in all we say, that none of our words may fall to the ground.' Understatement rather than overstatement seems to have characterized his own style of preaching and utterance. His style was extempore, as evidenced in an interesting account in one of the early Methodist Magazines:

On the last Sunday in the year (1788) he had an exceedingly large congregation in All Hallows Church, Lombard Street .

'Sir' said Wesley to his attendant while putting on his gown, 'It is above fifty years since I preached in this church. I remember it from a particular circumstance. I came without a sermon; and going up the pulpit steps I hesitated and returned into the vestry under much mental confusion and agitation.

A woman who stood by noticed my concern and said, ''Pray, Sir what is the matter?" I replied, "I have not brought a sermon with me".

Putting her hand on my shoulder, she said "'Is that all? Cannot you trust God for a sermon?" This question had such an effect upon me that I ascended the pulpit, preached extempore, with great freedom to myself and acceptance to the people; and have never since taken a written sermon into the pulpit."

To this fluent style there is no doubt that as a communicator Wesley added histrionic skills.

His contemporary, Horace Walpole, describes him as a preacher who is 'wondrously clever but as evidently an actor as Garrick. He spoke his sermons fast and with so little accent that I was sure it had been often uttered. Still, there was elegance in it.'> Certainly, Wesley must have been aware of the importance of gesture and facial expression, of 'body language' as we call it these days. This is why he took such detailed interest in the way his followers dressed and appeared to others.

Among the reams of advice he gave to his helpers is one passage which surely ought to be hung up in the office of every Social

Security Office or on the threshold of every charitable foundation, as a reminder that gesture and tone convey as much as words:

John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives If you cannot relieve, do not grieve the poor. Give them soft words if nothing else. Abstain from either sour looks or harsh words. Let them be glad to come, even if they go empty away.

Put yourself in the place of every poor man and deal with him as you would God should deal with you.

And on the subject of dress, it is delightful to find John Wesley as a very old man refusing to rebuke a young lady whose father had reprimanded her for her finery in dress, which he feared would offend the taste of the ascetic Mr Wesley. But to the father's surprise John Wesley commented, 'For my part I do not wish to see young people dress like their grandmothers' — a comment which no doubt eased the process of communication across the generation gap!

For Wesley was at his best as a communicator in a person-toperson relationship. He seems to have been able to bridge all the usual gaps, of class or age or sex, and was an excellent conversationalist with people in all walks of life. Even the famous Dr Samuel Johnson enjoyed his company, though he complained that Wesley never stayed in one place long enough for a really leisurely conversation! But Wesley himself refuted the idea that he rushed about too much. "Though I am always in haste,' he once wrote, 'I am never in a hurry; because I never undertake any more work than I can go through with perfect calmness of spirit.' This balanced way of life gave him time to attend to the needs of hosts of individual friends with whom he communicated regularly by correspondence, which for many people became a real source of blessing.

When John Haime, a dragoon in the Queen's Regiment, became converted under Wesley's preaching, he joined the company who often travelled with Wesley, and commented:

Mr Wesley took me to travel with him. ... And when I was absent he comforted me by his letters which were a means, under God, of saving me from utter despair.

And the kind of good advice Wesley gave in such pastoral letters can be seen in a phrase from one of them: 'Through every threatening cloud look up, and wait for happy days.'

This great care for individuals and their many various needs found its focus in the life of the Society for which Wesley cared in the Foundery Chapel. It is recorded that on founding the Society

Wesley the Communicator

there, he spent two whole days writing out a list of the names of every individual member and learning them by heart, so that he might pray for them personally and attend to their separate needs.

And it is reported that when he preached, however great the crowd, he had that knack ofso fixing his eyes upon his hearers that each one thought he or she was being addressed individually, rather as in one of those portraits so skilfully painted that the eyes seem to follow the beholder from wherever one stands.

Such individual care understandably strengthened the bonds which attached the people called Methodists to their founding father. Robert Southey says of him:

No founder of a monastic order ever more entirely possessed the respect as well as the love and admiration of his disciples or better understood their individual characters and how to deal with each according to the measure of his capacity.*

Such individual care is the secret of good communication, whether it be on a person-to-person basis or through mass media.

Wesley would surely never have thought that the one could replace the other. Even if his words could have been recorded on tape, or his lively countenance have been captured on film, what finally counts is the way in which he personally embodied the love of God and the grace of Christ for all with whom he came into contact. Alexander Knox, who met Wesley when he was a child, wrote of him in later years, 'His countenance as well as his conversation expressed an habitual gaiety of heart.

. He was, in truth, the most perfect specimen of moral happiness which I ever saw.

So there seems little fear that Wesley would have been a delightful guest to have in a radio studio or on a television chat show or holding a phone-in and I have a feeling he would have enjoyed it all immensely. So, I present to you John Wesley, communicator par excellence. The green light comes on. Can we guess his opening words? 'I look upon all this media world as my parish .

. .. and his out-cue? "The best of all is, God is with us.'

Wesley the Evangelist Joe Hale It was the emptiness of John Wesley's experience in America — not the confidence of his Oxford scholarship — which thrust him upon the world as an evangelist. Four months after he returned to England he asked Peter Bohler, 'How can you preach to others, who have not faith yourself?' Bohler told him, 'Preach faith ti// you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith'.' He had been a missionary in Georgia without having personally experienced

God's freeing and reconciling grace, so Bohler's prescription was radical and exceedingly important. Wesley seized the moment two days later and first offered salvation by faith alone to a 'prisoner under sentence of death' named Clifford.* He then began in the London churches to preach boldly 'salvation by faith alone'. At St John the Evangelist's 'I preached on those strong words, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature'''. The people were offended and he was told to 'preach there no more'. Other churches in the city, St Lawrence's, Great St Helen's, St Ann's, Aldersgate and the Savoy Chapel, followed suit and refused him a hearing. Through God's gracious initiative, the very thing he was preaching to others,

'free salvation by faith in the blood of Christ', was moving toward realization in his life, and in the life of his brother Charles!

'My brother had a long and particular conversation with Peter Bohler', John wrote on 3 May 1738. 'And it now pleased God to open his eyes; so that he also saw clearly what was the nature of that one true living faith, whereby alone, "through grace, we are saved''.'3

On Pentecost Sunday, 21 May, Charles was ill and recuperating in the Little Britain Street house of John Bray, 'a poor ignorant mechanic who knows nothing but Christ'. He entered into his

Wesley the Evangelist

conversion experience reading Psalm 39, 'And now, Lord, what wait I for? My hope is in thee.' Charles wrote, 'I then moved my eyes and met, "'He hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God...' (Psalm 40.3,4). Two days later he wrote: 'I awakened under the protection of Christ and gave myself up, soul and body, to Him. At nine, I began a hymn about my conversion but was persuaded to break off for fear of pride.' Bray encouraged

Charles to continue and Charles prayed Christ to stand by him and finished the hymn:

Where shall my wondering soul begin?

How shall I all to heaven aspire?

A slave redeemed from death and sin, A brand plucked from eternal fire, How shall I equal triumphs raise, Or sing my great Deliverer's praise?* It was the next evening John Wesley reluctantly went to the society in Aldersgate Street and there 'felt he did trust in Christ and Christ alone for salvation.

. .. He received the assurance that Christ had saved him from the 'law of sin and death'. The scene was glorious when John met Charles at the Bray house a hundred yards away; "Toward ten, my brother was brought in triumph by a troop of our friends, and declared, "'I believe!' We sang the hymn with great joy, then parted with prayer.'°

The Methodist shorthand 'Aldersgate', must include a series of important spiritual experiences extending before and after 24 May

1738. Dr Albert Outler writes of the 'ample evidence that fixes the year 1738 as the decisive period in Wesley's change from a faith in faith to faith itself, from aspiration to assurance. At Aldersgate he had passed from virtual to real faith, from hoping to having.'®

Dr Gordon Rupp says if we bypass the debate between those who would 'play up' or 'play down' the significance of 24 May, 'it was certainly no flash in the pan'. The following Sunday John stood up in a Religious Society at the house of the Rev. John Hutton in Westminster and 'told the people that five days before he was not a Christian ... and the way for them all to be Christians was to believe and own that they were not now Christians', which brought the famous response from Hutton, 'If you was not a Christian ever since I knew you, you was a great hypocrite, for you made us all believe you was one.' Mrs Hutton was so distressed

John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives that she wrote to Samuel, John's father, which does seem to confirm what 24 May meant to Wesley himself.' What John

Wesley was convinced in his mind lay at the heart of Christianity he experienced in his heart at Aldersgate.

