John Wesley (Epworth, June 17, 1703-London, March 2, 1791) was an English clergyman, theologian, and evangelist who sparked the first great spiritual awakening in the mid-18th century in England.

Biography

John Wesley was born in 1703 in Epworth, 23 miles northwest of Lincoln, as the fifteenth child of Samuel Wesley (1662-1735) and his wife Susanna Annesley (1669-1742). His father graduated of the University of Oxford and a poet who, from 1696, was rector of Epworth. He married Susanna (1669-1742), the twenty-fifth child of Samuel Annesley (1662-1735), a dissenting minister, in 1689.

Ultimately, she bore nineteen children, of which nine lived beyond infancy. She and Samuel Wesley (1662-1735) had become members of the Church of England as young adults.

As in many families at the time, Wesley's parents gave their children their early education. Each child, including the girls, was taught to read as soon as they could walk and talk. They were expected to become proficient in Latin and Greek and to have learned major portions of the New Testament by heart.

Susanna Wesley (1669-1742) examined each child before the midday meal and before evening prayers. The children were interviewed individually by their mother one night a week for the purpose of receiving intensive spiritual instruction.

In 1714, at age 11, Wesley was sent to the Charterhouse School in London under the mastership of John King from 1715, where he lived the studious, methodical and spiritual life in which he had been trained at home.

Apart from his disciplined upbringing, a rectory fire which occurred on 9 February 1709, when Wesley was five years old, left an indelible impression. Some time after 11:00 pm, the rectory roof caught on fire. Sparks falling on the children's beds and cries of "fire" from the street roused the Wesleys who managed to shepherd all their children out of the house except for John who was left stranded on an upper floor. With stairs aflame and the roof about to collapse, Wesley was lifted out of a window by a parishioner standing on another man's shoulders. Wesley later used the phrase, "a brand plucked out of the fire", quoting Zechariah 3:2, to describe the incident.

This childhood deliverance subsequently became part of the Wesley legend, attesting to his special destiny and extraordinary work.

While continuing his studies, he taught Greek and philosophy, lectured on the New Testament, and moderated daily disputes at the university. However, a call to ministry intruded upon his academic career and in August 1727, after completing his Master's degree at Christ Church, Oxford, Wesley returned to Epworth.

His father had requested his assistance in serving the neighbouring cure of Wroot. Ordained a priest on 22 September 1728, Wesley served as a parish pastor for two years.

In the year of his ordination he read Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471) and Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), showed an interest in mysticism, and began to search for the religious truths underlying the great spiritual awakening of the 18th century.

The reading of William Law's (1686-1761) Christian Perfection and A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life gave him, he said, a more sublime view of the law of God; and he resolved to keep it, inwardly and outwardly, as sacredly as possible, believing that in obedience he would find salvation.

He led a rigidly methodical life, studied the scriptures, diligently fulfilled his spiritual duties, and began to seek holiness in his daily life.

Holy Club

During Wesley's absence, his younger brother Charles (1707-1788) matriculated at Christ Church. Along with two fellow students, he formed a small club for the purpose of study and the pursuit of a devout Christian life. On Wesley's return, he became the leader of the group which increased somewhat in number and greatly in commitment. The group met daily from six until nine for prayer, psalms, and reading of the Greek New Testament. They prayed every waking hour for several minutes and each day for a special virtue. While the church's prescribed attendance was only three times a year, they took Communion every Sunday. They fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays until three o'clock as was commonly observed in the ancient church.

In 1730, the group began the practice of visiting inmates in jail, preaching, educating, and comforting incarcerated debtors, and caring for the sick.

Given the low ebb of spirituality in Oxford at that time, it was not surprising that Wesley's group provoked a negative reaction. They were considered to be religious enthusiasts, which in the context of the time meant religious fanatics.

University wits styled them the "Holy Club", a title of derision. Currents of opposition became a furore following the mental breakdown and death of a group member, William Morgan.

For all his outward piety, Wesley sought to cultivate his inner holiness or at least his sincerity as evidence of being a true Christian. Wesley also considered the contempt with which he and his group were considered a mark of a true Christian.

As he put it in a letter to his father, "Till he be thus contemned, no man is in a state of salvation."

