Wesley's Legacy in Worship
Wesley's Legacy in Worship C. Norman R. Wallwork John Wesley's legacy to the modern worshipping Methodist community consists of the principles that he established and the types of services that he introduced. It does not lie in the forms that he used, for, as we shall see, these have either been greatly revised, or have fallen into disuse.
Wesley, for instance, insisted on only two hymns in a preaching service and, even with the abolition of the 'lining out' of the hymns by a precentor, he would surely have jibbed at the standard British five. Similarly he would have wondered why modern Methodists sit in fidgety silence waiting for their turn to move to the communion rail, when they could be singing their way through the one hundred and sixty-six hymns provided for just that purpose.
Not only did Methodists subsequently employ the Wesley hymnody according to different principles, but their response to Wesley's revision of the Book of Common Prayer never worked out as he envisaged it. Similarly, in its modern counterpart, Wesley's
Covenant Service is only traceable in a couple of paragraphs.
Love-feasts have virtually disappeared, and the survival of Wesley's watch-night services is very patchy. Even Wesley's preaching service, the most enduring of his weekly innovations, has changed both in its form and its purpose.
Broadly speaking, Wesley gave the Methodist movement a revision of the Book of Common Prayer (with a set of optimistic instructions about its use on Sundays), and a number of supplementary services for weekly or occasional use. Most of the latter he borrowed from other Christian traditions, either from the Moravians or from the Puritan tradition.
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives Wesley was quite unwilling to separate evangelism from liturgy, or from the sacramental life of the church, or from social revolution. He stubbornly refused to let his societies secede from the Church of England — even when, as at times, he was almost single-handed in such a refusal — because he knew that evangelism outside a context of the sacramental means of grace is as finally invalid for the converted as are the means of grace for the unconverted. '
Once it was clear to John Wesley that the Methodist preachers and people in the American colonies were permanently independent of the British crown, and had become the fastest-growing and most vibrant section of the Methodist family, he resolved to settle upon his followers both a three-fold ministry of Superintendent,
Elder and Deacon, and a revision of the Book of Common Prayer, which he entitled the Sunday Service. These decisive steps he took in September 1784.
Two years later, it also became clear to John Wesley that, despite his wishes to the contrary, perhaps the majority of Methodists in England were intent on finding their Sunday home in the Methodist preaching house, and not in the parish church.
In what cases do we allow of service in Church hours?
I answer, 1. When the minister is a notoriously wicked man.
2. When he preaches Arian, or any equally pernicious doctrine.
3. When there are not churches in the town sufficient to contain half the people. And, 4. When there is no Church at all within two or three miles.
And we advise everyone who preaches in the Church-hours, to read the Psalms and Lessons, with part of the Church prayers: because we apprehend this will endear the Church
Service to our brethren, who probably would be prejudiced against it, if they heard none but extemporary prayer.'
Against this background, Wesley published his 1784 American Sunday Service in an English edition in 1786.
In the parish churches the principal service of the day consisted of Morning Prayer, followed immediately by the Litany, which was then followed by the first part of the Communion Service up to and including the sermon and intercessions. Most of the congrega-
Wesley's Legacy in Worship
tion could not read, would not have been provided with copies of the service, and would simply have listened to the parish priest reading the service and the parish clerk making the responses.
Such prayers as the General Confession in Morning Prayer and in the Communion Service would have been repeated after the parson or clerk, line by line.
John Wesley's proposals for the shortening of The Service of the Lord's Day included a reduction in the amount of psalmody per service; the omission of the Litany on Sundays, and a shortening of the Communion Service by the omission of the longer exhortations and the Creed. However, Wesley clearly intended the communion office to include the Lord's Supper, and not to end immediately after the sermon and intercessions.
I have prepared a liturgy little differing from that of the church of England (I think, the best constituted national church in the world) which I advise all the travelling-preachers to use, on the Lord's day, in all their congregations, reading the litany only on Wednesdays and Fridays, and praying extempore on all other days. I also advise the elders to administer the supper of the Lord on every Lord's day.