On 11 June, at St Mary's, Oxford, John preached before the University on the text 'By grace ye are saved through faith'.® This was the first sermon published following the eventful day. It became the manifesto of his herculean ministry agd set him apart as a mighty evangelist.

For the balance of his life Wesley preached on average 800 times a year. He exclaimed, 'I do indeed live by preaching!'? He travelled up to 5,000 miles year after year for half a century on horse or in chaise, and near the end, in 1789, wrote to the Dublin

Chronicle: 'It is not for pleasure at this time of life I travel three or four thousand miles a year.' Bishop F. Gerald Ensley adds:

No, it was not pleasure, but the passion to mediate the divine grace which had so blessed his own hfe. It lured him from the classrooms, from the lawns and 'sculptured loveliness which is

Oxford', to serve the brutal masses.

It nerved him for his encounters with hostile mobs. It held him steady when his own followers seemed hopelessly divided. No, it was not for pleasure, but the urge to share the deepest possession of his own life that kept him to his task.'° To this end he wrote and edited 400 books, wrote hundreds of tracts in defence of the faith, and published a fifty-volume

Christian Library which he personally edited and expected every Methodist preacher to read. His 'eminence is secure — as evangelist, reformer, practical genius', writes Dr Outler in his

Library of Protestant Thought volume on Wesley. 'Few men in the eighteenth century have left a mark so clear and ineffaceable.'''

First, foremost and always, John Wesley was an evangelist. His labour provided fuel for the Evangelical revival. The movement known as Methodism was inspired by his visionary leadership and was moulded by the unusual ability he possessed to attract and mobilize people.

If the word 'evangelist' is suspect today, tarnished by sensational and well publicized abuses, perhaps we can look to the model John and Charles Wesley left of 'some to be evangelists' and

Wesley the Evangelist

find in their exercise of this New Testament gift both effective ministry and honour.

Following Aldersgate and his visit to the Moravians at Herrnhut in Germany, Wesley, back in England on Sunday, 27

September 1738, 'began again to declare in my own country the glad tidings of salvation.

. .. This announcement stretches across his life like a canopy and illuminates Wesley the evangelist: how he understood 'the glad tidings of salvation'; how he sought to deliver this burning message; and what changes occurred as a result, or, as Wesley exclaimed, 'What hath God wrought!'

(i) The glad tidings of salvation John Wesley sought to bring the offer of free salvation to all persons. He declared:

If any doctrines within the whole compass of Christianity may be properly termed fundamental they are doubtless these two — the doctrine of justification, and that of the new birth: the former relating to that great work which God does for us, in forgiving our sins; the latter to the great work which God does in us, in renewing our fallen nature.'* A stirring of the Spirit in the London religious societies he knew, and an Awakening across the Atlantic in New England of which he had read in the writings of Jonathan Edwards, moved him

'more narrowly to inquire what the doctrine of the Church of England is concerning the much controverted point of justification by faith'. He concluded, 'Now all I teach respects either the nature and condition of justification, the nature and condition of salvation, the nature of justifying and saving faith, or the Author of faith and salvation.''3 These three words, all I teach, accurately describe the heart of Wesley's sermons, appeals, and letters.

The change God brings in the human heart and what flows from that change became the focus of his search and the basis for his vocation. He wrote By those words, 'we are saved by faith', we mean that the moment (one) receives that faith which is above described he is saved from doubt and fear, and sorrow of heart, by a peace that passes all understanding; from the heaviness of a wounded spirit, by joy unspeakable; and from his sins, of whatsoever kind

John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives they were, from his vicious desires, as well as words and actions, by the love of God and of all mankind then shed abroad in his heart.

His evangelical premises are beautifully and powerfully expressed in this highly personal plea.

The faith I want is 'a sure trust and confidence in God, that, through the merits of Christ, my sins are forgiven and | reconciled to the favour of God'. I want that faith which St Paul recommends to all the world, especially in his Epistle to the Romans, that faith which enables every one that hath it to cry out: 'I live not; but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me' (Gal. 2.20). I want that faith which none can have without knowing that he hath it (though many imagine they have it, who have it not), for whosoever hath it, is 'freed from sin, the whole body of sin is destroyed' (Rom. 6.6,7) in him; he is freed from fear, 'having peace with*God through Christ and rejoicing in hope of the glory of God' (Rom. 5.1, 2). And he is freed from doubt, 'having the love of God shed abroad in his heart through the Holy Ghost which is given unto him' (Rom.

5-5), which 'Spirit itself bearest witness with his spirit that he is a child of God' (Rom. 8.16)."° Wesley the evangelist was seeking nothing less than the establishment of 'real religion' in the church: 'a restoration of man, by him that bruises the serpent's head .

. a restoration not only to the favour, but likewise to the image of God; implying not barely deliverance from sin but the being filled with the fullness of God'.'® He confidently believed this restoration would result in 'a religion of love and joy and peace, having its seat in the heart, in the inmost soul, but ever showing itself by its fruits, continually springing forth not only in all innocence — for "love worketh no ill to his neighbour"' — but likewise in every kind of beneficence, in spreading virtue and happiness all around it'.'? The Gospel was both a powerful vortex drawing persons toward God and a centrifugal, impelling force thrusting redeemed people into the world about them. It was religion seated in the individual heart with its benefits ever flowing to all around it.

Wesley the Evangelist

Only God, as Creator, could bring about that kind of new creation for the new creation was the gift of God. 'It is a work of omnipotence. It requires no less power thus to quicken a dead soul than to raise a body that lies in the grave. None can create a soul anew but he who at first created the heavens and the earth.'

Wesley believed these words in his bones. On the basis of his intellectual grasp of the Scripture and his own experience that God 'had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death', he convinced others it could happen to them, too.'® Thus the end of life for which we are all created was

'to know God, to love him, to do his will, to enjoy him for ever and ever!''9 He was sure of the way to begin, 'We preach inward salvation, now attainable by faith.*° It was for preaching this direct, personal and immediate offer of grace 'that we were forbid to preach any more in any of those churches where, till then, we were gladly received!' These are telling words — inward, salvation, now, attainable by faith. They reveal the cutting edge of the Gospel

Wesley announced, the 'Glad tidings of salvation' he preached to all who would listen.

(ii) Delivering the glad tidings In eighteenth century England one was born and baptized into a specific parish of the Church of England. Shifts in population, however, caused the system to break down. The mining areas of Cornwall were among the most populous areas of England, with St Just nearly as large as Manchester and St Ives larger than

Liverpool. New industries, like magnets, had drawn into their field of force new concentrations of people. In Cornwall many of those drawn to the west had no ties to a parish and no relationship to a church. Families in need of the Christian Gospel were lost to the faith because they were not found where the established church had determined they should be. Never before had the Cornish people so needed material and spiritual help, but never before had the clergy had so little to offer.*'

Some new impetus was needed and this was provided by George Whitefield, a young contemporary of Wesley.

George Whitefield was a member of the 'Holy Club' at Oxford, having been introduced to the group by Charles Wesley. He later followed John and Charles Wesley across the Atlantic to Georgia.

John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives He was ordained in Gloucester at the early age of twenty-one, having been converted three years before John and Charles

Wesley. Though in London he was derided as a 'boy parson', his early preaching attracted wide notice in England. The trumpet was sounded in crowded London parks and in the fields of Bristol by George Whitefield and the troops began to gather. John and Charles were across the Atlantic at the time many people in London and Bristol, England's premier cities, were beginning to hang on to the Gospel preaching of young Whitefield and to think of him as the original methodist! According to Gordon Rupp,

Whitefield was the morning star of the Evangelical revival. 'He was the one great evangelist to share in the Revival as it embraced

America, Wales, Scotland, and England.'** This history has been eclipsed in part because Whitefield was eleven years younger than Wesley and died at the early age of fifty-five. John Wesley, active virtually to the end of his eightyeight years, outlived him by twenty-one years.

When the Wesleys returned to London and found the churches closed to them, John was pragmatic and believed that when one door was closed, God would open another. Whitefield was instrumental in nudging him through a new door, a door that led him to the irregular and strange practice of preaching in the out of doors, first in Bristol. He also accompanied Whitefield to join the action in London.

