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John Wesley

Also Known As Wesley
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Anglican priest and the organising founder of Methodism, who spent fifty years riding a circuit of Britain and Ireland preaching in fields, market squares and pit heads to people the parish system was not reaching. His distinctive contribution was less doctrinal than structural: he built a network of societies divided into small classes that met weekly to give an account of themselves, staffed it with lay preachers, and held it together by an annual conference and by constant travel. He taught universal atonement against the predestinarian wing of the revival, and held that a Christian may be perfected in love in this life. He died an Anglican priest and never intended to leave the church.

Facts
Origins
Founded
Founded the Methodist movement within the Church of England, organizing converts into small accountability groups called class meetings, a structure that outlived his intention to remain within Anglicanism and became the basis of the independent Methodist Church after his death. 1
Place of Origin
Epworth, Lincolnshire 1
Veneration
Shrine or Burial Place
Buried in the graveyard behind Wesley's Chapel on City Road in London, the church he built as his own society's London base. 1
Attestation
Historicity
Historically attested 1
Historically attested; he kept a journal for over fifty years. In 1784 he ordained preachers for America himself, which only a bishop could lawfully do; Methodist separation from the Church of England followed his death
Position Profile
Key Text
A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, his own statement of the doctrine that a Christian may be perfected in love in this life, is his key doctrinal work. 1
Terminology
Term Coined
Christian perfection, his doctrine that a believer may in this life be so filled with love that sin no longer reigns 1
Life
Lifespan or FloruitSourced to the subject's own account
1703 to 1791 2
Office Held
Priest of the Church of England, in which he remained until his death; from 1784 the Conference was his legal successor 1
Identity
Gender
Male 1
Publications
Notable Publication
His Standard Sermons and Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, both compiled from his own preaching and teaching, became the doctrinal standards by which Methodist preachers were tested. 1
Learn More
Aldersgate, and the Reluctant Field Preacher

Wesley's early religion was strenuous and unhappy. At Oxford he and his brother Charles led a small group mocked as the Holy Club and as Methodists for the regularity of their devotions, and he went to Georgia in 1735 as a missionary with a rigour that alienated the colonists and a personal entanglement that ended in a court case and his departure. On the voyage out a storm terrified him, and he noticed that a party of Moravians on board sang through it unafraid, which he could not account for.

Back in London, and under the questioning of the Moravian Peter Bohler, he concluded that he had been trying to earn what could only be received. On the evening of 24 May 1738, at a meeting in Aldersgate Street, someone read aloud Luther's preface to the epistle to the Romans, and Wesley recorded that about a quarter before nine, while the reader was describing the change God works in the heart through faith in Christ, he felt his heart strangely warmed, and did trust in Christ alone for salvation.

Field preaching followed the next year and he had to be talked into it. Whitefield, already preaching in the open at Bristol, sent for him, and Wesley wrote that he could scarcely reconcile himself to this strange way, having been so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order that he would have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church. He then did it for fifty years.

The Method, and a Church He Never Meant to Leave

The name Methodist began as an insult about regularity and turned out to describe the movement exactly. What Wesley built was a structure. Converts were gathered into societies; each society was divided into classes of about a dozen who met weekly under a leader to give an account of their conduct and their state; smaller bands went further into mutual confession. Membership was renewed by a quarterly ticket, which could be withheld. Preaching was largely by laymen, licensed by Wesley and moved from circuit to circuit on his instruction, and the whole was co-ordinated by an annual Conference and by his own travelling, traditionally reckoned at a quarter of a million miles on horseback.

His theology was Arminian and he defended it in a magazine he named for the purpose: Christ died for everyone, grace can be resisted, and assurance is available to the ordinary believer. He also taught Christian perfection, that a person may in this life be so filled with love that sin no longer reigns, which he defended against ridicule for forty years and which remains the distinctive Methodist doctrine.

