John Wesley

John Wesley (June 17, 1703March 2, 1791) was an 18th-century Anglican clergyman and Christian theologian who founded the Methodist movement. Methodism had three rises, the first at Oxford University with the founding of the so-called "Holy Club", the second while Wesley was parish priest in Savannah, Georgia, and the third in London after Wesley's return to England. The movement took form from its third rise in the early 1740s with Wesley, along with others, itinerant field preaching and the subsequent founding of religious societies for the formation of believers. This was the first widely successful evangelical movement in the United Kingdom. Wesley's Methodist Connection included societies throughout England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland before spreading to other parts of the English-speaking world and beyond. He divided his religious societies further into classes and bands for intensive accountability and religious instruction.

13 Quotes

Cleanliness is indeed next to godliness.

John Wesley

Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.

John Wesley

The Bible knows nothing of solitary religion.

John Wesley

Catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come for miles to watch you burn.

John Wesley

Justifying faith implies, not only a divine evidence or conviction that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, but a sure trust and confidence that Christ died for my sins, that He loved me and gave Himself for me.

John Wesley

The best of it is, God is with us.

John Wesley

Though I am always in haste, I am never in a hurry.

John Wesley

Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.

John Wesley

Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can.

John Wesley

I set myself on fire and people come to watch me burn.

John Wesley

Passion and prejudice govern the world; only under the name of reason.

John Wesley

Once in seven years I burn all my sermons; for it is a shame if I cannot write better sermons now than I did seven years ago.

John Wesley

My cool judgement is, that if all the other doctrines of devils which have been committed to writing since letters were in the world were collected together in one volume, it would fall short of this; and that, should a Prince form himself by this book, so calmly recommending hypocrisy, treachery, lying, robbery, oppression, adultery, whoredom, and murder of all kinds, Domitian or Nero would be an angel of light compared to that man.

John Wesley