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Spanning some fifty-five years, John Wesley recorded his daily experiences in studying, teaching, preaching, and traveling throughout England and then America in the eighteenth century. These selections present an engrossing portrait of Wesley during the course of his travels and evangelistic activities, illuminating the preacher’s views and opinions on a host of contemporary matters.
Wesley’s eclectic interests and passion for rational analysis also make his journal a rich source for any reader interested in observing the conditions and values of society—particularly those of the lower classes—through the eyes of a well-educated and intelligent gentleman of the time.
John Wesley (1703–1791) was an eighteenth-century Anglican clergyman and Christian theologian who was the founder of 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 when Wesley, along with others, began itinerant field preaching and subsequently founded religious societies for the formation of believers. This was the first widely successful evangelical movement in Britain.