Thursday, 14, 1739 — I went with Mr Whitefield to Blackheath, where were, I believe, twelve or fourteen thousand people. He a little surprised me by desiring me to preach in his stead, which I did (though nature recoiled), on my favourite subject, 'Jesus

Christ, who of God is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.' I was greatly moved with compassion for the rich that were there, to whom I made a particular application. Some of them seemed to attend, while others drove away their coaches from so uncouth a preacher.*3

As Whitefield recorded it:

June 14, Thursday — Spent the whole day in my pleasant and profitable retreat at Blendon; and in the evening had the pleasure of introducing my honoured and reverend friend, Mr

John Wesley, to preach at Blackheath. The Lord gave him ten

Wesley the Evangelist

thousand times more success than He has given me! After sermon, we spent the evening most agreeably together with many Christian friends at the Green Man. About ten we admitted all to come in that would; the room was soon filled —

God gave me utterance. I exhorted and prayed for nearly an hour, and then went to bed, rejoicing that another fresh inroad was made into Satan's territories by Mr. Wesley's following me in field-preaching as well in London as in Bristol.*4

Kennington Common and Moorfields in London were the great outdoor theatres where Whitefield and the Wesleys fearlessly proclaimed the message God had given them to crude and hostile audiences.

John wrote:

Sunday, 9 — I declared to about ten thousand in Moorfields, what they must do to be saved. My mother went with us, about five, to Kennington, where were supposed to be twenty thousand people. I again insisted on that foundation of all our hope, 'Believe in the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved.' From Kennington I went to a society at Lambeth. The house being filled, the rest stood in the garden. The deep attention they showed gave me a good hope that they will not all be forgetful hearers.*° Sunday, 16—I preached at Moorfields to about ten thousand, and at Kennington Common to, I believe, nearly twenty thousand, on those words of the calmer Jews to St. Paul, "We desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest; for as concerning this sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against'. At both places I described (in very plain terms) the real difference between what is generally called Christianity, and the true old

Christianity, which, under the new name of Methodism, is now also everywhere spoken against."° Sunday, 23 —I declared to about ten thousand, in Moorfields, with great enlargement of spirit, "The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost' (Rom. 14.17]. At Kennington I enforced to about twenty thousand that great truth, 'One thing is needful.'

Thence I went to Lambeth and showed (to the amazement, it seemed, of many who were present) how 'he that is born of God doth not commit sin' [I John 3.9].?7

John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives Rounds of field preaching like these were the heart and soul of the Methodist awakening.

Dr George Hunter suggests the first objective in Wesley's field preaching was the starting of small classes in which those attending experienced saving grace and disciplined growth.

Wesley's practice in open-air preaching was: 1. to awaken people; 2. to enrol awakened people in a class; 3. to teach those awakened to experience their justification; and 4. to teach justified people to expect an experience of sanctification in this life.?° While Wesley was convinced new believers must be formed into disciplined societies so that the gains would not be lost, I believe his open-air preaching was also meant to call people to experience salvation

'by grace through faith' then and there.

Wesley's journal entries include texts of his sermons and describe the call Wesley gave for people to respond to the saving message. In his manner of appeal Wesley resembled at times a retired minister I used to hear at the Presbyterian church in the place where I attended college.

Unlike the stereotypical present-day evangelist, this popular and provocative preacher rarely asked persons to "come forward' at the end of the service, but he always gave an invitation! You knew you were being challenged to respond! Wesley's urgent preaching touched human need and opened people to see their need for support in fellowship with other believers. Without the preaching of a message that in itself called for response, however, the classes would never have got off the ground.

The spoken word driven home by the Holy Spirit unlocked human hearts.

An hundred gathered themselves together, who I earnestly called 'to repent and believe....' I cried out, with all the authority of love, 'Why will ye die, O house of Israel?' My heart was filled with love, my eyes with tears, and my mouth with arguments. They were amazed, they were ashamed, they were melted down, they devoured every word.

. I cried aloud, 'All things are ready; come unto the marriage.' I preached 'God hath given us eternal life; and this life is in his Son.' I believe

God applied it to many hearts.

Wesley aimed to offer Christ, to announce salvation through Christ as good news for every person and to invite persons to

Wesley the Evangelist

respond to a loving God with their whole beings. Because Wesley and his preachers left no grounds for neutrality, the sheer force of the Gospel message they brought, in contrast to much of that being then offered in the churches, led to opposition and meant life for the early Methodists was anything but easy.

Dr Frank Baker paints a stark picture that present-day Methodists may have trouble grasping. 'In 1740 William Seward was first blinded, and then killed, by a Welsh mob, the first, but not the last, Methodist martyr. Many of the preachers were pelted, beaten, stamped on, kicked, stripped, thrown into ponds, dragged along the ground by the hair, drenched with water from fire hoses, gored by bulls, tarred and feathered.''? John's advice was 'Always look a mob in the face,' and he did! 'He cut the cloth of his meeting to cover the situation which confronted him; the length and order were adapted to the mood he found when he arrived.'3° On 5 June 1739 in Bath, Wesley met the notorious Beau Nash in a famous encounter. Nash was pretentious, usually travelling from Bath to Tunbridge in a post chariot drawn by six grey horses, with outriggers, footmen, French horns and every other appendage of expensive parade. He always wore a white hat. He was the king of Bath and Bath was the most fashionable watering-place in England, Everyone sought to make a grand appearance in the Pump Room where Beau Nash held forth. One poetically described the atmosphere: 'Anointed with oil, crowned with rosebuds, and decked with purple and fine linen, they sport away their days, chanting to the sound of the viol, drinking wine in bowls, and stretching themselves on couches of ivory!' Nash was the king of revels.

There was great expectation at Bath of what a noted man was to do to me there; and I was much entreated not to preach, because no one knew what might happen. By this report I also gained a much larger audience, among whom were many of the rich and the great. I told them plainly, the Scripture had concluded them all under sin — high and low, rich and poor, one with another. Many of them seemed to be a little surprised, and _ were sinking apace into seriousness, when their champion appeared, and, coming close to me, asked by what authority I did these things. I replied, "By authority of Jesus Christ,

John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives conveyed to me by the (now) Archbishop of Canterbury, when he laid hands upon me, and said, '""Take thou authority to preach the Gospel."' He said, 'This is contrary to Act of Parliament: this is a coventicle.' I answered, 'Sir, the coventicles mentioned in that Act .

. are seditious meetings; but this is not such; here is no shadow of sedition; therefore it is not contrary to that Act.' He replied, 'I say it is; and, beside, your preaching frightens people out of their wits.'

, 'Sir, did you ever hear me preach?' 'No.' 'How then can you judge of what you never heard?' 'Sir, by common report.'

'Common report is not enough. Give me leave, Sir, to ask, Is not your name Nash?' 'My name is Nash.' 'Sir, I dare not judge of you by common report: I think it is not enough to judge by.'

Here he paused awhile, and, having recovered himself, said, 'I desire to know what this people comes here for': on which one replied, 'Sir, leave him to me; let an old woman answer him.

You, Mr Nash, take care of your body; we take care of our souls: and for the food of our souls we come here.' He replied not a word, but walked away.?'

At times religious leaders hurled ludicrous charges. One incident reported in The Methodist Magazine occurred in Redruth when Methodists were summoned before a magistrate and events took a humorous turn.

Soon after the Methodist society was formed in Redruth the minister of the parish, who was also a magistrate, desired to root out the sect. He sent his agents to their meetings to take down names. He then appointed a day on which the offenders were to appear before him, that he might take out a Mittimus and send them all to jail. His court was a club-room over the public-house kitchen at the church-town. The Methodists, on appearing, were accompanied by a mixed multitude — some sympathizers, and others rejoicing that now the 'Canorums', as they called them (the Methodists), would be put down. The reverend magistrate took the chair, with pen and ink before him. The room was filled, and all things ready for entering on business, when the floor suddenly gave way and sunk down into the kitchen beneath them. No lives were lost, no bones broken, but much noise and dust ensued. As the gentleman was descending he cried out to one of his friends, 'Joe, where are we going?' 'I

Wesley the Evangelist

don't know,' says Joe. 'Nor I neither,' says his Worship. But though his journey was short, it proved a little disastrous, for he lost his hat and wig by the way, and the contents of the inkbottle, happening to fall on his head, ran down over his face.

After a while he got up, and, having recovered his hat and wig, and cleaned his face as well as he could, the Methodists collected around him to know his further pleasure, when he prudently replied, 'Go home, go home; sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.'??

Wesley is not simply an eighteenth-century personality who belonged to a distant religious scene. The movement he led continues right down to the present and has an important place in recent Christian history. The evidence of what happened then is seen in what exists now.

What hath God wrought!

