John Wesley — "I was much disgusted at the first sight of the people. They were as rude and ill…"
I was much disgusted at the first sight of the people. They were as rude and ill-favoured as their houses.
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More from John Wesley
"I should be glad if I could spend my whole life in reading and writing."
"The Lord is at hand; therefore fear not."
"I am never solitary, for I am never alone."
"I believe that all true Christians are brothers and sisters, whatever their denomination."
"Give me one hundred men who fear nothing but God, hate nothing but sin, and are determined to know nothing among men but Jesus Christ, and I will shake the gates of hell."
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
Wesley describes his visceral negative reaction upon encountering a group of people, finding both them and their dwellings crude and unappealing. He's being bluntly honest about his initial prejudice and revulsion toward people of lower social status or rougher circumstances — a candid admission of the kind of class-based disgust common among educated 18th-century men encountering the rural poor or working class.
Relevance to John Wesley
This admission is striking given Wesley's lifelong ministry to Britain's poorest workers — miners, factory laborers, prisoners. He frequently preached in rough outdoor settings to audiences who repelled him initially. His journals document repeated moments of overcoming personal disgust through faith and duty, making his outreach to the marginalized more remarkable precisely because it was not natural affection but disciplined commitment that drove him.
The era
18th-century Britain saw extreme class stratification during early industrialization. The poor lived in squalid conditions Wesley regularly witnessed while itinerant preaching through mining and mill towns. Georgian society normalized open disdain for the lower orders, and even reformers like Wesley carried such instincts. His Methodist movement challenged this by insisting on the spiritual equality and moral reclamability of people his own class considered irredeemably brutal.
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