Journey to Savannah, Georgia

On 14 October 1735, Wesley and his brother Charles sailed on The Simmonds from Gravesend in Kent for Savannah in the Province of Georgia in the American colonies at the request of James Oglethorpe, who had founded the colony in 1733 on behalf of the Trustees for the Establishment of the Colony of Georgia in America. Oglethorpe wanted Wesley to be the minister of the newly formed Savannah parish, a new town laid out in accordance with the famous Oglethorpe Plan.

It was on the voyage to the colonies that the Wesleys first came into contact with Moravian settlers. Wesley was influenced by their deep faith and spirituality rooted in pietism.

At one point in the voyage a storm came up and broke the mast off the ship. While the English panicked, the Moravians calmly sang hymns and prayed. This experience led Wesley to believe that the Moravians possessed an inner strength which he lacked.

The deeply personal spirituality practiced by the Moravian Pietists greatly influenced Wesley and is reflected in his theology. Wesley arrived in the colony in February 1736, and lived for a year at the parsonage that stood on the site of today's Oliver Sturges House.

He approached the Georgia mission as a High churchman, seeing it as an opportunity to revive primitive Christianity in a primitive environment. Although his primary goal was to evangelize the Native American people, a shortage of clergy in the colony largely limited his ministry to European settlers in Savannah.

While his ministry has often been judged to have been a failure in comparison to his later success as a leader in the Evangelical Revival, Wesley gathered around him a group of devoted Christians, who met in a number of small group religious societies. At the same time, attendance at Communion increased over the course of nearly two years in which he served as Christ Church's parish priest.

Nonetheless, Wesley's High Church ministry was controversial among the colonists and it ended in disappointment after Wesley fell in love with a young woman named Sophia Hopkey. He hesitated to marry her because he felt that his first priority in Georgia was to be a missionary to the Native Americans, and he was interested in the practice of clerical celibacy within early Christianity.

Following her marriage to William Williamson, Wesley believed Sophia's former zeal for practising the Christian faith declined.

In strictly applying the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer, Wesley denied her Communion after she failed to signify to him in advance her intention of taking it. As a result, legal proceedings against him ensued in which a clear resolution seemed unlikely.

It has been widely recognised that one of the most significant accomplishments of Wesley's Georgia mission was his publication of a Collection of Psalms and Hymns. The collection was the first Anglican hymnal published in the United States and the first of many hymn books Wesley published that included five hymns that he translated from German.

Wesley's Aldersgate Experience

Returning to England in 1737 discouraged, it was at this point that Wesley addressed the Moravians. Both he and Charles (1707-1788) received counsel from the young Moravian missionary Peter Boehler (1712-1775), who was temporarily in England awaiting permission to depart for Georgia himself.

Wesley's noted Aldersgate experience of 24 May 1738, at a Moravian meeting in Aldersgate Street, London, in which he heard a reading of Martin Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans, revolutionised the character and method of his ministry.

The previous week he had been highly impressed by the sermon of John Heylyn (1685-1759), whom he was assisting in the service at St Mary le Strand. Earlier that day, he had heard the choir at St Paul's Cathedral singing Psalm 130, where the Psalmist calls to God Out of the depths.

But it was still a discouraged Wesley who attended a service on the evening of 24 May. Wesley recounted his Aldersgate experience in his journal:

"In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt 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, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."

A few weeks later, Wesley preached a sermon on the doctrine of personal salvation by faith, followed by another on God's free grace for all.

Working with the Moravians

Wesley allied himself with the Moravian society in Fetter Lane. In 1738 he went to Herrnhut, the Moravian headquarters in Germany, to study. On his return to England, Wesley 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.

Wesley's Oxford friend, the evangelist George Whitefield, was also excluded from the churches of Bristol upon his return from America. Going to the neighbouring village of Kingswood, in February 1739, Whitefield preached in the open air to a company of miners. Later he preached in Whitefield's Tabernacle.

Wesley hesitated to accept Whitefield's call to copy this bold step. Overcoming his scruples, he preached the first time at Whitefield's invitation a sermon in the open air, near Bristol, in April 1739.

Wesley wrote:

I could scarce reconcile myself to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he set me an example on Sunday; having been all my life till very lately so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church.