Toward the end of his life, in the summer of 1787, Wesley preached a sermon, 'The Signs of the Times', from Jesus' words in Matthew 16.3: 'Ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the sign of the times?' He was astonished by indifference among the leaders of the Church of England to the Methodist revival and its renewing, refreshing influence. He quoted from a pastoral letter from the Bishop of London, written some years before: 'I cannot imagine what persons mean by talking of "'a great work of God"' at this time. I do not see any work of God now, more than has been at any other time.'*3 Wesley rejoined:

At this day the gospel leaven — faith working by love, inward and outward holiness, or (to use the terms of St Paul) 'righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost' — hath so spread in various parts of Europe, particularly in England,

Scotland, Ireland, in the islands, in the north and south, from Georgia to New England and Newfoundland, that sinners have been truly converted to God, thoroughly changed both in heart and in life; not by tens, or by hundreds only, but by thousands, yea, by myriads! The fact cannot be denied: we can point out the persons, with their names and places of abode.**

Continuing his assessment:

John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives After a candid inquiry into matter of fact, consider deeply,

'What hath God wrought?' Who hath seen such a thing? Who hath heard such a thing? Hath not a nation, as it were, been

'born in a day?' How swift, as well as how deep, and how extensive a work has been wrought in the present age! And certainly 'not by might, neither by power, but by the Spirit of the Lord'. For how utterly inadequate were the means!

How insufficient were the instruments to work any such effect!35

John Wesley knew the West Country well, having visited Cornwall on thirty different occasions. He had seen miners and their families changed by the power of Christ. George Borlase wrote in 1753 of great atrocities being committed along Cornwall's rugged coasts that were shocking even for that day. "The people who make it their business to attend these (ship) wrecks are generally tynners, and, as soon as they observe a ship on the coast, they first arm themselves with sharp axes ,and hatchetts, and leave the tynn works to follow those ships... They'll cut a large trading vessell to pieces in one tide, and cut down everybody that offers to oppose them.' The story of one shipwreck in which nearly two thousand men died is legendary. The commander, Sir

Cloudesley Shovel, was cast up alive on Porth Hellick beach, only to be murdered by a woman for the sake of an emerald ring!3° Wesley asked on one of his later visits if 'that scandal of Cornwall, the plundering of wrecked vessels, still subsisted' and was told by the old vicar of Cubert, 'As much as ever; only the Methodists will have nothing to do with it.'3? The sheer increase in the number of Methodists in the region had become a powerful leavening influence.

Redruth, once considered to be one of the roughest, became one of the most civilized towns in all of England. The nearby plain at Gwennap, covered from end to end with nearly ten thousand miners when it was so dark they could hardly see one another, was an awesome sight, Wesley wrote. 'There was on all sides the deepest attention; none speaking, stirring, or scarce looking aside.

Surely here, though in a temple not made with hands, was God worshipped in 'the beauty of holiness'.' The next morning he was

'waked between three and four, by a large company of "'tinners'',

Wesley the Evangelist

who fearing they should be too late, had gathered round the house, and were singing and praising God. At five I preached once more on "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved."

They all devoured the word.'3® This was one of the seventeen times he preached at the famous Gwennap Pit. The Methodist chapels scattered throughout the then populous mining region are his footprints.

Wesley left two of the most important Methodist societies in England at St Ives and Redruth in Cornwall and 'an organization and apostles who were to spread his simple doctine of fearing God and working righteousness throughout the country. He had brought hope to hopeless thousands, and thanks largely to him the Cornwall of 1790 was a far less barbarous place than it had been in 1740. Drunkenness had declined and, though smuggling had never been so prosperous, the inhumanities of wrecking had been checked.'%9 In the north Midlands, potteries developed in Burslem, and new towns prospered, drawing in people from every side. Wesley wrote in 1781 of the Methodist witness: "The word of God has had free course among them. Sinners are daily awakened and converted to God, and believers grow in the knowledge of Christ.' When the Prime Minister of England, William Gladstone, laid the foundation stone of the Wedgwood Institute at Burslem a little less than a century later he quoted from Wesley's

Journal to illustrate how harsh conditions had been softened because of the Wesleyan revival.*° Artisans and potters came into the Christian faith in large numbers. Many used their skills to create commemorative figures, plates with picture transfers, and pottery busts of John Wesley, which found their way into Methodist homes and chapels across Britain, and indeed are scattered today throughout the world. These popular folk-art pieces attest to the impact of Wesley as spiritual father of the awakening. Such veneration was usually reserved for members of the royal family, prime ministers, or heroes of battle. Enoch

Wood, a gifted potter, sculpted the most correct pottery portrait of John Wesley at age eighty. The first edition Enoch Wood bust is extremely rare and valuable. Lesser quality commemorative pieces were cast by the tens of thousands.

For half a century John Wesley single-mindedly pressed on, determined to keep to the course. The sermons he prepared were

John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives not to be once preached, once heard, and then forgotten! He refused the advice of the minister who said, 'Once in seven years I burn all my sermons; for it is a shame if I cannot write better sermons now than I could seven years ago.' The urgency underlying Wesley's preaching was that people should experience saving grace, then live to bring glory to God, had little to do with the artful use of words, the turning of a phrase, or polite literature. a Whatever others can do, I really cannot. I cannot write a better sermon on the Good Steward than I did seven years ago; I cannot write a better on the Great Assize, than I did twenty years ago; I cannot write a better on the Use of Money than I did thirty years ago; nay, I know not that I can write a better on the Circumcision of the Heart than I did five-and-forty years ago. Perhaps, indeed, I may have read five or six hundred books more than I had then, and may know a little more history, or natural philosophy, than I did; but 1 am not sensible that this has made any essential addition to my knowledge in divinity.

Forty years ago I knew and preached every Christian doctrine which I preach now.*'

His preaching was a consistent hammering home of four 'alls'

(all need to be saved; all can be saved; all can know they are saved; and all can be saved to the uttermost). Even so, he was ever an avid learner, intensely observing and faithfully recording what he saw.

He was not enamoured by novelty nor a devotee of the notion that because something is new, it is true.

In all that transpired between John Wesley's reluctant visit to the society in Aldersgate Street where he felt his heart 'strangely warmed' and the time of his death in his City Road house fiftythree years later, he was an evangelist. No other objective he pursued came close to his passion to see a rebirth of vital religion. He was convinced the message of unmerited grace offered a different life to people and that new Christians drawn together in small disciplined classes could bring change in the nation.

There was one clear and undeniable fact for Wesley:

A few years ago Great Britain and Ireland were covered with

Wesley the Evangelist

vice from sea to sea. Very little of even the form of religion was left; and still less of the power of it .

. God commanded light to shine. In a short space he called thousands of sinners to repentance. They were not only reformed from their outward vices, but likewise changed in their dispositions and tempers; filled with 'A serious, sober sense of true religion', with love to God and all mankind, with an holy faith producing good works of every kind, works both of piety and mercy.*"

Dr Rupp writes, That the whole manner of existence of individuals and the character of local communities were changed is beyond dispute.

Without exaggeration of the number of converted boozers, men and women were turned from disordered characters into sober, decent people into whose homes there came new stabilities and joys.*3 In less than two and a half centuries, a movement developed into a dynamic and vital church now found in ninety nations, with a worldwide membership exceeding twenty-five million people.*4 The relationship between John Wesley and Methodist people is without parallel in any other Christian world communion.

Lutherans and Calvinists do not think of leaders, Martin Luther and John Calvin, in the same way. John Wesley provided the Methodists with spiritual direction, theological guidance and a discipline and order for their churches. But more, he gave

Methodist people a vision of what God was doing in human history. What he sought in the renewal and restoration of vital religion in England he earnestly longed to see realized in the wider

Church and in the whole family of God.

He was utterly convinced all persons were spiritually dead until they received the gospel of salvation; that salvation was for all people and for all the world; and that all might experience the unfathomable love and reconciling power of God. Only the Spirit of God could raise the dead to life. Those embued with new life could collectively be used of God to unleash a mighty moral transformation. Though Methodists dare not take credit for the whole impact of the Evangelical revival, they did their part, scattering evangelists everywhere who invited men and women to

John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives receive God's pardoning grace. Lives were changed, and as a byproduct of evangelism, people were lifted and society was made more humane. Seeing it happen, Wesley could only exclaim,

'What hath God wrought!'

Notes Introduction Frank Baker 1. Mary Pendarves to Ann Granville, 4 April 1730: 'I honour Primitive

Christianity, and desire you will let him know as much' (Wesley, Letters, Oxford edition, 25:256 n.2).

2. Ibid., 25:336 and n.4; cf. p.341.

3. Wesley, Journal, Bicentennial! edition, 18:132.

4. See Methodist History, Vol. 8.2, January 1970, pp.25-32, "The Birth of John Wesley's Journal.

5. Wesley, Letters, 25:8.

6. Richard Watson, The Life of the Rev. John Wesley, Mason, London 1835, Pp-203-4.

7. Letter to Dorothy Furly, 25 September 1757.

8. 27 January 1767. g. Wesley's power was first questioned in the London Conference of 1763, first expounded fully in its historical setting in his annual Minutes of 1766, and thence transcribed into the 'Large' Minutes of 1770.

