The life and times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., founder of the Methodists. Vol. 2 (of 3)Tyerman, L. (Luke)
History
The life and times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., founder of the Methodists. Vol. 2 (of 3)
Tyerman, L. (Luke)
Methodism; Wesley, John, 1703-1791
13. “A Letter to a Roman Catholic.” 12mo, 12 pages. Its object is to
mollify the papist, by showing, that he and the protestant equally
hold most of the great truths of the Christian religion; and that they
therefore ought to live in peace and love. Wesley writes: “O brethren,
let us not still fall out by the way! I hope to see you in heaven. And
if I practise the religion above described, you dare not say I shall
go to hell. You cannot think so. None can persuade you to it. Your own
conscience tells you the contrary. Then, if we cannot as yet think
alike in all things, at least, we may love alike. Herein we cannot
possibly do amiss.”
14. “Minutes of Several Conversations between the Rev. Messrs. John and
Charles Wesley and others.” Dublin: 1749.
15. It was also in this, or in a former year, that Wesley published his
threepenny tract, entitled, “An Extract of the Life and Death of Mr.
John Janeway,” a young man of remarkable piety, who died at the age of
twenty-three, in the year 1657.
16. “A Christian Library. Consisting of Extracts and Abridgments of
the Choicest Pieces of Practical Divinity which have been published in
the English Tongue. In Fifty Volumes. By John Wesley, M.A., Fellow of
Lincoln College, Oxford. Bristol: printed by Felix Farley.”
This work was begun in 1749, and completed in 1755. A prodigious
number of books were read. Folios and quartos had to be reduced to
12mo volumes. Some were abridged on horseback, and others at wayside
inns and houses where Wesley tarried for a night. During the six years
spent in finishing his task, he suffered a long and serious illness;
had to provide his school at Kingswood with necessary books; wrote
his “Explanatory Notes on the New Testament”; and was laboriously
engaged in preaching Christ, and governing his societies. The work
was Herculean. Such an enterprise had never before been attempted.
It was a noble effort to make the masses—his own societies in
particular—acquainted with a galaxy of the noblest men the Christian
church has ever had. His design was to leave out whatever might be
deemed objectionable or unimportant in sentiment, and superfluous in
language; to divest practical theology from logical technicalities and
unnecessary digressions; and to separate the rich ore of evangelical
truth from the base alloy of Pelagian and Calvinian error. In some
instances he failed in doing this. He writes:—“I was obliged to
prepare most of these tracts for the press just as I could snatch
time for it; not transcribing them; none expected it of me; but
only marking the lines with my pen, and altering or adding a few
words here or there, as I had mentioned in the preface. Besides, as
it was not in my power to attend the press, that care necessarily
devolved on others; through whose inattention a hundred passages were
left in, which I had scratched out. It is probable too, I myself
might overlook some sentences which were not suitable with my own
principles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account