Wesley was unhappy about the idea of field preaching as he believed Anglican liturgy had much to offer in its practice. Earlier in his life he would have thought that such a method of saving souls was almost a sin. He recognised the open-air services were successful in reaching men and women who would not enter most churches. From then on he took the opportunities to preach wherever an assembly could be brought together, more than once using his father's tombstone at Epworth as a pulpit. Wesley 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.

Persecutions

From 1739 onward, Wesley and the Methodists were persecuted by clergy and religious magistrates for various reasons. Though Wesley had been ordained an Anglican priest, many other Methodist leaders had not received ordination. And for his own part, Wesley flouted many regulations of the Church of England concerning parish boundaries and who had authority to preach. This was seen as a social threat that disregarded institutions.

Clergy attacked them in sermons and in print, and at times mobs attacked them. Wesley and his followers continued to work among the neglected and needy. They were denounced as promulgators of strange doctrines, fomenters of religious disturbances; as blind fanatics, leading people astray, claiming miraculous gifts, attacking the clergy of the Church of England, and trying to re-establish Catholicism.

Wesley felt that the church failed to call sinners to repentance, that many of the clergy were corrupt, and that people were perishing in their sins. He believed he was commissioned by God to bring about revival in the church, and no opposition, persecution, or obstacles could prevail against the divine urgency and authority of this commission.

John Wesley had strong ties to the North West of England and visited Manchester on at least fifteen occasions between 1733 and 1790. In 1733 and 1738 he preached at St Ann's Church and Salford Chapel, meeting with his friend John Clayton.

Ordination of ministers

As the societies multiplied, they adopted the elements of an ecclesiastical system. The divide between Wesley and the Church of England widened. The question of division from the Church of England was urged by some of his preachers and societies, but most strenuously opposed by his brother Charles.

Wesley refused to leave the Church of England, believing that Anglicanism was "with all her blemishes, [...] nearer the Scriptural plans than any other in Europe". In 1745 Wesley wrote that he would make any concession which his conscience permitted, to live in peace with the clergy. He could not give up the doctrine of an inward and present salvation by faith itself; he would not stop preaching, nor dissolve the societies, nor end preaching by lay members.

In the same year, in correspondence with a friend, he wrote that he believed it wrong to administer sacraments without having been ordained by a bishop.

When, in 1746, Wesley read Lord King's account of the primitive church, he became convinced that apostolic succession could be transmitted through not only bishops, but also priests. He wrote that he was "a scriptural episkopos as much as many men in England." Although he believed in apostolic succession, he also once called the idea of uninterrupted succession a "fable".

Many years later, Edward Stillingfleet's Irenicon led him to decide that ordination (and holy orders) could be valid when performed by a presbyter (priest) rather than a bishop. Nevertheless, some believe that Wesley was secretly consecrated a bishop in 1763 by Erasmus of Arcadia, and that Wesley could not openly announce his episcopal consecration without incurring the penalty of the Præmunire Act.

In 1784, he believed he could no longer wait for the Bishop of London to ordain someone for the American Methodists, who were without the sacraments after the American War of Independence. The Church of England had been disestablished in the United States, where it had been the state church in most of the southern colonies. The Church of England had not yet appointed a United States bishop to what would become the Protestant Episcopal Church in America. Wesley ordained Thomas Coke as superintendent of Methodists in the United States by the laying on of hands, although Coke was already a priest in the Church of England. He also ordained Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey as presbyters; Whatcoat and Vasey sailed to America with Coke. Wesley intended that Coke and Francis Asbury (whom Coke ordained as superintendent by direction of Wesley) should ordain others in the newly founded Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States.

In 1787, Coke and Asbury persuaded the American Methodists to refer to them as bishops rather than superintendents, overruling Wesley's objections to the change.

His brother, Charles, was alarmed by the ordinations and Wesley's evolving view of the matter. He begged Wesley to stop before he had "quite broken down the bridge" and not embitter his [Charles'] last moments on earth, nor "leave an indelible blot on our memory." Wesley replied that he had not separated from the church, nor did he intend to, but he must and would save as many souls as he could while alive, "without being careful about what may possibly be when I die." Although Wesley rejoiced that the Methodists in America were free, he advised his English followers to remain in the established church.