10. Letter to Lady Frances Gardiner, 2 November 1763.

11. Cf. his stiff reply to the recalcitrant trustees at Dewsbury, 30 July 1788.

12. Letter to Miss March, 30 May 1776.

13. Letter to 'John Smith', 25 March 1747, Letters 26:229-30; cf.

Ppp-197, 210.

14. Letter to Charles, 27 June 1766. He used a form of Paul's Greek word in Acts 27.15, 17, for a ship driven before the wind.

15. Letters, 25:9—-10.

16. Letter to Ebenezer Blackwell, 31 August 1755.

17. Methodist History, Vol. 12, July 1974, pp.193-4.

18. London Quarterly Review, Vol. 179, January 1954, pp.290-9.

19. Letter to Charles Wesley, 13 January 1774. 'Philosophy', of course, implied natural philosophy, or science, and he was referring to his own A Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation: or, a Compendium of Natural

Philosophy, third edition, enlarged, five vols., 1777.

20. See especially Vol. II, pp. 163-88.

21. Ibid., IT, 189-212.

2. Wesley and the Moravians_ W. P. Stephens 1. The Moravians were renewed in the 1720s at Herrnhut under the leadership of Count von Zinzendorf. They worked within the Lutheran

Notes to pages 23-68 Church in Saxony, while having their own churchly life and episcopal order of ministry. They were outstanding for the emphasis they gave to overseas missionary work, and Wesley's first contacts were with Moravian missionaries. Their origins go back to the Bohemian Brethren in the fifteenth century.

2. Texts referred to in this article are as follows: The Works of John Wesley, edited by Thomas Jackson, 14 volumes, London 1831; The Journal of John Wesley, Standard Edition, edited by Nehemiah Curnock, 8 volumes, London 1909-16; The Letters of John Wesley, edited by John

Telford, 8 volumes, London 1931.

3. Towlson sees signs of separation before the impact of Molther and regards him as the occasion rather than the cause of separation. See C. W.

Towlson Moravian and Methodist, London 1957, pp.88, 117.

4. There were other issues — such as universal salvation (Journal II, 498), a collection of Moravian hymns described as 'that amazing compound of nonsense and blasphemy' (Journal III, 389), and their exalted view of their own church (Letters I, 349).

5. A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, Volume 1, edited by Rupert Davies and Gordon Rupp, Epworth Press 1965, p.xxxv.

6. John Wesley: Sacramental Theology. No Ends without the Means Ole E. Borgen 1. For a more exhaustive study see Ole E. Borgen, John Wesley on the Sacraments. A Theological Study, Grand Rapids: Francis Asbury Press 1986

(reprint hereafter cited as Borgen). For the sacramental practice of the Wesleys see John C. Bowmer, The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper in Early

Methodism, London: Dacre Press 1951.

2. Borgen, pp.46—7. Cf. also pp.36—44.

3. The Works of John Wesley, 14 vols, ed. Thomas Jackson, reprinted Grand Rapids, Zondervan 1958-1959 (hereafter cited as Works), Vol.

VI, pp.417, 423; Wesley's Standard Sermons, 2 vols, ed. E. H. Sugden, London: Epworth Press 1961 (hereafter cited as StS), Vol. II, p.132, cf.

Vol. I, pp.44—5, 304; Borgen, p.172.

4. Works VI, p.413.

5. John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament. 3 vols., Bristol, printed by William Pine, 1765 (hereafter cited as OT Notes), I Chron.

21.26; Lev. 25.25; Num. 15.2; 19.2.

6. John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, London:

Epworth Press, 1954 (hereafter cited as NT Notes), Rom. 9.25; 1 Thess.

1.10; Heb. 2.10; 13.20.

7. Borgen, pp.44-6.

8. Works, VIII, p.49. g. StS, I, p.259, cf. p.243.

10. The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., ed. John Telford, 8 vols, London: Epworth Press 1931 (hereafter cited as Letters), Vol. 11, p.46, italics mine; cf. Works VI, p.369; VIII, p.107; Borgen, pp.82-5.

Notes to pages 68-72

11. StS, 1, p.242; cf. II, pp.237-8. The full text of the Catechism reads:

', .. an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, given unto us, ordained by Christ himself, as a means whereby we receive the same. .. .'; Borgen, pp.49-50 n.1.

12. John Wesley, The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America, London; Strahan 1784 (hereafter cited, as Sund. Service), pp.3 11-12.

13. John Wesley, The Duty of Receiving The Lord's Supper. Unpublished holograph, dated 1731/2, transcribed by Ole E. Borgen, 1966 (hereafter cited as Duty of Receiving), p.10.

14. John and Charles Wesley, Hymns on the Lord's Supper. With a Preface concerning The Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice. Extracted from Doctor [Daniel] Brevint, first edition, Bristol: Printed by Felix

Farley, 1745, sec., III.

2, p.g. The preface is hereafter cited as Brevint (W).

15. Brevint (W), sec. III. 2-3, pp.g—10; Works VII, p.148.

16. StS II, pp.237-8.

17. Duty of Receiving, p.1t.

18. John and Charles Wesley, Hymns on the Lord's Supper (see n.14 above, hereafter cited as HLS), hymn no. 162:1.

19. Works V1, pp.73-4; Letters 1V, p.38.

20. Augustine, First Catechetical Instruction. Ancient Christian Writers, 34 vols., ed. J. Quasten and W. Burghardt, Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press 1960, II, p.82.

21. Cf. Works X, p.192, '. .

. inward grace, which added thereto, makes it a sacrament'.

22. Sund. Service, p.312. Wesley speaks of'. .

. the senseless opinion of transubstantiation'. It is 'hurtful to piety' and goes against Scripture, sense and reason, Works VII, p.64; LX, p.278; X, p.151.

23. Letters 1, p.118; NT Notes, John 3.13.

24. Duty of Receiving, p.8; HLS, no. 30:5; Borgen pp.58—69.

25. StS 1, p.440; Duty of Receiving, p.1; HLS, no. 42:2-4.

26. Works, X, p.150; cf. p.114. Borgen, pp.69-81.

27. Brevint (W), sec. II. 1, p.4.

28. Brevint (W), sec. II. 7, p.6.

29. Brevint (W), sec. II. 5, and 9, pp.6—7.

30. Brevint (W), sec. II. 9, p.7, cf. sec. III. 2, pp.g—10.

31. Brevint (W), sec. II. 3, p.5.

32. Brevint (W), sec. II. 6, p.6.

33. Brevint (W), sec. II. 7, p.6; HLS, no. 94:2.

34. HLS, 22:1, 3; cf. nos. 25:2; 123:3.

35. HLS, no. 23:1-2.

36. Brevint (W), sec. II, 7, p.6.

37. John Wesley, Sermons on Several Occasions. Vols. -VIII 1754-1788 (hereafter cited Serm. on Sev. Occ); 1, p.229.

38. Article XIII, Sund. Service, p.310.

39. Letters 111, pp.366—7 (italics mine).

Notes to pages 72-78 40. Serm. on Sev. Occ. I, p.248.

41. Serm. on Sev. Occ., 1, pp.230; 249-50, cf. Works VIII, pp.18, 20, 62; X, p.135; XI, p.283; StS 1, p.467.

42. StS, 1, pp.g7, 254; Letters III, p.322; VI, p.117.

43. NT Notes, 1 Tim. 4. 13; Works VITI, p.316.

44. The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, 13 vols, London:

Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1868-1872 (hereafter cited as Poet. Works), 1, pp.233ff.; IV, pp.451 ff

45. Letters I, p.86; StS 1, pp.243, 344, 528; II, p.33., 46. Works VIII, pp.286, 323.

47. The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., 8 vols, ed. Nehemiah Curnoch, New York: Eaton & Mains 1909 (hereafter cited Journal, Curn.)

I, p.330; cf. StS, II, pp.144, 292; Works VI, pp.5 10-11, etc.

48. StS I, pp.246, 248; Works XI, p.437; NT Notes, 1 Thess. 5.16— iF 49. NT Notes, Eph. 6.18.

50. StS 1, pp.430-1; NT Notes, Matt. 6.8.

51. NT Notes, Eph. 6.18; 11 Tim. 4.5; I Peter 4.7.

52. StS 1, p.458.

53. NT Notes, Matt. 4.2; OT Notes, Isa. 58.5, Works VIII, p.364.

54. NT Notes, Eph. 4.29; Heb. 10.22.

~ 55. NT Notes, Heb. 10.25; Acts 5.11; StS 1, p.395 (italics mine).

