I was much surprised to find that the Bishop of London, in his late Pastoral Letter, has taken occasion to caution the Clergy of his diocese against 'enthusiasm,' and to warn them against 'the new doctrine of regeneration by the Holy Ghost.'
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"I have not lost a day since I was born."
"I have no time to be in a hurry."
"I am not an enemy to pleasure; but I am an enemy to sin."
"I have often thought that the reason why so few are saved, is, because so few are willing to be saved."
"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."
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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Wesley expresses surprise that a senior Church of England bishop officially warned clergy against 'enthusiasm' — the era's dismissive label for fervent spiritual experience — and against teaching that the Holy Spirit genuinely transforms believers inwardly. He is essentially flagging that the institutional church was rejecting what he considered core Christianity: not ritual observance, but real spiritual conversion confirmed by inner change. The tone is pointed; Wesley treats this as a revealing admission by the establishment.
Wesley's entire ministry was built on regeneration — the conviction that genuine conversion transforms a person's inner life, not just their outward behavior. His 1738 Aldersgate experience, where his heart was 'strangely warmed,' became his template for authentic faith. He preached the Holy Spirit as actively present in believers. The Bishop's letter directly targeted this emphasis, placing Wesley's core theological claims under official censure and confirming his quarrel with a cold, formal Church of England.
Eighteenth-century England's Church of England had grown rationalistic and ceremonially stiff. 'Enthusiasm' was a term of abuse applied to those claiming direct spiritual experience, associated with social disorder and sectarian excess dating to the Civil War. Wesley and Whitefield's evangelical revival — open-air preaching, mass conversions, emotional services — alarmed church authorities who feared it would destabilize religious hierarchy and public order. The Bishop's pastoral letter was the establishment's formal pushback against this popular spiritual awakening.
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