Doctrines, theology and advocacy

The 20th-century Wesleyan scholar Albert Outler argued in his introduction to the 1964 collection John Wesley that Wesley developed his theology by using a method that Outler termed the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. In this method, Wesley believed that the living core of Christianity was contained in Scripture (the Bible), and that it was the sole foundational source of theological development. The centrality of Scripture was so important for Wesley that he called himself "a man of one book," although he was well-read for his day. However, he believed that doctrine had to be in keeping with Christian orthodox tradition. So, tradition was considered the second aspect of the Quadrilateral.

Wesley contended that a part of the theological method would involve experiential faith. In other words, truth would be vivified in personal experience of Christians (overall, not individually), if it were really truth. And every doctrine must be able to be defended rationally. He did not divorce faith from reason. Tradition, experience and reason, however, were subject always to Scripture, Wesley argued, because only there is the Word of God revealed "so far as it is necessary for our salvation."

The doctrines which Wesley emphasised in his sermons and writings are prevenient grace, present personal salvation by faith, the witness of the Spirit, and entire sanctification. Prevenient grace was the theological underpinning of his belief that all persons were capable of being saved by faith in Christ. Unlike the Calvinists of his day, Wesley did not believe in predestination, that is, that some persons had been elected by God for salvation and others for damnation. He understood that Christian orthodoxy insisted that salvation was only possible by the sovereign grace of God. He expressed his understanding of humanity's relationship to God as utter dependence upon God's grace. God was at work to enable all people to be capable of coming to faith by empowering humans to have actual existential freedom of response to God.

Wesley defined the witness of the Spirit as: "an inward impression on the soul of believers, whereby the Spirit of God directly testifies to their spirit that they are the children of God." He based this doctrine upon certain Biblical passages. This doctrine was closely related to his belief that salvation had to be "personal." In his view, a person must ultimately believe the Good News for himself or herself; no one could be in relation to God for another.

Entire sanctification he described in 1790 as the "grand depositum which God has lodged with the people called 'Methodists'." Wesley taught that entire sanctification was obtainable after justification by faith, between justification and death. He did not contend for "sinless perfection"; rather, he contended that a Christian could be made "perfect in love". (Wesley studied Eastern Orthodoxy and embraced particularly the doctrine of Theosis).

This love would mean, first of all, that a believer's motives, rather than being self-centred, would be guided by the deep desire to please God. One would be able to keep from committing what Wesley called, "sin rightly so-called." By this he meant a conscious or intentional breach of God's will or laws. A person could still be able to sin, but intentional or wilful sin could be avoided.

Secondly, to be made perfect in love meant, for Wesley, that a Christian could live with a primary guiding regard for others and their welfare. He based this on Christ's quote that the second great command is "to love your neighbour as you love yourself." In Wesley's view, this orientation would cause a person to avoid any number of sins against his neighbour. This love, plus the love for God that could be the central focus of a person's faith, would be what Wesley referred to as "a fulfilment of the law of Christ." He maintained that individuals could have assurance of perfection, akin to a second conversion or instantaneous sanctifying experience, through the testimony of the Spirit. Wesley collected and published such testimonies.

Nature of sin

One notable contribution of Wesley was his definition of sin, which was foundational to his understanding of Christian perfection.

Wesley explains:

"Nothing is sin, strictly speaking, but a voluntary transgression of a known law of God. Therefore, every voluntary breach of the law of love is sin; and nothing else if we speak properly. To strain the matter farther is only to make way for Calvinism. There may be ten thousand wandering thoughts, and forgetful intervals, without any breach of love, though not without transgressing the Adamic law. But Calvinists would fain confound these together. Let love fill your heart, and it is enough!"