Wesley's detailed alterations to the Book of Common Prayer include minor doctrinal amendments in a Puritan direction. Among his deviations Wesley omits almost all references to the Apocrypha; he prefers 'minister' to 'priest' (except in the Communion Service, where he substitutes 'elder' for 'priest'); he replaces the absolution with a collect in Morning and Evening Prayer; and removes the declaratory pronouns from the absolution in the Communion
Service. He omits a third of the Psalter (882 verses out of 2507) on grounds of brevity and unsuitable sentiments, and substitutes whole phrases and verses with the text of the Authorized Version.
Most of the references to baptismal regeneration are removed from the service for the Baptism of Infants, and there is no reference to the ring in the service for the Solemnization of Matrimony. Private Baptism, Confirmation, The Visitation of the Sick, Churching, The Commination, The State Services and The Sea Service are also omitted. The service for the Communion of the Sick is retained. In the ordination services the threefold ordinal is retained both for America (1784) and for Britain (1786),
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives but Superintendants (sic), Elders and Deacons replace Bishops,
Priests and Deacons, and the texts have been carefully amended.
Few of the expectations surrounding Wesley's Sunday Service were realized. In America, only the second part of the Communion Service was retained for use at the close of a preaching service, along with such occasional offices as ordinations, baptisms, weddings and burials. In Britain, those Wesleyan chapels which opted for Morning Prayer almost invariably used the form in the Book of Common Prayer, and in 1882 and 1936 the British Methodists opted to continue this custom. However, most British
Methodists, including the Wesleyans, never accepted Morning Prayer, though it had an honoured place in some chapels. Evening
Prayer was a non-starter.
Wesley's revision of the Prayer Book communion service fared somewhat better, for it has been in continuous use in many
Methodist chapels in Britain and has been included in the 1975 Methodist Service Book as an alternative order. However, the shortage of ordained travelling-preacHers and, immediately after Wesley's death, questions of church order, meant that his ideal of a weekly eucharist was never realized.
Perhaps only three principles of Wesley's prayer-book abridgement have survived among the Methodists. In the first instance,
British Methodists, by and large, have inherited a basically Anglican approach to the communion service and the occasional offices. (In the case of the communion service, this means that many congregations now have copies of the service, join in the responsive sections and move to the rail for communion.) In the second instance, British Methodists tend to adapt their printed services rather than abandon them. Thirdly, Methodists have retained and often have taken full advantage of the rubrics which provide for extempore prayer as an alternative to the printed forms at certain points in the text.
Outside the forms for Sunday and occasional services which Wesley included in the Sunday Service, his other legacy to the Methodists was a series of supplementary acts of worship designed, like the whole of the movement, to spread scriptural holiness.
The most well-known of Wesley's supplementary services was The Renewal of the Covenant. David Tripp has demonstrated that here Wesley was influenced to some degree by the covenant-
Wesley's Legacy in Worship
ing theology of scripture, by the covenanting principle of the Puritans, of the Laudian Anglicans, of his own family and of the Moravians.
From 1755 or slightly earlier, Wesley urged his followers to make an express and solemn Covenant with God. He adopted for use on such occasions, a form of prayer composed by the Puritan minister, Joseph Alleine, in the late 1650s, and to it were added lengthy directions composed to accompany the prayer. These directions were compiled by Joseph Alleine's father-in-law, Richard. Wesley published the directions and the prayer in a form of his own as Directions for Renewing our Covenant with God, in 1780.
At first Wesley held his Covenant Services at various times, but finally settled on the first Sunday of the New Year. It was Wesley's practice to include in these services the celebration of the Lord's
Supper.
Wesley's Covenant Service was very different from the highly praised version that came into general Methodist and ecumenical use after the publication of the Book of Offices of 1936. Four portions of Wesley's original text which have more or less survived in the present Covenant Service demonstrate something of the power and depth which the service has retained. In the section bidding the worshippers to know that Christ has appointed them both their work and station there is a solemn reminder:
Christ hath many services to be done, some are easy and honourable, others more difficult and disgraceful; some are suitable to our inclinations and interests, others are contrary to both: in some we may please Christ and please ourselves.
