ABSTRACT
John Wesley, Thomas Wride, and other preachers operated in a religious marketplace. The fragmentary evidence suggests that Wride was within the Wesleyan theological mainstream. His sermons were orthodox in content if not in the manner of their delivery, and he accepted even the controversial Wesleyan doctrine of ‘sanctification’ or Christian perfection. However, his hatred of Calvinism, while anti-Calvinism was a hallmark of Wesley’s Connexion, was unusually deep, and his interest in social action—another hallmark—was unusually shallow. Together with his puritanical approach to personal and social morality, these characteristics reduced the scope for him to work collaboratively with ministers from other religious groups. Wesley himself was more open to such joint working, both with Church of England evangelicals and with Baptists and other Dissenters. These groups were of course often also in competition, and relations were sometimes strained, as on the Isle of Man, where the bishop was antagonistic, or in Norwich, where the expansionist Baptists exploited the shortage of Methodist preachers. Wride was both politically and socially conservative, as was Wesley, and his hatreds included swearing and the theatre, hostility which he shared with other Methodists but exhibited to an extreme degree.