Wesley held this a proper understanding of sin, excluded involuntary transgressions as sin. He explains that "I believe there is no such perfection in this life as excludes these involuntary transgressions which I apprehend to be naturally consequent on the ignorance and mistakes inseparable from mortality... Such transgressions you may call sins, if you please: I do not, for the reasons above-mentioned." To Wesley "Mistakes, and whatever infirmities necessarily flow from the corruptible state of the body, are noway contrary to love; nor therefore, in the Scripture sense, sin." Wesley explains more fully in this paragraph:

He that is, by faith, born of God, sinneth not (1.) By any habitual sin; for all habitual sin is sin reigning: But sin cannot reign in any that believeth. Nor (2.) By any wilful sin; for his will, while he abideth in the faith, is utterly set against all sin, and abhorreth it as deadly poison. Nor (3.) By any sinful desire; for he continually desireth the holy and perfect will of God; and any tendency to an unholy desire, he, by the grace of God, stifleth in the birth. Nor (4.) Doth he sin by infirmities, whether in act, word, or thought; for his infirmities have no concurrence of his will; and without this they are not properly sins. Thus, 'he that is born of God doth not commit sin:' And though he cannot say, he hath not sinned, yet now 'he sinneth not.'"

Not only did Wesley believe that his definition was scriptural, He also believed that it was historical. He explains "But is 'a voluntary transgression of a known law' a proper definition of sin?' I think it is of all such sin as is imputed to our condemnation. And it is a definition which has passed uncensured in the church for at least fifteen hundred years."

Advocacy of Arminianism

Wesley entered controversies as he tried to enlarge church practice. The most notable of his controversies was that on Calvinism. His father was of the Arminian school in the church. Wesley came to his own conclusions while in college and expressed himself strongly against the doctrines of Calvinistic election and reprobation. His system of thought has become known as Wesleyan Arminianism, the foundations of which were laid by Wesley and his fellow preacher John William Fletcher. Wesley was perhaps the clearest English proponent of Arminianism.

By contrast, Whitefield inclined to Calvinism; in his first tour in America, he embraced the views of the New England School of Calvinism. When in 1739 Wesley preached a sermon on Freedom of Grace, attacking the Calvinistic understanding of predestination as blasphemous, as it represented "God as worse than the devil," Whitefield asked him not to repeat or publish the discourse, as he did not want a dispute. Wesley published his sermon anyway. Whitefield was one of many who responded. The two men separated their practice in 1741. Wesley wrote that those who held to unlimited atonement did not desire separation, but "those who held 'particular redemption' would not hear of any accommodation."

Whitefield, Howell Harris (leader of the Welsh Methodist revival), John Cennick, and others, became the founders of Calvinistic Methodism. Whitefield and Wesley, however, were soon back on friendly terms, and their friendship remained unbroken although they travelled different paths. When someone asked Whitefield if he thought he would see Wesley in heaven, Whitefield replied, "I fear not, for he will be so near the eternal throne and we at such a distance, we shall hardly get sight of him."

In 1770, the controversy broke out anew with violence and bitterness, as people's view of God related to their views of men and their possibilities. Augustus Toplady, Daniel Rowland, Sir Richard Hill and others were engaged on one side, while Wesley and Fletcher stood on the other. Toplady was editor of The Gospel Magazine, which had articles covering the controversy.

In 1778, Wesley began the publication of The Arminian Magazine, not, he said, to convince Calvinists, but to preserve Methodists. He wanted to teach the truth that "God willeth all men to be saved." A "lasting peace" could be secured in no other way.

Support for abolitionism

Later in his ministry, Wesley was a keen abolitionist, speaking out and writing against the slave trade. Wesley denounced slavery as "the sum of all villainies," and detailed its abuses. He addressed the slave trade in a polemical tract, titled Thoughts Upon Slavery, in 1774. He wrote, "Liberty is the right of every human creature, as soon as he breathes the vital air; and no human law can deprive him of that right which he derives from the law of nature". Wesley influenced George Whitefield to journey to the colonies, spurring the transatlantic debate on slavery. Wesley was a mentor to William Wilberforce, who was also influential in the abolition of slavery in the British Empire.

It is thanks to Wesley's abolitionist message that a young African American, Richard Allen, converted to Christianity in 1777 and later founded, in 1816, the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), in the Methodist tradition.

Support for women preachers

Women had an active role in Wesley's Methodism, and were encouraged to lead classes. In 1761, he informally allowed Sarah Crosby, one of his converts and a class leader, to preach. On an occasion where over 200 people attended a class she was meant to teach, Crosby felt as though she could not fulfill her duties as a class leader given the large crowd, and decided to preach instead. She wrote to Wesley to seek his advice and forgiveness. He let Crosby to continue her preaching so long as she refrained from as many of the mannerisms of preaching as she could. Between 1761 and 1771, Wesley wrote detailed instructions to Crosby and others, with specifics on what styles of preaching they could use. For instance, in 1769, Wesley allowed Crosby to give exhortations.