56. StS, 1, p.248.

57. Letters III, p.79.

58. Journal, Curn. II, p.361.

59. HLS, no. 42.4-5.

60. Works X, p.1g2 (italics mine).

61. Works X, p.193.

62. Works V1, pp.66, 67, 68 (italics mine).

63. Works VI, p.240; X, p.190; Poet. Works III, pp.15, 33.

64. Works VIII, pp.227-8.

65. Works X, p.193 (italics are mine).

66. Works X, p.198; Letters III, p.36.

67. Works X, p.192 (italics mine).

68. Works VI, p.509.

69. Works X, p.1g1.

70. Ibid.

71. Article XVII, 'Of Baptism', Sund. Serv. p.312.

72. Works X, p.193.

73. Ibid.

74. Works X,p.195; NT Notes, Acts 16.15; I John 5.7; Works VIII, p.73.

75. NT Notes, Acts 16.15; cf. Works X, pp.196-7, 198.

76. Works X, pp.197-8.

77. Works X, pp.196—7, 199.

78. Works X, p.1gt (italics mine).

79. NT Notes, Acts 22.16; Works VIII, pp.48, 52 (italics mine).

Notes to pages 78-89

80. NT Notes, Acts 10.47; Mark 16.16; Heb. 6.1.

81. See Borgen, pp.161ff., and nn. 171, 177.

82. StS, 1, p.194; II, p.435; Letters I, p.196.

83. Works XIII, p.476; VII, pp.77, 79, 83, 97; StS, p.240.

84. HLS, no. 92:6; cf. no. 101:2.

85. Brevint (W), sec. I, 1, p.3.

86. Brevint (W), sec. IV, 7, p.16.

87. Brevint (W), sec. ITI, 5, p.11.

88. StS I, p.253; cf. pp.242-3, 344, 528.

89. Journal, Curn. II, p.361.

90. Works VI, p.509. gi. Journal, Curn. III, pp.31-2.

92. Letters VI, p.124.

93. StS II, p.240; cf. Works VI, p.509.

94. Letters lV, p.272.

95. NT Notes I Cor. 10.17; HLS, no. 165.

96. Brevint (W), sec. V, 4, 6, pp.18-19.

97. Brevint (W), sec. II. 1, p.4.

98. StS I, pp.267, 295-6, 300. g9. Brevint (W), sec. V. 1, p.17.

100. HLS nos. 88:4; 96.3

101. Works V1, pp.44, 227, 230.

102. Brevint (W), sec. I. 1, pp.3—-4.

103. Brevint (W), sec. VI. 2, p.21.

104. Brevint (W), sec. VI. 1, p.22. HLS, nos. 35.1; 67.1; Brevint (W), secs. I:1, pp.3-4: 1V.8, p.16.

105. OT Notes, Chron. 29.14.

106. Works VI, p.414.

107. OT Notes, Exod. 27.4; 29.36. Brevint (W), sec. VII.8, p.26.

108. A Word of Advice to Saints and Sinners, Eleventh Edition, London 1790, p.I1.

109. Brevint (W), sec. VIII. 6, p.32.

7. Wesley's Legacy in Worship C. Norman R. Wallwork 1. Albert C. Outler, Evangelism in the Wesleyan Spirit, Tidings 1971,

P-552. Methodist Conference, Minutes 1786, 1812 edition, Vol. I, p.1g1.

3. The Letters of John Wesley, A.M., ed. John Telford, Epworth Press 1931, Vol. VII, p.239.

4. David Tripp, The Renewal of the Covenant in the Methodist Tradition, Epworth Press 1969, p.177.

5. John and Charles Wesley, Short Hymns on Selected Passages of Scripture, 1762.

6. The Journal of John Wesley, A.M., ed. Jeremiah Curnock, Charles J.

Kelly 1gog, Vol. I, p.377.

7. Ibid., Vol. II, 1911, p.12r.

Notes to pages 89-115 8. The Works of the Revd John Wesley, A.M., Wesleyan Book Room 1831,

Vol. VIII, pp.258f. g. Leslie F. Church, More about the Early Methodist People, Epworth

Press 1949, pp.241f.

10. Works, Vol. VIII, pp.255-6.

11. Letters, Vol. 3, p.287.

12. Works, Vol. XIII, p.258.

13. The Life of Mr Silas Told written by Himself (1786), Epworth Press 1954, p-67.

= 14. Methodist Conference, Minutes 1766, 1862 edition, Vol. I, p.140.

15. James Redfearn, 'The Correspondence of Thomas Wride 1785-6', Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, 1898, Vol. 1.4, p.140.

16. W. F. Lofthouse, 'Charles Wesley', in A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain. ed. Rupert Davies and E. G. Rupp, Vol.

1, Epworth Press 1968, p.125.

17. Cecil Northcott, Hymns in Christian Worship, Lutterworth Press 1964, p.26.

18. John Bishop, Methodist Worship in Relation to Free Church Worship, Scholars Press 1975, p.139:

1g. Church, More About the Early Methodist People, pp.228—9.

20. Frank Baker, Representative Verse of Charles Wesley, Epworth Press 1962, p.xv. g. John Wesley: The Organizer A. Raymond George 1. See Frank Baker in Rupert Davies and Gordon Rupp (eds.), A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain hereafter HMGB) I, Epworth

Press 1965, 213-55.

2. See A. Raymond George on 'Ordination', in Rupert Davies, A.

Raymond George, and Gordon Rupp (eds.) HMGB II, Epworth Press 1978, 143-60.

3. B. Gregory, Side Lights on the Conflicts of Methodism 1827-1852, London 1899, p.161.

4. John C. Bowmer, Pastor and People, Epworth Press 1975, pp.20-36.

5. Bernard E. Jones in Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society XXXVI, 134-8; Henry D. Rack, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society

XX XIX, 12-21; Henry D. Rack in Rupert Davies, A. Raymond George and Gordon Rupp (eds.), HMGB III, Epworth Press 1983. 156-62;

John C. Bowmer, op. cit., pp.173-6.

6. Minutes of 1766.

7. Towards a Statement on the Church, Report of the Joint Commission between the Roman Catholic Church and World Methodist Council

1982-1986, Fourth Series, section 24.

10. John Wesley: Apostle of Social Holiness David Guy 1. John Wesley, Journal, abridged edition, Salvation Army, Publishing

Department 1905, p. 193.

Notes to pages 116-142

2. G. M. Trevelyan, English Social History, Longmans? 1946, p.362.

3. Quoted in A. Lunn, John Wesley, Cassell 1929, p.139.

4. J. H. Plumb, England in the Eighteenth Century, Penguin Books 1969 (italics mine), p.g5.

5. John Wesley, Sermons on Several Occasions, Epworth Press 1948, p.41.

6. Gill, Selected Letters of John Wesley, Epworth Press 1956, p.68.

7. John Wesley, Sermons on Several Occasions, Epworth Press 1948, p.546.

8. A. Briggs, A Social History of England, Penguin Books 1987, p.189. g. Gill, Letters, p.100.

10. W.E. Sangster, The Path to Perfection, Epworth Press 1943 reissued 1984, p.174.

11. Lunn, John Wesley, p.345.

12. John Wesley, Journal, p.438.

13. A.J. Broomhall, Barbarians at the Gates, Hodder 1981, p.284.

14. David L. Edwards, Christian England, Vol. 3, Fount Paperbacks 1985, 65f.

15. Max Warren, The Missionary Movement from Britain in Modern History, SCM Press 1965, p.33.

16. L. Tyerman, The Life and Times of John Wesley, Vol. 3, Hodder 1890, P-4417. Quoted in C. Yuill, Chosen to be a Soldier, The Salvation Army 1980, p.16.

18. F. Booth-Tucker, Life of Mrs Booth, Vol. 1, The Salvation Army 1892, p.27.

19. Quoted by Max Warren, Missionary Movement.

20. Gill, Selected Letters, pp.8of.

21. Broomhall, Barbarians, p.355.

22. Quoted by D. Burke in Creed and Deed. A Theology of Salvation Army Social Service, Salvation Army: Canada 1986, p.27.

23. Edwards, Christian England, Vol. 3, p.66.

24. John Kent, The Age of Disunity, Epworth Press 1966, p.145.

25. F. Coutts, Bread for My Neighbour, Hodder 1978, p.67.

26. D. Burke, Creed and Deed, p.210.

12. Health and Healing in the Ministry of John Wesley Morris Maddocks 1. The Journal of John Wesley, abridged by Christopher Idle, Lion

Paperback 1986, entries from 21 May to 17 June 1738.