He intended none of it to become a separate church. He was ordained in the Church of England, communicated in it, and told his preachers repeatedly not to leave it. But in 1784 he registered a deed defining the Conference as his legal successor, and in the same year ordained preachers for America himself, knowing that only a bishop could do so. Separation followed his death in 1791, and he had made it possible.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names John Wesley directly: "Isaac Watts and from John and Charles Wesley, alongside pieces attributed to Allen and to members of his own congregation, and it was printed without either author attributions or musical notation."

Source Richard Allen (Hymnology Archive)Hymnology Archive; cross checked against Hymnary.org

This source names John Wesley directly: "abridged for American Methodists by John Wesley in 1784; citing this record alongside the Thirty-Nine Articles for the same doctrinal claim is the same Reformation-era confession counted twice..."

This source names John Wesley directly: "religious refugees from the start: John Wesley preached his earliest sermons there before returning to England to found Methodism, and Lutheran Salzburgers persecuted in Europe settled at Ebenezer..."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names John Wesley directly: "collection of verse John and Charles Wesley issued together in March 1739 in London, printed by William Strahan and sold by James Hutton and at Mr."

Source Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1739 (Hymnology Archive and Wikipedia)Hymnology Archive and Wikipedia contributors

This source names John Wesley directly: "Archive's catalogue entry for the Wesleys' published works and the Wikipedia articles on Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739), And Can It Be and Charles Wesley."

Source Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1739 (Hymnology Archive and Wikipedia)Hymnology Archive and Wikipedia contributors

This source names John Wesley directly: "open-access collection API record for "John Wesley," an etching by the Scottish artist John Kay, 1790, from his series of original portraits and caricature etchings."

This source names John Wesley directly: "John and Charles Wesley, sons of an Anglican rector, formed a small, disciplined devotional group at Oxford in 1729, nicknamed the Holy Club and, mockingly, the Methodists for its methodical rule of..."

This source names John Wesley directly: "Rack's Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism, 3rd edition, Epworth Press, 2002, widely regarded as the finest modern biography of Wesley, sets the movement's rise against its..."

This source names John Wesley directly: "The office John Wesley created in 1784 when he ordained Thomas Coke general superintendent for the fledgling Methodist societies in America, a functional office of oversight rather than a third holy..."

Source The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist ChurchUnited Methodist Churchthe holders' own account

This source names Wesley directly: "Nine Articles and abridged by John Wesley for American Methodists in 1784."

This source names John Wesley directly: "Methodists from the Church of England, John Wesley reluctantly agreed to let the movement in America organise as its own church, sending Thomas Coke to ordain Francis Asbury as general superintendent."

This source names John Wesley directly: "John Wesley's sermons are his own primary theological and homiletic record, published and republished across his lifetime and after in various collected editions, and this record states honestly..."

Source The Sermons of John WesleyJohn Wesley

This source names John Wesley directly: "abridged for American Methodists by John Wesley in 1784; citing both together for the same doctrinal claim is the same Reformation-era text counted twice across a documented line of abridgment, not..."

Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of ReligionChurch of Englandthe holders' own account

This source names John Wesley directly: "the 1784 Deed of Declaration by which John Wesley had first given the original Wesleyan societies a legal constitution."

Belongs to Tradition

Contrasts With

They split in 1740 and 1741 over predestination into Calvinistic and Arminian connexions that stayed separate. The personal breach healed: Whitefield asked in advance that Wesley preach his funeral sermon, and Wesley did.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Depicted In

The Met's own title for this etching names the subject outright, a portrait of the preacher John Kay made from life within his lifetime.

Related To

The governmental account became the standard reading in Wesleyan and Methodist theology and in the holiness churches descended from it.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Traditions Founded

The societies, classes, lay preachers and Conference are his, and the 1784 deed made the Conference his legal successor, though he intended no separation from the Church of England.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Sources
1. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005View the Source
2. John Wesley (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia, 2026View the Source
John Wesley, accession 33.30(133) (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Metropolitan Museum of ArtDepicted In: John Wesley (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 33.30(133)), accession 33.30(133)View the Source
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