The "people called Methodists," or Wesleyans, are the followers of John Wesley, who was born in 1703. He took his degree at Oxford, and was ordained in 1725. He held a Fellowship at Lincoln College until his marriage in 1752. While at Oxford, he, with his brother Charles, of Christ Church, and his friend Whitefield, of Pembroke, and some twelve others, determined to live under a common rule of strict and serious behaviour; to receive frequently the Holy Communion; and to adopt a methodical and conscientious improvement of their time. After ordination, these two brothers, John and Charles, set to work to revive a spirit of religion in the Church of England, of which they were priests, and were aided by the good-will and sound paternal advice of some of the Bishops. In 1735 John Wesley went out as a missionary to Georgia, in America, but the settlers rejected his services, and his mission to the Indians was a failure. On his voyage out, he unfortunately came under the influence of some Moravians; and on returning to England, after a three years' absence, he became a regular member of the Moravian Society in London. It was here he learnt the two peculiar doctrines of subsequent Wesleyanism, viz.: (1) instantaneous and sensible conversion, (2) the doctrine of perfection, _i_._e_., of a Christian Maturity, on attaining which, he that is (in the Wesleyan sense) "born again," "born of God," sinneth not. If, however, we take into view Wesley's own persistent affirmation in later times, "I have uniformly gone on for fifty years, never varying from the doctrine of the Church at all;" and many other such passages, we cannot escape the inevitable conclusion that the very doctrine on which his modern followers have built their separation from the Church, is nothing else than a transient and _foreign_ element in their great founder's teaching. In 1744 Wesley called around him his most trusted friends,--six clergymen of the Church of England and four lay preachers, and held what we should now call a _Retreat_; this meeting, however, is regarded by the Wesleyans as the first regular "Conference" of the Methodist Societies. It was in 1784 that Wesley drew up a "Deed of Declaration," which was formally enrolled in Chancery, establishing Methodism in the eye of the Law. This was an _unintentional_ step on the part of Wesley towards an ultimate separation from the Church. Now it was too that he made his second great mistake of consecrating an English Clergyman as bishop, and two laymen as presbyters of the American Societies. This was the origin of the Episcopal Methodists of America. John Wesley died in 1791, almost his last printed utterance being, "I declare that I live and die a member of the Church of England; and none who regard my opinion or advice will ever separate from it." (_John Wesley_, _Arminian Magazine_, _April_, 1790.)