2. Journal, 25 May 1738.

3. Journal, 26 September 1749.

4. Journal, 4 December 1746.

5. See the Journal entry for 13 March 1743.

6. He had already shown interest as early as 1747, when he went with some friends 'to see what are called electrical experiments', Journal, 16

October 1747.

7. Journal, 9 November 1756.

8. Journal, 18/26 December 1765.

Notes to pages 143-152 g. Journal, 27 June 1786.

10. Journal, entries for 28 June, his birthday, 1774 and 1788.

11. Journal, 11 August 1776.

12. Journal, 15 November 1786.

13. See Journal, 4 December 1746, quoted on p.140.

14. Proverbs 22.6.

15. A. G. Ives, Kingswood School, Epworth Press 1970, pp.54f.

16. Ibid., p.g.

17. Journal, 7 July 1739.

18. Journal, 5 August 1759.

19. Journal, 16 August 1759.

13 John Wesley and Death Wesley A. Chambers 1. G. M. Trevelyan, English Social History, Longmans, Green and Co

3. R. F. Wearmouth, Methodism and the Common People of the Eighteenth Century, Epworth Press 1945, p.1334. Book of Common Prayer, liturgy for the Ministration of Public Baptism of Infants. y 5. Book of Common Prayer, Articles of Religion, IX.

6. Book of Common Prayer, liturgy for the Ministration of Public Baptism of Infants.

7. John Wesley M.A., Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, Genesis 9.248

8. John Wesley M.A., Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, Rom.

7.13; I Cor. 15.55. g. Ibid., I Cor. 15.56.

10. Ibid. Eph. 2.1.

11. Ibid. Rev. 21.8.

12. Ibid. Rev. 21.4.

13. See Rev. 22.11.

14. Ibid., I Cor 15.57.

15. Ibid. I Cor. 15.54.

16. Ibid. Rom. 5.14.

17. Ibid., Rom. 8.38.

18. Ibid., Heb. 2.15.

19. Ibid.

Pe Collection of Hymns and Psalms, Charles-Town 1737: for Sunday 21. Ibid.: for Wednesday or Friday XV.

22. Ibid.: for Sunday X XII.

23. Ibid.: for Wednesday or Friday X.

24. Journal of the Rev. John Wesley A.M., edited by Nehemiah Curnock, 18 January 1736.

25. For a full discussion of Wesley's view on hell, see D. Dun Wilson,

Notes to pages 152-166 237.

Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, Part 1, March 1963; Journal, Vol.

I, p.139, notes by Nehemiah Curnock.

26. The Works of John Wesley, Vol. 25, Letters, Vol. 1, 19 March 1727.

27. Journal, ed. Curnock, 23 November 1735: 1 January 1736: 23 January 1736: 25 January 1736.

28. Ibid., 10 July 1736: 2 January 1737.

29. Ibid., 24 January 1738.

30. Ibid.

31. Jeremy Taylor, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living p.23.

32. Ibid.

33. The Works of John Wesley, Vol 25., Letters, Vol. 1, 28 February 1729/ 34. Ibid., 28 May 1725.

35. Wesley preferred to call it the first rise of Methodism.

36. L. Tyerman, The Oxford Methodists, Hodder and Stoughton 1873, 37. Ibid., p.5, 6.

38. Ibid., p.77, 79; Works, Vol. 25 Letters, 5 May 1729; Journal, ed.

Curnock, 22 February 1736.

39. Martin Schmidt, John Wesley. A Theological Biography, Vol.

1, Epworth Press 1973, p.225.

40. Journal, Curnock, Vol. 1, 14 March 1738.

41. Ibid., 27 April 1738.

42. Ibid., 26 April 1737.

43. Ibid., 9 May 1738.

44. Ibid., 10 May 1738.

45. Ibid., 24 May 1738.

46. Ibid., 6 June 1738.

47. Ibid., 31 March 1739.

48. Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament by John Wesley M.A., Isa.

49. Modern Christianity Exemplified at Wednesbury. The Works of the Rev.

John Wesley, A.M., 1831, Vol. XIII, p.162.

50. Explanator Notes upon the New Testament, I John 4.18.

51. Journal, ed. Curnock, vol. 3, pp.115-16, 153, 156, 268f.

52. The Journal of the Rev. Charles Wesley, M.A. The Early Journal 17361739, edited by John Telford. Wednesday 19 July 1738.

53. Wesleyan Magazine for 1820, pp.464, 593ff, 623, ggoff., also The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., 1831, Vol XIII, pp.471-4.

14. Wesleyan Theology Melvin E. Dieter 1. The Works of John Wesley, third edition, reprinted Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City 1948 (hereafter referred to as Works, 1:103.

2. Works, 5:492-504.

3. Works, 5:501-3.

4. Albert Outler strongly affirms this in his Theology in the Wesleyan

Notes to pages 167-178 Spirit, Tidings, Nashville 1975, 81-3; see especially p.82 n.27, with its reference to Martin Schmidt, John Wesley: A Spiritual Biography, Abingdon

Press and Epworth Press 1973, I1, 214.

5. See George Croft Cell, The Rediscovery of John Wesley, Holt, New York 1935, 341; Harald Lindstrom, Wesley and Santification: A Study in the Doctrine of Salvation, Epworth Press 1950, reprinted Zondervan: Francis Asbury

Press 1984, 12; Kenneth E. Rowe, The Place of John Wesley in the Christian Tradition, Scarecrow Press, Methuchen NJ 1976.

6. Works, 5:502.

7. See Albert M. Lyles, Methodism Mocked:

The "Satire Reaction to Methodism in the Eighteenth Century, Epworth Press 1960, pp.117-22.

8. See Melvin E. Dieter, 'John Wesley and Creative Synthesis', The Asbury Seminarian 34, Summer 1984, 3-7. g. Works, 5:207-8. For his reaffirmation of the sermon thirty-two years later see Works, 3:213.

10. Outler remarks that 'Too little attention has been paid to the implications of the fact that Wesley never discarded this sermon or even recast it', Theology in the Wesleyan Spirit, p.70.

11. Works, 1:101.

12. See Ted A. Campbell, John Wesley's Conceptions and Uses of Antiquity, Southern Methodist PhD dissertation 1984:

13. See especially Works, 5:132-34.

14. Works, 5:226.

15. Works, 8:325.

16. Works, 6:64—5.

17. Works, 6:64.

18. Works, 5:185-6.

15. The Relevance of John Wesley's Message for Today William R.

Davies 1. John Wesley. Fifty Three Sermons, Wesleyan Book Room, London, pp.

3. The Journal of John Wesley, Standard Edition, Epworth Press 1938 Vol 2, p.125.

4. Ibid., Vol. 1, 476. In an essay on the relevance of Wesley's message there is no space to discuss whether what happened at Aldersgate Street was Salvation, assurance or both. The text as it stands suggests the latter:

'I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me...

." (italics mine). However, others (e.g. Leslie Davison Pathway to Power, Fountain Trust, London 1971, pp.57-8) suggest the possibility of Wesley's conversion in 1725, with assurance following on 24

May 1738. Whether experienced concurrently or consecutively, these are distinct theological strands which refer on the one hand to being saved and on the other to knowing that one is saved.

5. John Wesley, Fifty Three Sermons, p.127.

Notes to pages 178-193

6. The Journal of John Wesley, Vol. 2, p.122.

7. Cf. Luke 3.22; 4.1-3.

8. P. Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations, Penguin Books 1949, p.140. g. Ibid., p.163.

10. M. Harper, Walk in the Spirit, Hodder and Stoughton 1971, p-25.

11. The Constitutional Discipline and Practice of the Methodist Church, Methodist Publishing House, first published 1951, 61.1.

12. John Wesley, Fifty Three Sermons, pp.564—-81.

13. The Letters of John Wesley, Standard Edition, Vol 5., p.333.

14. John Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, Epworth Press 1952, p.81.

15. R. N. Flew, The Idea of Perfection in Christian Theology, Oxford University Press 1934, p.336.

16. W.E. Sangster, The Path to Perfection, Hodder and Stoughton 1943, pp. 185ff.

17. Plain Account pp.41, 42, 51.

18. Journal, Vol 2, 323.

19. Ibid., Vol 1, p.180 note.

20. Ibid., Vol 4, p.220.

21. Ibid., Vol 7, p.333.

22. Ibid., Vol. 8, p.128.

17. Wesley asa Writer A. Skevington Wood 1. George Lawton, John Wesley's English: A Study of His Literary Style,

Allen and Unwin 1962, p.14.