. but then there are other works, wherein we cannot please Christ, but by denying ourselves.
And a solemn promise is to be made:
I put myself wholly into thy hands: put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt; put me to doing, put me to suffering, let me be employed for thee, or trodden under foot for thee; let me be full, let me be empty, let me have all things, let me have nothing, I freely and heartily resign all to thy pleasure and disposal.
In the third and tenth sections of Wesley's publication of the Covenant Prayer we read:
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives I call heaven and earth to record this day, that I do solemnly avouch thee for the Lord my God; and with all veneration bowing the neck of my soul under the feet of thy most sacred
Majesty, I do here take Thee the Lord Jehovah, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, for my portion; and do give up myself, body and soul, for thy Servant, promising and vowing to serve Thee in holiness and righteousness, all the days of my life... O dreadful Jehovah, the Lord God Omnipotent, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, thou art now become my Covenant-Friend, and I, through thy infinite grace, am become thy Covenant-Servant.
Amen. And the Covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven.* Wesley clearly believed that it was not enough for the early
Methodists to respond to the preaching of the law and the gospel, nor even to be set in the nurture house of the local Methodist band and class meetings. Onee each year they were to commit themselves anew to their pilgrim journey. They were to lay hold again on the grace of their covenant God, and this they were summoned to do in the presence of their fellow Methodists. Year by year Wesley's followers were exhorted to renew their covenant in the preaching service at the turn of the year, and then, kneeling down, the travelling preacher would read the covenant directions and the prayer over their bowed heads. More often than not the Renewal of the Covenant ended with the singing of Charles
Wesley's Covenant hymn, with its final verse:
To us the covenant blood apply, Which takes our sins away; And register our names on high, And keep us to that day.° In 1727, into his Moravian community at Herrnhut, Count
Zinzendorf spontaneously introduced the agape or love-feast, which had held such an honoured place in the early centuries of the Christian church. This service was a common meal, with token food and drink, held for prayer, praise and fellowship, with the emphasis on testimony and thanksgiving. Sometimes the elements were identical with those of the Eucharist, but more often than not bread and wine were replaced by cake or special biscuits and water, in order to avoid any confusion between the love-feast and
Wesley's Legacy in Worship
the Lord's Supper. Ten years after the introduction of the lovefeast at Herrnhut, the Moravian settlers in Georgia had brought the service with them to Savannah.
It was here that Wesley encountered the service in the summer of 1737.
After evening prayers, we joined with the Germans in one of their love-feasts. It was begun and ended with thanksgiving and prayer, and celebrated in so decent and solemn a manner as a Christian of the apostolic age would have allowed to be worthy of Christ.° Following his Aldersgate experience Wesley spent mid-June to mid-September 1738 with the Moravians in Germany, and again shared in their love-feast celebrations. On his return Wesley described the introduction of the love-feast to the Fetter Lane
Religious Society in London, and a love-feast which he shared on New Year's Day 1739 with (among others) six of his fellow clergyman — all original Oxford Methodists.
Mr Hall, Kinchin, Ingham, Whitefield, Hutchins, and my brother Charles were present at our love-feast in Fetter Lane, with about sixty of our brethren. About three in the morning as we were continuing instant in prayer, the power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground. As soon as we were recovered a little from that awe and amazement at the presence of His majesty we broke out with one voice: 'We praise Thee, O God; we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord.''
When the London Methodists seceded from the Fetter Lane Society and set up their own headquarters at the Foundery in Moorfields, they took the love-feast with them. Sometimes the celebration would be held fortnightly, alternating between a gathering for the men and one for the women, but eventually the 'general love-feast' predominated. Wesley's intention, both for his preachers in Conference and for his poeple in the Methodist societies, bands and classes, was to deepen their fellowship and increase their joy. For Wesley, the New Testament knew nothing of solitary religion.
In order to increase in them a grateful sense of all His mercies, I desired that, one evening in a quarter, all the men in band, ona
go John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives second all the women, would meet, and on a third both men and women together; that we might together 'eat bread', as the ancient Christians did, 'with gladness and singleness of heart'.
