SOURCE: Wood, A. Skevington. “Wesley as a Writer.” In John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by John Stacey, pp. 190-201. London: Epworth Press, 1988.

[In the following essay, Wood extols the literary merit of Wesley's work, arguing that he be seen as not only as a historical figure.]

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’.¹ 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.² 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 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’.⁴

In recent years, however, several surveys have contained appreciative references, including the relevant volume in The Oxford History of English Literature.⁵ An up-to-date sample is to be found in James Sambrook's evaluation in the Longman Literature in English series.⁶ 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.⁷ 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 not to be able to travel or preach, and yet so well as to be able to read and write.’⁸ 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.’⁹ 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.¹⁰ 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.’¹¹ 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 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.¹² 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.¹³ Both Lawton and Elton have attempted to classify the material.¹⁴ 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’.¹⁵ 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’.¹⁶ In its passages of spiritual autobiography it can be placed alongside John Bunyan's Grace Abounding and George Fox's Journal.¹⁷ 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 Defoe.¹⁸

It was through reading Jeremy Taylor's Rule and Exercises of Holy Living and Holy Dying that, while studying 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.¹⁹ He did not intend to reproduce what he had written only for his own use but ‘which would answer no valuable end to others’.²⁰ 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 all the world imitated.’²¹ Fitzgerald later learned that Thomas Carlyle knew Wesley's Journal and shared his high opinion of it.²²

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.²³ 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.’²⁴ 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.’²⁵ 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.²⁶

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.²⁷ 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.²⁸ That no doubt is why he proved to be such a helpful 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.²⁹ 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.³⁰ John Lawson disagrees and insists that what we are left with is ‘not a collection of dummy sermons’.³¹ Both George Lawton and James Downey come down on Lawson's side.³² In the Preface to the first selection of sermons, made in 1747, Wesley announces that he designed ‘plain truth for plain people’.³³ He had endeavoured to adapt his presentation to the capacities of the rank and file who constituted the majority of his 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 91 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.³⁵ 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.’³⁶

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.³⁷ 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.³⁸ Although some modern readers apparently find them rather hard to absorb—hence recent attempts to bring their 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, Downey 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’.⁴⁰ 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’.⁴¹

‘I have no time to write largely in controversy,’ Wesley confessed.⁴² 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.’⁴³ 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 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.’⁴⁴ 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’.⁴⁵ 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.’⁴⁶

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.⁴⁷ Wesley edited the fifty volumes of his Christian Library in order to make available such a 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’.⁴⁸ 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 of a 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.⁴⁹ 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.⁵⁰ He aimed to ‘use the most common words, and that in the most obvious sense’.⁵¹ 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.’⁵² Downey emphasizes the same feature: ‘Wesley's prose is best described as athletic.’⁵³ 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.⁵⁴ 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”’.⁵⁵ According to Frank Baker, the sources of Wesley's style are to be traced to his classical education, his familiarity with the Authorized Version and the Book of Common Prayer, and his call to communicate the Gospel to the poor.⁵⁶ 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.⁵⁷

Notes

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. 926-8.

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, Eighteenth-Century English Literature, Macmillan 1983, p. 110.

8. The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, ed. Nehemiah Curnock, Epworth Press. 1909, Vol. IV, p. 91.

9. Ibid., p. 92.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid., p. 137.

12. Cf. James Downey, The Eighteenth-Century Pulpit, Clarendon Press 1969, pp. 32-3, 58-9, 71, 136 n.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 Sampson, The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature, Cambridge University Press ³1970, p. 460.

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

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

19. Journal, Vol. I, p. 83.

20. Ibid.

21. Letters and Literary Remains of Edward Fitzgerald, ed. W. Aldis Wright, Macmillan 1902, 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 Welsey, ed. Frank Baker, Clarendon Press 1976-, Vol. 25, p. 28.

27. Letters, Vol. I, 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 ²1935, Vol. I, p. 30.

34. Ibid.

35. Works (Oxford Edition), Vol. 3, pp. 290-2.

36. Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, Vol. II, pp. 138-9; cf. Journal, Vol. VII, p. 73.

37. Works (Oxford Edition), Vol. 3, p. 400.

38. Dante Alighieri, De Vulgari Eloquentia c. 1304; cf. Arthur P. Rossiter, Our Living Language, Longman, Green 1953, p. 105; Proceedings, Vol. XXXIII, pp. 53-62; 112-17.

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

40. Journal, Vol. IV, pp. 3-4.

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

42. Letters, Vol. IV, 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 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. IV, 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.

53. Downey, 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 1957, p. 77.

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 ²1906.

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.