2. Henry Bett, The Spirit of Methodism, Epworth Press 1937, pp.169—70.

3. Oliver Elton, A Survey of English Literature 1730-1780, Arnold 1928, Vol. II, pp.184, 212-22; Emile Legouis and Louis Cazamian, A History of English Literature, Dent 1930, pp.g26—8.

4. The Cambridge History of English Literature, ed. Sir A. W. Ward and A.

R. Waller, Vol. X, The Age of Johnson, Cambridge University Press 1913, p-368.

5. The Oxford History of English Literature, ed. John Buxton and Norman Davis, Vol. VIII, John Butt and Geoffrey Carnell, The Mid-Eighteenth

Century, Oxford University Press 1979, pp.276—8, 361-2, 653-5.

6. James Sambrook, The Eighteenth Century: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature 1740-1789, Longman 1986, pp.41—3.

7. David Daiches, A Critical History of English Literature, Secker and Warburg 1960, Vol. 3, p. 662; Maximillian E. Novak, Fighteenth-Century

English Literature, Macmillan 1983, p.1 10.

8. The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, ed. Nehemiah Curnock, Epworth Press. 1909, Vol. IV, p.gr. g. Ibid., p.g2.

10. Ibid. rr. Tbid:, p.137:

12. Cf. James Downey, The Eighteenth-Century Pulpit, Clarendon Press

Notes to pages 193-199 1969, pp.32-3, 58-9, 71, 136n.1.

13. Lawton, op.cit., p.240.

14. Ibid., pp.240—-65; Elton, op.cit., p.214.

15. Elton; op.cit., p.214.

16. George Sarhipiscll, The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature, Cambridge University Press 31970, p.460.

17. The Pelican Guide to English Literature, ed. Boris Ford, Vol. 1V, Arthur R. Humphreys, From Dryden to Johnson, Penguin Books 1957, p.72.

18. Elton, op.cit., p.212.

19. Journal, Vol. 1, p:83:

20. Ibid.

21. Letters and Literary Remains of Edward Fitzgerald, ed. W. Aldis Wright, Macmillan 1go2, Vol. II, p.184; cf. Vol. III, p.87.

22. Ibid., Vol. IV, p.23.

23. Cf. The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, ed. John Telford, Epworth Press 1931, Vol. I, p.xiv.

24. Ibid., Vol. VII, 377.

25. Ibid., p.392.

26. The Works of John Wesley, ed. Frank Baker, Clarendon Press 1976-, Vol. 25, p.28.

27. Letters, Vol. 1, p.xiii.

28. Cf. Ibid., p.xx.

29. Downey, op.cit., p.5.

30. James H. Rigg, The Living Wesley, Charles H. Kelly 1891, p.135; W.

Lamplough Doughty, John Wesley, Preacher, Epworth Press 1955, p.84.

31. John Lawson, Notes on Wesley's Forty-Four Sermons, Epworth Press 1946, p.1.

32. Lawton, op.cit., pp.246—9; Downey, op.cit., pp.201—2.

33. The Standard Sermons of John Wesley, ed. Edward H. Sugden, Epworth Press 71935, Vol. I, p.3o.

34. Ibid.

35. Works (Oxford Edition), Vol. 3, pp.2go—2.

36. Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, Vol. 11, pp.138-9; cf.

Journal, Vol. VII, p.73.

37. Works (Oxford Edition), Vol. 3, p.40o0.

38. Dante Alighieri, De Vulgari Eloquentia c.

1304; cf. Arthur P.

Rossiter, Our Living Language, Longman, Green 1953, p.105; Proceedings, Vol.

XX XITI, pp. 53-62; 112-17.

39. Downey, op.cit., p.225.

40. Journal, Vol. 1V, pp.3-4.

41. Works (Oxford Edition), Vol. 11, p.1.

42. Letters, Vol. LV, p.118.

43. Ibid.

44. Journal, Vol.

IV, p.490; Gordon Rupp, Religion in England 1688-1791, Clarendon Press 1986, pp.381-2.

45. An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion (1743); A Farther

Notes to pages 199-215

Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion (1745-1746).

46. Elton, op.cit., p.213.

47. John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, Epworth Press 1929, p.6.

48. The Works of the Rev John Wesley, third edition, ed. Thomas Jackson, John Mason 1829-1831, Vol. XIV, p.222.

49. Journal, Vol. V., p.521; cf. Letters, Vol. 1V, p.145.

50. John Wesley, Sermons on Several Occasions, John Mason 1849, Vol.

II, p.176.

51. Letters, Vol. II, p.44.

52. John H. Whiteley, Wesley's England: A Survey of Eighteenth Century Social and Cultural Conditions, Epworth Press 1938, p.229.

53Downey, op.cit., p.224.

54. Letters, Vol. V, p.8.

55. Letters, Vol. II, p.44; Vol. V, p.313.

56. Works, Vol.25, p.130.

57. James R. Sutherland, On English Prose, University of Toronto Press

18. Wesley the Communicator Pauline M. Webb 1. Letter quoted in full in L. Tyerman, The Life and Times of John Wesley,

Vol. III, Hodder 1871, pp.130—-4.

2. Ibid., p.563.

3. Quoted in a note in Wesley's Journal, standard edition, Epworth Press 1938, Vol. V, pp.188-9.

4. Robert Southey, Life of John Wesley, pp.303-4.

19. Wesley the Evangelist Joe Hale 1. Nehemiah Curnock (ed.), The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, New

York: Eatmon R. Mains 1809, eight volumes, I, p. 442.

2: Ebid. I, p.4423. Ibid., I, p.459.

4. John Lawson, A Thousand Tongues, Paternoster Press 1987, p.125.

5. Clare George Weakley Jr (ed.), The Nature of Revival (from Charles Wesley's Journal), Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers 1987, p.53.

6. Albert C. Outler (ed.), John Wesley, A Library of Protestant Thought, New York: Oxford University Press, 1964, pp.14, 17.

7. Ernest Gordon Rupp, Religion in England 1688-1791, Clarendon Press 1986, pp.357, 358.

8. Curnock, op.cit. I, p.483. g. F. Gerald Ensley, John Wesley, Evangelist, Nashville: Methodist

Evangelistic Materials 1958, p.41.

10. Ibid, p.16.

11. Outler, op.cit., preface, p.vii.

12. Albert C. Outler (ed.), The Works of John Wesley, Vol. 2, Sermons II, Nashville: Abingdon Press 1985, p.187.

Notes to pages 215-228 13. Gerald R. Cragg (ed.), The Appeals to Men of Reason and Religion, The Works of John Wesley, Clarendon Press 1975, p.105.

14. Ibid., p.53.

15. Outler, John Wesley, pp.49, 50.

16. Outler, Works, Vol. 2, Sermons II, p.482.

17. Cragg, op.cit., p.46.

18. Curnock, op.cit., I, p.474—-7.

19. Cragg, op.cit., p.62.

20. Cragg, op.cit., p.74.

21, / Pook: Holliday: A History of Cornwall, Dadwarih? 1975, pp-264, 22. Rupp, op.cit., p.339.

23. Curnock, op.cit., 1, p.220-1.

24. George Whitefield's Journals, new edition, unabridged, Banner of Truth Trust 1960, pp288, 289.

25. Curnock, op.cit., II, p.273.

26. Gurnsek epccits; il, p.278.

27. Curnock, op.cit., II, p.281.

28. George Hunter, To'Spread The Power, Nashville: Abingdon Press 1987, p.5729. Frank Baker, A Charge To Keep, Epworth Press 1947, p.26.

30. F. Gerald Ensley, John Wesley Evangelist, Nashville: Methodist Evangelistic Materials 1958, pp.39, 40.

31. Curnock, op.cit., I1, pp.211-13.

32. Curnock, op.cit., III, p.182.

33. Outler, op.cit., p.525.

34. Outler, op.cit., p.527.

35. Outler, op.cit., p.531.

36. Holliday, op.cit., p.262.

37. Holliday, op.cit., p.271.

38. Curnock, op.cit., III, p.94.

39. Holliday, op.cit., p.277.

40. Curnock, op.cit., VI, p.309, 310.

41. Curnock, op.cit., VI, p.209.

42. Cragg, op.cit., p.374.

43. Rupp, op.cit., p.448.

44. World Methodist Council Handbook of Information 1987-1991, ed. Joe Hale, Asheville: Biltmore Press 1987, p.101.

ISBN 0-7162-0449-5

Il 80716204

↑ Back to top