John Wesley — "I have often thought, that if I were to choose a profession, it should be that o…"
I have often thought, that if I were to choose a profession, it should be that of a physician.
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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
If given a free choice of career, the speaker would pick medicine above all others. The statement reveals a deep admiration for healing as a vocation — not merely as technical craft but as direct, practical service to suffering people. It positions medicine as the most meaningful work a person could do, combining intellectual rigor with immediate human impact and compassion in a way few other professions can match.
Relevance to John Wesley
Wesley actually practiced folk medicine throughout his ministry, publishing 'Primitive Physick' in 1747 as a cheap medical guide for the poor who couldn't afford doctors. He ran free clinics and dispensed remedies to his Methodist societies. His drive to heal bodies mirrored his drive to save souls — both rooted in methodical care for the poor and marginalized. Medicine and ministry were, for him, twin expressions of the same Christian duty.
The era
In 18th-century Britain, formal medicine was expensive and largely inaccessible to the working poor. Physicians served the wealthy; the laboring classes relied on apothecaries, folk remedies, and clergy. Wesley's era also saw early Enlightenment optimism about empirical science improving human welfare. Choosing medicine as an ideal profession reflected both genuine humanitarian concern and the growing cultural prestige of systematic, evidence-based approaches to natural philosophy and healing.
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