At these love-feasts (so we termed them, retaining the name as well as the thing which was in use from the beginning) our food is only a little plain cake and water. But we seldom return from them without being fed, not only with the 'meat which perisheth', but with 'that which endureth to everlasting life'.®
Wesley presided at love-feasts throughout his ministry, and they continued to be celebrated in all branches of Methodism, on both sides of the Atlantic well into the nineteenth century. Leslie
Church testified to their ministry in the following terms:
The supreme value of the love-feast lay in its frank fellowship and its Christian expression of freedom, equality, and brotherhood .
. It was not the material elements of the love-feast that were important, nor even the order of the proceedings — but rather the sense of prayer and expectation with which the people came, and the satisfaction of their spiritual hunger as they fed on the Bread of Life.?
Charles Wesley wrote an eight-verse hymn for the love-feast, published in his Hymns and Sacred Poems of 1740, which captures the spirit and the blessing which attended the first Methodist celebrations:
Come, and let us sweetly join Christ to praise in hymns divine; Give we all, with one accord, Glory to our common Lord:
Hands and hearts and voices raise; Sing as in the ancient days; Antedate the joys above, Celebrate the feast of love.
In Germany Wesley also attended Moravian watch-night services; but the Methodist watch-night services began with Wesley's approval of the spontaneous watch-night held by the Methodists at Kingswood, Bristol.
About this time, I was informed that several persons in Kingswood frequently met together at the school; and, when
Wesley 's Legacy in Worship gI they could spare the time, spent the greater part of the night in prayer, and praise and thanksgiving. Some advised me to put an end to this; but, upon weighing the thing thoroughly, and comparing it with the practice of the ancient Christians, I could see no cause to forbid it. Rather, I believed it might be made of more general use. So I sent word, I designed to watch with them on the Friday nearest the full moon, that we might have light thither and back again... On Friday abundance of people came.
I began preaching between eight and nine; and we continued till a little beyond the noon of night, singing, praying, and praising God.'° Once established, Methodist watch-nights were held monthly in Bristol, London and Newcastle.
On 8 June 1750, Wesley prepared a long letter of defence to John Baily, Rector of Kilcully, Cork, in which among many other matters he justified watch-night services as follows:
You charge me.
. with holding 'midnight assemblies'. Sir, did you never see the word 'Vigil' in your Common Prayer Book?
Do you know what it means? If not, permit me to tell you that it was customary with the ancient Christians to spend whole nights in prayer, and that these were termed Vigiliae, or Vigils.
Therefore, for spending a part of some nights in this manner, in public and solemn prayer, we have not only the authority of our own national Church, but of the universal Church in the earliest ages.™ Methodists ultimately abandoned regular monthly watch-nights in favour of an annual service on New Year's Eve. The latter custom has survived in many places, and has been adopted by other Christian traditions outside Methodism.
The least documented but most universal of Wesley's innovative and supplementary services was his Sunday and mid-week preaching service. Although this service has not survived anywhere in its original form, it became the basis of the Methodist weekly worship in all the chapels and preaching-houses which declined the use of Wesley's Sunday Service or the Book of Common
Prayer for non-Eucharistic services. Even at communion services, for most of Methodist history, the Lord's Supper has been celebrated at the close of an extempore preaching service.
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives In his summary of the customs and practices of early Methodism, Wesley, writing in the third person, recalls the early preaching services at the Foundery in Moorfields:
In November (1739), a large building, the Foundery, being offered him, he began preaching therein, morning and evening, that the people's labour might not be hindered.
From the beginning the men and women sat apart, as they always did in the primitive church; and none were suffered to call any place their own, but the first comers sat down first.
They had no pews; and all the benches for rich and poor were of the same construction.
