John Wesley

He married Susanna, the twenty-fifth child of Samuel Annesley, a dissenting minister, in 1689.

Ultimately, she bore nineteen children, nine of whom lived beyond infancy.

She and Samuel Wesley had become members of the Church of England as young adults.

As in many families at the time, Wesley's parents gave their children their early education.

Each child, including the girls, was taught to read as soon as they turned five years old.

They were expected to become proficient in Latin and Greek and to have learned major portions of the New Testament by heart.

Susanna Wesley examined each child before the midday meal and before evening prayers.

The children were not allowed to eat between meals and were interviewed singly by their mother one evening each week for the purpose of intensive spiritual instruction.

Samuel Wesley was a graduate of the University of Oxford and a poet who, from 1696, was rector of Epworth.

John Wesley (28 June 1703 – 2 March 1791) was an English cleric, theologian, and evangelist who was a leader of a revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism.

The societies he founded became the dominant form of the independent Methodist movement that continues to this day.

John Wesley was born on 28 June 1703 in Epworth, 23 miles (37 km) north-west of Lincoln.

He was the fifteenth child of Samuel Wesley and his wife Susanna Wesley (née Annesley).

Apart from his disciplined upbringing, a rectory fire which occurred on 9 February 1709, when Wesley was five years old, left an indelible impression.

Some time after 11:00 pm, the rectory roof caught on fire.

Sparks falling on the children's beds and cries of "fire" from the street roused the Wesleys who managed to shepherd all their children out of the house except for John who was left stranded on an upper floor.

With stairs aflame and the roof about to collapse, Wesley was lifted out of a window by a parishioner standing on another man's shoulders.

Wesley later used the phrase, "a brand plucked out of the fire", quoting, to describe the incident.

This childhood deliverance subsequently became part of the Wesley legend, attesting to his special destiny and extraordinary work.

In 1714, at age 11, Wesley was sent to the Charterhouse School in London (under the mastership of John King from 1715), where he lived the studious, methodical and, for a while, religious life in which he had been trained at home.

Wesley was also influenced by the reported haunting of Epworth Rectory between 1716 and 1717.

The Wesley family reported frequently hearing noises and occasionally seeing apparitions which they believed were caused by a ghost called 'Old Jeffery'.

In June 1720, Wesley entered Christ Church, Oxford.

After graduating in 1724, Wesley stayed on at Christ Church to study for his master's degree.

He was ordained a deacon on 25 September 1725—holy orders being a necessary step toward becoming a fellow and tutor at the university.

Educated at Charterhouse and Christ Church, Oxford, Wesley was elected a fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1726 and ordained as an Anglican priest two years later.

At Oxford, he led the "Holy Club", a society formed for the purpose of the study and the pursuit of a devout Christian life.

After an unsuccessful two year ministry in Savannah, Georgia, he returned to London and joined a religious society led by Moravian Christians.

On 24 May 1738, he experienced what has come to be called his evangelical conversion.

He subsequently left the Moravians and began his own ministry.

A key step in the development of Wesley's ministry was to travel widely and preach outdoors, embracing Arminian doctrines.

Moving across Great Britain and Ireland, he helped form and organise small Christian groups (societies and classes) that developed intensive and personal accountability, discipleship, and religious instruction.

He appointed itinerant, unordained evangelists—both women and men—to care for these groups of people.

Under Wesley's direction, Methodists became leaders in many social issues of the day, including the abolition of slavery and support for women preachers.

Although he was not a systematic theologian, Wesley argued for the notion of Christian perfection and against Calvinism.

His evangelicalism, firmly grounded in sacramental theology, maintained that means of grace sometimes had a role in sanctification of the believer; however, he taught that it was by faith a believer was transformed into the likeness of Christ.

He held that, in this life, Christians could achieve a state where the love of God "reigned supreme in their hearts", giving them not only outward but inward holiness.

Wesley's teachings, collectively known as Wesleyan theology, continue to inform the doctrine of Methodist churches.

Throughout his life, Wesley remained within the established Church of England, insisting that the Methodist movement lay well within its tradition.

In his early ministry years, Wesley was barred from preaching in many parish churches and the Methodists were persecuted; he later became widely respected, and by the end of his life, was described as "the best-loved man in England".