Methodist John Wesley Quotes

The great preacher and founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley (1703-1791), was once approached by a man who came to him in the grip of unbelief. "All is dark; my thoughts are lost," the man said to Wesley, "but I hear that you preach to a great number of people every night and morning. Pray, what would you do with them? Whither would you lead them? What religion do you preach? What is it good for?" Wesley gave this answer to those questions: You ask, what would I do with them? I would make them virtuous and happy, easy in themselves, and useful to others. Whither would I lead them? To heaven, to God the judge, the lover of all, and to Jesus the mediator of the New Covenant. What religion do I preach? The religion of love. The law of kindness brought to light by the gospel. What is this good for? To make all who receive it enjoy God and themselves, to make them like God, lovers of all, contented in their lives, and crying out at their death, in calm assurance, "O grave where is thy victory! Thanks be to God, who giveth me victory, through my Lord Jesus Christ.

John Wesley drank wine, was something of an ale expert, and often made sure that his Methodist preachers were paid in one of the vital currencies of the day—rum. His brother, Charles Wesley, was known for the fine port, Madeira, and sherry he often served in his home;

Earlier, at the first Methodist Conference in 1744, Wesley had advised his helpers and assistants to preach Christ in all his offices and "to declare his law as well as his gospel, both to believers and unbelievers."52 In this counsel, then, the moral law holds great value not only in convicting sinners but also in keeping believers in Christ. That is, Wesley highlighted both the accusatory role of the law, in a way similar to Luther,53 as well as the prescriptive role of this same law, in a way similar to Calvin;54 the one to bring sinners to Christ; the other to keep believers alive in the Lord.

the love of God the Father” can either mean God’s love to us or our love to God. John Wesley wanted the early Methodists to read it both ways, first receiving God’s love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and then responding to that love by enacting the two great commandments.

Charles Wesley fully sided with the Arminianism of his brother John, and abused his poetic gift by writing poor doggerel against Calvinism.847  He had a bitter controversy on the subject with Toplady, who was a devout Calvinist. But their theological controversy is dead and buried, while their devotional hymns still live, and Calvinists and Methodists heartily join in singing Wesley’s "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," and Toplady’s "Rock of Ages, cleft for me.

The Baptists expanded from 94 congregations in 1760 to 858 in 1790 to become the single largest religious denomination in America. The Methodists had no adherents at all in 1760, but by 1790 they had created over seven hundred congregations—despite the fact that the great founder of English Methodism, John Wesley, had publicly opposed the American Revolution.

particularly through the Methodist movement led by John and Charles Wesley and George Whitefield. Their theology and their understanding of the gospels are quite different topics upon which I am not qualified to speak. But I suspect that the Wesleyan emphasis on Christian experience, both the “spiritual” experience of knowing the love of God in one’s own heart and life and the “practical” experience of living a holy life for oneself and of working for God’s justice in the world, might well be cited as evidence of a movement in which parts of the church did actually integrate several elements in the gospels, a synthesis that the majority of Western Christians have allowed to fall apart.

One attractive, unique feature of the worship services in Georgia was their use of hymns, facilitated by Wesley’s publication of A Collection of Psalms and Hymns in 1737, the first English hymn book published in America. None of the hymns are by Charles, who had not yet been tapped by his poetic muse. These texts, many translated by John from the German, express the heart of a pietism grounded in Scripture and elucidate the themes that are central to Wesley’s spiritual quest—utter dependency upon grace, the centrality of love, and the desire for genuine fire to inflame his cold heart (see Zinzendorf’s bridal song of the soul).

Wesley had just one requirement for those who wished to join his movement: “A desire to flee from the wrath to come.”[1] In other words, they had to understand that they, like all human beings since Adam and Eve, were sinners - and that unless something was done about that sin, they would be eternally lost. Every person who accepted that fact and sought an answer through faith in Jesus and the methodical (“Method”-ist) practice of Christianity was welcome.

John Wesley, who founded the Methodist movement, wrote, “One of the principle rules of religion is to lose no occasion of serving God. And since he is invisible to our eyes, we are to serve him in our neighbor; which he receives as if done to himself in person, standing visibly before us.

faith in action.” At church, we were taught to be “doers of the word, not hearers only.” That meant stepping outside the pews, rolling up our sleeves, and doing “all the good you can, for all the people you can, in all the ways you can, as long as ever you can.” That credo, attributed to the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, inspired generations of Methodists to volunteer in hospitals, schools, and slums. For me, growing up in a comfortable middle-class suburb, it provided a sense of purpose and direction, pointing me toward a life of public service.

emphasis on…miraculous intervention.”1 Take a moment to picture an early Methodist meeting. They were full of stamping, shouting, weeping, wailing, and people falling to the floor in trances all over the place. These were wild God encounters, and prophetic utterances and visions were taken seriously. It was reported that you could hear the meetings from miles away. In one Methodist meeting in 1807 for instance, Hugh Bourne was speaking to thousands of people on God’s judgment, and “many ran away, while others fell upon each other in heaps.”2 As John Wesley and George Whitefield

In 1747, Bishop Gibson of London wrote a circular letter to all the ministers in his diocese, warning against the Methodists. The letter made the accusation that “they persuade the people that the established worship, with a regular attendance upon it, is not sufficient to answer the ends of devotion.” Bishop Gibson’s letter ended with the rhetorical flourish, “Reverend Brothers, I charge you all, lift up your voice like a trumpet! And warn and arm and fortify all mankind—against a People called Methodists.” John Wesley responded with an “Open Letter to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of London,” asking first of all whether Methodists were really so dangerous as to deserve to be singled out in this way. “Could your lordship discern no other enemies of the gospel of Christ? . . . Are there no Papists, no Deists left in the land? . . . Have the Methodists (so called) monopolized all the sins, as well as all the errors of the nation?

John Wesley drank wine, was something of an ale expert, and often made sure that his Methodist preachers were paid in one of the vital currencies of the day—rum. His brother, Charles Wesley, was known for the fine port, Madeira, and sherry he often served in his home; the journals of George Whitefield are filled with references to his enjoyment of alcohol.

The Young Tradition’s third and final album, Galleries (1968), was an epic of time-banditry, whizzing through the seven ages of English folk song, from field to ballad to seventeenth-century Puritan hymns. It boldly juxtaposed music by Renaissance poet Thomas Campion and Methodist preacher Charles Wesley, making one daring leap forward to blues singer Robert Johnson’s complaint of stones in his passway, and with a pastiche ‘Medieval Mystery Tour’ copped from Bert Jansch and John Renbourn. A staple diet of English folk was also included in the shape of ‘John Barleycorn’, ‘The Husband and the Servingman’ and ‘The Bitter Withy’. But the most eyebrow-raising element was the instrumental ensemble that made its guest appearance on two songs, Campion’s ‘What If a Day’ and the traditional ‘Agincourt Carol’. The Early Music Consort’s David Munrow, Christopher Hogwood and Roddy and Adam Skeaping were among the first of a new breed of authentic instrumentalists, avid collectors of medieval rebecs, shawms and hurdy-gurdies, reviving a medieval Gothic and Renaissance repertoire all but lost to the classical mainstream. Their approach was at once scholarly and populist; in what was to prove a short life, Munrow managed to raise the profile of Early Music significantly, with around fifty recordings and plentiful appearances on TV and radio. Munrow and Bellamy had this in common: neither was afraid to tilt quixotically at a canon.