John Wesley
An ordained clergyman who, after two years in Georgia and an experience of assurance in London on 24 May 1738, took to preaching in the open air and organised his hearers into societies and classes. With his brother Charles he signed their rules in 1743.
Wesley says that he preached by the authority conveyed to him when the bishop who became archbishop of Canterbury laid hands on him (Wesley, Journal, 5 June 1739). He sailed for Georgia in October 1735 (Wesley, Journal, 14 October 1735), and his Journal for 24 May 1738 records the evening in Aldersgate Street in London when he “felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation” (Wesley, Journal, 24 May 1738). On 2 April 1739 he began to preach in the open air near Bristol (Wesley, Journal, 2 April 1739), and he defended preaching outside any parish of his own with the words “I look upon all the world as my parish” (Wesley, Journal, letter printed under June 1739).
The rules of the United Societies, which he wrote in the first person and signed with his brother Charles Wesley on 1 May 1743, describe the weekly meetings he began in London at the end of 1739 and the classes into which each society was divided (Wesley, General Rules paragraphs 1–3 and signature, pp. 3–9). 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.