John Wesley — "I conceive slavery to be such a thing as is odious to the God of love."
I conceive slavery to be such a thing as is odious to the God of love.
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More from John Wesley
"I have not lost a day since I was born."
"Are we not a little too apt to forget that the Methodists are not the only Christians in the world?"
"I have learned to suffer in silence, and not to make my complaints known to any but God."
"I have often thought that the reason why so few are saved, is, because so few are willing to be saved."
"I have often thought that the grand reason why the generality of Christians are so cold and lifeless, is because they do not believe the Bible."
About John Wesley (1703-1791)
English Anglican cleric and founder of Methodism, whose open-air preaching and class-meeting structure created the largest 18th-century evangelical revival. Closely associated with Charles Wesley (his hymn-writing brother) and George Whitefield (early co-revivalist, later doctrinal opponent). For an intellectual contrast, see George Whitefield, Calvinist evangelical revivalist — Whitefield's predestinarian Calvinism vs Wesley's free-grace Arminian theology split the early Methodist movement permanently in the 1739-41 break. The founding evangelical Calvinist-Arminian schism — the two parallel evangelical traditions American Christianity descends from.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Slavery is deeply offensive to God precisely because God's defining nature is love. Wesley argues theologically: a deity whose essence is love cannot sanction an institution that strips human beings of freedom, dignity, and personhood. This isn't merely a social critique — it's a spiritual verdict. Owning another person as property is incompatible with divine love, making opposition to slavery not just a moral preference but a religious obligation.
Relevance to John Wesley
Wesley's theology of universal grace — that Christ redeemed all souls equally — made slavery theologically untenable in his framework. He published 'Thoughts Upon Slavery' in 1774, one of the era's most forceful abolitionist pamphlets. His final letter, written days before his 1791 death, urged William Wilberforce to continue fighting the slave trade. Wesley's conviction that every person holds inherent worth before God made him a natural abolitionist decades before the movement reached parliament.
The era
The Atlantic slave trade reached peak volume in the 18th century, with Britain transporting hundreds of thousands of Africans to colonial plantations annually. Abolitionism was barely organized — the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade formed only in 1787. Wesley's condemnation in the 1770s was among the earliest influential challenges, framing the debate in moral-theological terms at a time when economic justifications dominated and slave-owning among Christians faced almost no institutional opposition.
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