ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the fundamental questions posed by John Wesley's endeavour to secure a theologically valid role for literature under the category of practical divinity. Both practical divinity and literary criticism are based on similar premises about the relationship between the rhetorical and artistic properties of the text and its moral, affective, and ethical concerns, as well as its communication of 'truth'. A conceptual link between literature and evangelical religion lies in the oratorical work of the Christian minister and thus in the genre of the eighteenth-century sermon. Many of the problems inherent in contemporary discourse about artistry and style, and about the potentially extra-rhetorical and inspirational religious properties of literary writing, come to the surface in Wesley's description and defence of this comprehensive collection of Wesleyan hymnody. But an assessment of Wesley's poetics which is based solely on his status as a 'man of letters' avoids the pressing theological requirement placed on evangelical as opposed to imaginative literature.
