ABSTRACT
John Wesley's teaching on practical divinity asserted the religious value of 'experience' and shifted the core notion of belief away from an act of intellectual agency towards something more intuitive and experiential — away from 'assent', and towards 'faith'. The locus of Wesley's authority seems to move from scripture and reason, dealt with brusquely, to a much more extended and warmly defended evocation of practical, experiential evidence. Recording his daily life for the edification of his Methodist readers and strategically presenting this autobiographical narrative via his published journals allowed him to theorise the necessity of experience to belief. Prior to the emergence of the Methodist conversion narrative, spiritual autobiography took shape in the practice of communal spoken testimony in the Puritan and later the dissenting 'gathered churches'. The doctrine of instantaneous conversion marked a major discrepancy between the teaching developed in the Methodist Societies and the received wisdom of the Anglican Church.
