John Wesley

: For entries on other people named John Wesley, see John Wesley (disambiguation).

Conversion; open-air preaching

Wesley's spiritual state is the key to his whole

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career. For ten years he had fought temptation and tried to fulfil the law of the Gospel, but had not, he wrote, obtained freedom from sin, nor the witness of the Spirit, because he sought

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it, not by faith, but "by the works of the law." He had learned from the Moravians that true faith was inseparably connected with a sense of forgiveness, and that saving faith is given in a moment. He obtained this faith on May 24, 1738, at a Moravian meeting in Aldersgate Street, London, while listening to the reading of Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans, containing an explanation of faith and the doctrine of justification by faith. "I felt," he wrote, "my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins." A few weeks later he preached a remarkable sermon on the doctrine of present personal salvation by faith, which was followed by another, on God's grace "free in all, and free for all." May 24 is marked as Aldersgate Day by Methodists to remember this important event.

Related Topics:
Moravian - May 24 - 1738 - Aldersgate - London - Luther - Epistle to the Romans - Aldersgate Day

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He never stopped preaching this doctrine and that of the witness of the Spirit. He allied himself with the Moravian society in Fetter Lane, and in 1738 went to Herrnhut, the Moravian headquarters in Germany, to learn more of a people to whom he felt deeply indebted. On his return to England he drew up rules for the "bands" into which the Fetter Lane Society was divided, and published a collection of hymns for them. He met frequently with this and other religious societies in London, but did not preach often in 1738, because most of the parish churches were closed to him.

Related Topics:
Herrnhut - Germany - Hymn - Parish church

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Wesley's Oxford friend, the evangelist George Whitefield, upon his return from America, was also excluded from the churches of Bristol; and, going to the neighbouring village of Kingswood, preached in the open air, in February 1739, to a company of miners. Wesley hesitated to accept Whitefield's earnest request to copy this bold step. Overcoming his scruples, he preached his first sermon in the open air, near Bristol, in April of that year.

Related Topics:
George Whitefield - Bristol - Kingswood

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He was still unhappy about the idea of field preaching, and would have thought, "till very lately," such a method of saving souls as "almost a sin." These open-air services were very successful; and he never again hesitated to preach in any place where an assembly could be got together, more than once using his father's tombstone at Epworth as a pulpit. He continued for fifty years — entering churches when he was invited, and taking his stand in the fields, in halls, cottages, and chapels, when the churches would not receive him.

Related Topics:
Tombstone - Pulpit

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Late in 1739 Wesley broke with the Moravians in London. Wesley had helped them organize the Fetter Lane Society; and those converted by his preaching and that of his brother and Whitefield had become members of their bands. But

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finding, as he said, that they had fallen into heresies, especially quietism, he decided to form his own followers into a separate society. "Thus," he wrote, "without any previous plan, began the Methodist Society in England." Similar societies were soon formed in Bristol and Kingswood, and wherever Wesley and his friends made converts.

Related Topics:
Heresies - Quietism

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