Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on Earth.
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"I am as much a High-Churchman as ever I was. And I hope to live and die so."
"I have been in this city for over a year, yet I have not seen one instance of a truly awakened soul."
"I have often thought, that if I were to choose a food to eat, it should be bread and water."
"Though I am an old man, I am but a little child; for I am just beginning to learn the alphabet of salvation."
"I am not afraid of giving too much, but of giving too little."
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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A small group of people — ordained or not — who are completely devoted to avoiding sin and pursuing God alone will have more transformative power than any large institution. What matters isn't religious credentials or official rank, but depth of moral commitment and singular focus on God. True spiritual revolution comes from radical personal dedication, not from titles, numbers, or ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Wesley practiced exactly what this quote preaches. As an Anglican priest, he controversially deployed lay preachers across England and America — people with no ordination but fierce devotion. His Methodist movement was built on circuit riders and class leaders, ordinary people empowered to spread revival. His doctrine of entire sanctification demanded exactly this: complete surrender to God and rejection of sin as a daily, lived standard, regardless of clerical standing.
In 18th-century England, the established Church of England held a legal monopoly on preaching, and clergy were educated, socially elevated figures largely disconnected from the working poor. Wesley's era saw industrial displacement, widespread poverty, and spiritual neglect of laboring masses. His insistence that laymen could preach as effectively as ordained clergy was genuinely radical — and legally controversial — in a society where religious authority and social class were deeply intertwined.
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