Blake, Wesley and Theology

Abstract

Between 1738 and 1739 Wesleyan Methodism had forged its own ideology and religious practice.¹ Wesley had set out to evangelise across Britain and preached a religion of the heart and the doctrine of justification by faith alone. In his Journal (13 September 1739) he described his position to ‘A serious clergyman’ who desired to know in what points Methodism differed from the Anglican Church, stating, ‘To the best of my knowledge, in none. The doctrines we preach are the fundamental doctrines of the Church, clearly laid down, in her Prayers, Articles, and Homilies.’² G. F. Nuttall suggests that there were two types of Arminianism at this time: ‘Arminianism of the heart’ and ‘Arminianism of the head’. The former helps us to locate Wesley’s High Church theology more precisely: what he held in common with both rational dissent and the High Church party in the Church of England was Arminianism (the Calvinist Evangelicals, both within the Anglican Church and outside it were, of course, not Arminians); but the rational dissenters and the High Church Anglicans were deistical and inclined to natural religion. Wesley, however, was an Arminian of the heart and emphasised feeling and faith over reason.³