Mr Wesley began the service with a short prayer; then sung a hymn and preached, (usually about an hour), then sang a few verses of another hymn, and concluded with prayer, preceded by repentance and followed by holiness. "*
The Foundery preaching service ran thus: short prayer, hymn, sermon, hymn, and prayer. Mr Silas Téld describes a Methodist preaching service of 1740, also conducted by John Wesley:
Exactly at five o'clock a whisper ran through the congregation, 'Here he comes! here he comes!' I had a curiosity to see his person, which, when I beheld, I much despised. The enemy of souls suggested, that he was some farmer's son, who, not able to support himself, was making a penny in this low manner. He passed through the congregation into the pulpit, and, having his robes on, I expected he would have begun with the Church service: but, to my astonishment, he began with singing a hymn, with which I was almost enraptured; but his extempore prayer was quite unpleasant, as I thought it favoured too much of the Dissenter. After this, he took his text in the second chapter of St John, 12, 13, 'I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you, etc.' The enemy now suggested he was a Papist, as he dwelt much on forgiveness of sins .
In 1766 Wesley urged the Methodist Conference and the societies to ponder the strengths, weaknesses and limited purpose of their preaching services:
But some say, 'Our own service is public worship.' Yes, in a sense: but not such as supersedes the Church Service. We never
Wesley's Legacy in Worship
designed it should. We have a hundred times professed to the contrary. It pre-supposes public prayer, like the sermons at the University. Therefore I have over and over advised, Use no long prayer, either before or after the sermon. Therefore I myself frequently use only a collect, and never enlarge in prayer, unless at intercession, or on a watch-night, or on some extra-ordinary occasion.
If it were designed to be instead of the Church Service, it would be essentially defective. For it seldom has the four grand parts of public prayer; deprecation, petition, intercession, and thanksgiving. Neither is it, even on the Lord's day, concluded with the Lord's Supper.
The hour for it on that day, unless where there is some peculiar reason for a variation, should be five in the morning, as well as five in the evening.
In 1785 Wesley was still insisting that the 'lining-out' of two hymns in the preaching service was quite sufficient:
I desire that none of our preachers would sing oftener than twice at one service. We need nothing to fill up the hour .
. .'° Wesley's preaching service was the primary vehicle for the three grand dimensions of Methodist weekly worship — extempore prayer, extempore preaching, and the singing of hymns composed or selected by the Wesleys.
Though Wesley attended at least one Moravian preaching service at Herrnhut, it is most likely that the early Methodist preaching service was based on the Bidding Prayer and Sermon.
This was, after all, the only legitimate extra-liturgical public service available to a canonically-minded Anglican clergyman.
Love-feasts and Covenant services were not open to the public, and the watch-night was a preaching service.
The Bidding Prayer and Sermon, though formalized at the universities, at the assizes and at charity sermons, was orginally a people's service. Its origins, via the fifty-fifth Canon of the Church of England, lay in the vernacular intercessions and sermon, which French, German and English Catholics had re-introduced into the -Mass in the early Middle Ages. Known as the Prone or the Bidding of the Bedes, this service was utilized by Calvin and Zwingli on the continent, and by the Puritans within the Church
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives of England throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Both Thomas Coke and John Fletcher employed models of the Bidding Prayer when they combined their roles as clergymen and Methodist preachers in the preaching houses.
When it became obvious that the early Methodists were not attending the parish churches Sunday by Sunday, and that the travelling preachers dare not introduce either the Book of Common
Prayer or Wesley's Abridgement for Methodist Sunday worship, the preaching service with two hymns, a prayer and a sermon became the norm. Both before and after Wesley's death the Conference realized the need for the reading of at least one chapter of scripture at those preaching services held in church hours. The scene was now set for the filling out of the service with more hymns, more prayers, and later with introits, anthems, and a psalm or canticle, so that up-and-coming Methodist congregations could own a service which bore the atmosphere, if not the form, of worship in the parish churches and in the 'better' dissenting chapels. In the village chapels at least four hymns, a long prayer and the Lord's
Prayer, two readings and a sermon, became standard practice. In most cases the preaching service also took the place of the precommunion service at the Lord's Supper.
Every one of Wesley's supplementary services, and indeed his crowded and frequent celebrations of the Lord's Supper were brought alive, not only by extempore prayer and extempore preaching, but also by the integral place which each assembly for prayer and praise assigned to the use of hymns.