In the summer of 1771, Mary Bosanquet wrote to John Wesley to defend hers and Sarah Crosby's work preaching and leading classes at her orphanage, Cross Hall.

Bosanquet's letter is considered to be the first full and true defense of women's preaching in Methodism. Her argument was that women should be able to preach when they experienced an 'extraordinary call,' or when given permission from God. Wesley accepted Bosanquet's argument, and formally began to allow women to preach in Methodism in 1771.

Personality and activities

Wesley travelled widely, generally on horseback, preaching two or three times each day. Stephen Tomkins writes that "[Wesley] rode 250,000 miles, gave away 30,000 pounds, ... and preached more than 40,000 sermons... " He formed societies, opened chapels, examined and commissioned preachers, administered aid charities, prescribed for the sick, helped to pioneer the use of electric shock for the treatment of illness, and superintended orphanages and schools (including Kingswood School).

Wesley practised a vegetarian diet and in later life abstained from wine for health reasons. Wesley warned against the dangers of alcohol abuse in his famous sermon, The Use of Money, and in his letter to an alcoholic. In his sermon, On Public Diversions, Wesley says: "You see the wine when it sparkles in the cup, and are going to drink of it. I tell you there is poison in it! and, therefore, beg you to throw it away". These statements against alcohol use largely concerned "hard liquors and spirits" rather than the low-alcohol beer, which was often safer to drink than the contaminated water of that time. Methodist churches became pioneers in the teetotal temperance movement of the 19th and 20th centuries, and later it became de rigueur in British Methodism.

He attended music concerts, and was especially an admirer of Charles Avison.

After attending a performance in Bristol Cathedral in 1758, Wesley recorded in his journal: "I went to the cathedral to hear Mr. Handel's Messiah. I doubt if that congregation was ever so serious at a sermon as they were during this performance. In many places, especially several of the choruses, it exceeded my expectation."

He is described as "rather under the medium height, well proportioned, strong, with a bright eye, a clear complexion, and a saintly, intellectual face". Though Wesley favoured celibacy rather than marital bond, he married very unhappily in 1751, at the age of 48, to a widow, Mary Vazeille, described as "a well-to-do widow and mother of four children." The couple had no children. John Singleton writes: "By 1758 she had left him - unable to cope, it is said, with the competition for his time and devotion presented by the ever-burgeoning Methodist movement. Molly, as she was known, was to return and leave him again on several occasions before their final separation." Wesley wryly reported in his journal, "I did not forsake her, I did not dismiss her, I will not recall her."

In 1770, at the death of George Whitefield, Wesley wrote a memorial sermon which praised Whitefield's admirable qualities and acknowledged the two men's differences: "There are many doctrines of a less essential nature ... In these we may think and let think; we may 'agree to disagree.' But, meantime, let us hold fast the essentials..." Wesley may have been the first to use "agree to disagree" in print - in the modern sense of tolerating differences - though he himself attributed the saying to Whitefield, and it had appeared in other senses previously.

Death

Wesley's health declined sharply towards the end of his life and he ceased preaching. On 28 June 1790, less than a year before his death, he wrote:

This day I enter into my eighty-eighth year. For above eighty-six years, I found none of the infirmities of old age: my eyes did not wax dim, neither was my natural strength abated. But last August, I found almost a sudden change. My eyes were so dim that no glasses would help me. My strength likewise now quite forsook me and probably will not return in this world.

Wesley died on 2 March 1791, at the age of 87. As he lay dying, his friends gathered around him, Wesley grasped their hands and said repeatedly, "Farewell, farewell." At the end, he said, "The best of all is, God is with us", lifted his arms and raised his feeble voice again, repeating the words, "The best of all is, God is with us." He was entombed at his chapel on City Road, London.

Because of his charitable nature he died poor, leaving as the result of his life's work 135,000 members and 541 itinerant preachers under the name "Methodist". It has been said that "when John Wesley was carried to his grave, he left behind him a good library of books, a well-worn clergyman's gown" and the Methodist Church.