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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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John Wesley
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(1703–91)
Founder of the *Methodist movement. Ordained an Anglican clergyman in 1725, he became in 1729 the leading member of the Holy Club, a devotional group started in Oxford by his younger brother, Charles *Wesley. Their methodical programme of prayer and study caused the young men to be ridiculed as Methodists. Together with another member of their club, George *Whitefield, the Wesleys began preaching an intensely personal message of individual salvation, in which each listener was to be persuaded of God's eagerness to save him or her while being threatened with the alternative of a very vivid Hell – a technique familiar ever since in Christian evangelism. When conventional Anglican clergy closed their pulpits to sermons of such fervour (weeping and fainting were commonplace in Methodist congregations), Whitefield and Wesley began preaching in the open air.
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From 1739 Wesley spent much of the rest of his life riding round the country (5000 miles each year, it was calculated), establishing and encouraging local congregations. In his view this was a revival within the *Church of England, but in 1784 he took the step of ordaining two of his preachers when a bishop refused to do so. This action signalled a rift which became absolute after his death; the Methodists then went their way as a separate church. The house where Wesley lived and died, in London's City Road, is kept as a museum. (For the number of practising Methodists in England in 1989, see under *Christians.)
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