During the fifty years that the Wesley brothers presided over the Methodist movement, they published something like sixty hymn books. Some of these collections were small pamphlets containing less than a dozen hymns, while others contained perhaps thirty or forty items. Some of the publications were for general occasions, but many collections were designed for specific seasons of the year, or celebrated particular Christian themes or stages of evangelical
Arminian experience, under such titles as: Hymns on God's Everlasting Love (1741-2); Hymns for the Nativity of our Lord (1745);
Funeral Hymns (c.1746) Hymns for the Watchnight (c.1746); Hymns for those to whom Christ is all in all (1761); A Collection of Hymns for the Lord's Day (1784).
Of all the hymn-books published in the Wesleys' life-time, the
Wesley's Legacy in Worship
greater part either bore the name of both John and Charles (John's name always coming first), or no name at all, on the title page. There are only three which were published by Charles alone, on two of which John remarks that as he had not seen them before publication, there were expressions of which he could not approve. Charles has left no reference to the editing of books which they published together. '® The most definitive of the Wesleys' hymn books was the volume of 1780, containing some 525 items and entitled A Collection of Hymns,
Sor the use of the People called Methodists. Cecil Northcott wrote of this definitive volume:
The 1780 Methodist hymn book is a spiritual biography, a kind of hymnodic Pilgrim's Progress beginning with the exhortation to the sinner to return to God, and leading him through the great facts of religious experience in this life to the final confrontation with Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell...
From repentance the Wesley hymns guide the believer through the phases of human life as one who will rejoice, fight, pray, watch, work, suffer and intercede for the world. Only after the individual experience has been fully provided for come the hymns of the corporate life of 'the Methodist Society' in its meetings, thanksgivings, praying and parting.'7
John Bishop maintains that:
Charles Wesley sets forth the whole range of the evangelical faith. It is a remarkable feat. Methodists have learned their doctrines from hymns. By singing them they have not only got to know them, but to receive and approve them.'®
Leslie Church makes the perceptive observation:
Through all the formative years, when the Societies were divided on ecclesiastical or theological issues, the hymns helped those who sang them towards a deeper unity than Conference or Trustees meetings could effect ..
. for it was not the commentary on the shelf but the song in the heart which inspired and continually instructed the first Methodists. When the travelling preacher had ridden away on his round, and his closelyreasoned sermon was forgotten, the people in the cottage meeting went on singing. '9
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives A similar point is made by Frank Baker:
It was the profound conviction of the Wesleys that .
. salvation must be 'free', but it must also be 'for all', otherwise it was hardly a gospel. Both became key-notes of Methodist preaching and Methodist singing. As a result the theological atmosphere of English religion was changed from the rigid Calvinism of the seventeenth century to the Arminianism and modified Calvinism of the nineteenth century. In this theological revolution no two men played a greater part than the brothers Wesley, and it seems that the hymns of Charles were even more influential than the sermons of John."° What then are the permanent contributions of John Wesley to contemporary Methodist and ecumenical liturgical faith and practice?
Foremost is the Wesley commitment to the main diet of worship on the Lord's day. This is to be drawn from the accumulated wisdom and custom of the universal church and should include the Lord's Supper every week.
Secondly, no set of liturgical texts, however treasured and venerable, is beyond adaptation and revision, and such a process is a constant necessity in the life of the church.
Thirdly, at least once a year the Lord's people should be summoned to a renewal of their commitment to God. For the Methodists this summons is to the Covenant Service. For other
Christians the summons may be to the renewal of baptismal vows in the Easter Vigil.
Fourthly, provision must be made for the recurring needs of prayer, praise and fellowship which occur outside the formal liturgical life of the local church. This need Wesley met in the celebration of the love-feast, but, as with the Lord's Supper, admission was by membership ticket because the language and experience of believers could confuse the enquirer. Much of the extra-liturgical worship that has grown out of the charismatic movement bears witness to this recurring need to which Wesley responded.
Fifthly, public worship based on the choir offices of Morning and Evening Prayer and the Eucharistic Liturgy cannot express the full range of the instrument in the soul of the evangelical Christian.
