Charles Wesley
The brother of John Wesley, who sailed with him to Georgia in 1735 and, by John’s account, found peace of soul on Whitsunday 1738, three days before him. He signed the General Rules of the Methodist societies with John in 1743.
John Wesley’s Journal names “my brother, Charles Wesley” among those who took boat with him for Georgia in October 1735, and says that on the voyage Charles wrote sermons (Wesley, Journal, 14–21 October 1735). In May 1738 John found him ill in London and at first strongly averse to what he called “the new faith”; on Whitsunday he heard that Charles “had found rest to his soul” (Wesley, Journal, 1–21 May 1738). When John was asked to go to Bristol in March 1739, Charles could scarcely bear the mention of it, John writes, until a text of Scripture changed his mind (Wesley, Journal, 28 March 1739).
The General Rules of the United Societies are signed “John Wesley, Charles Wesley” and dated 1 May 1743 (Wesley, General Rules signature, p. 9). See John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism.
In the timeline
- 24 May 1738, firm dateJohn Wesley and the Rise of Methodism
On 24 May 1738, at a meeting in Aldersgate Street in London, the clergyman John Wesley feels his heart “strangely warmed”. The next year he begins to preach in the open air at Bristol, and the societies he and his brother Charles organise come to be called Methodist.