Hence John Wesley's preaching service with hymns, extempore
Wesley's Legacy in Worship
prayer and extempore preaching entered into the very life-blood of the Methodist community. In other words, the people's service may never totally coincide with the hopes and aspirations of liturgical scholars. The people's service will re-emerge, however much it is overlaid or suppressed.
Sixthly, the singing of hymns in the Methodist tradition has not only offered to the universal church an addition to its canon of hymns, but has introduced the concept of a hymn as an integral text in the liturgy and not just a linking item, an introit, a gradual in the Eucharist or an office hymn in the services of Morning and Evening Prayer. At the same time the Wesleys employed the hymn as a vehicle both to teach the faith and to stir up and express the depths of Christian experience in the human spirit.
Bibliography 1. Wesley's Abridgement of the Book of Common Prayer Frank Baker, John Wesley and the Church of England, Epworth Press 1970
G. J. Cuming, A History of Anglican Liturgy, Macmillan 1969 A. Raymond George, "The Sunday Service of the Methodists', Jn
Communio Sanctorum. Mélanges offerts a Jean-Jacques von Allmen, Geneva
A. Raymond George, The Sunday Service 1784, Friends of Wesley's Chapel Lecture 1983 James F. White, John Wesley's Sunday Service of the Methodists in North
America, Quarterly Review Bicentennial Reprint, United Methodist Publishing House 1984 2. Wesley's Covenant Service David Tripp, The Renewal of the Covenant in the Methodist Tradition, Epworth
Press 1969 3. The Love-Feast Frank Baker, Methodism and the Love-Feast, Epworth Press 1957
Adrian Burdon, Epworth Review, 15.2, May 1988 Leslie Church, More About the Early Methodist People, Epworth Press 1949
Clifford Towlson, Moravian and Methodist, Epworth Press 1957 4. The Watch-night Service Leslie Church, More About the Early Methodist People, Epworth Press 1949
John Bishop, Methodist Worship in Relation to Free Church Worship, Scholars Press 1975
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives 5. The Preaching Service A. Raymond George, 'The Means of Grace', in A History of the Methodist
Church in Great Britain, ed. Rupert Davies and E. G. Rupp, Vol.
Epworth Press 1965 C. Norman R. Wallwork, Origins and Development of the Methodist Preaching
Service, Birmingham University MA Thesis 1984 Trevor Dearing, Wesleyan and Tractarian Worship, Epworth Press 1962
6. The Hymns of Methodism Frank Baker and George Walton Williams, John Wesley's First Hymn Book.
A Collection of Psalms and Hymns (Charlestown 1737), The Dalcho Historical Society and the Wesley Historical Society 1964
Frank Baker, Representative Verse of Charles Wesley Epworth Press 1962, Charles Wesley's Verse, Epworth Press 1988
Henry Bett, The Hymns of Methodism Epworth Press 1913, 1945 George H. Findlay, Christ's Standard Bearer — A Study in the Hymns of Charles
Wesley, Epworth Press 1956 R. Newton Flew, The Hymns of Charles Wesley. A Study of their Structure,
Epworth Press 1953 A. S. Gregory, Praises with Understanding, Epworth Press 1936
Franz Hildebrandt and O. A. Beckerlegge, The Works of John Wesley, Vol.
7, A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists, Clarendon Press 1984 H. A. Hodges and A. M. Allchin, A Rapture of Praise. Hymns of John and Charles Wesley, Hodder and Stoughton 1966
John Lawson, A Thousand Tongues. The Wesley Hymns as a Guide to Scriptural Teaching, Paternoster Press 1987 Bernard Lord Manning, The Hymns of Wesley and Watts Epworth Press
1942, 1988 J. Ernest Rattenbury, The Evangelical Doctrines of Charles Wesley's Hymns,
Epworth Press 1941 J. Ernest Rattenbury, The Eucharistic Hymns of John and Charles Wesley,
Epworth Press 1948 Erik Routley, The Musical Wesleys, Herbert Jenkins 1968