ABSTRACT
One of the central dilemmas, and perhaps the most worked-over issue, in eighteenth-century religious history is the question of John Wesley's relationship with die Church of England. How far did he remain a devout and sincere member of the church, and how far was his religious identity quintessentially bound up with that membership? Conversely, how far was Wesley's religious allegiance increasingly outside the church, so that statements such as the one used in this essay's title might be no more than a wilfully deceptive smokescreen to hide the emergence of a new religious movement that effectively stood outside (and even against) it? One of Wesley's correspondents reprimanded him in 1761: 'did you not betray the Church, as Judas his Master, with a kiss?',1 and someone who might be thought to have had inside information, Thomas Adam, the rector of Wintringham and a former friend of Wesley's, eventually turned against him, accusing Wesley and the Methodists of acting 'under a lie'.2 We might also ask how far Wesley had a consistent and coherent position towards the established church. Did his attitude towards it change over time, or was it rather that external circumstances altered, which made it seem that Wesley had modified his allegiance? Moreover, what was the nature of that change? Can we discern a linear development, or was it a more confused trajectory? How far were the details of his own biography-the influences upon him, his relationships with members of his family (particularly his mother and younger brother Charles) and friends, and external stimuli, such as the reaction of the established church to his ministry-responsible
1 John Wesley to the editor of the London Magazine, in The Letters of the Revd. John Wesley, M.A., John Telford (ed.), (London, 1931), IV, p. 122. It may, of course, be that Wesley fabricated this correspondent. There are several editions of Wesley's works. Unless otherwise stated, I shall use the 'standard' editions: Letters, Telford (ed.) and The Journal of the Revd. John Wesley, A.M., Nehemiah Cumock (ed.), (London, 1909-16). In writing this I have benefited greatly from talking to Peter Nockles and Gareth Lloyd, the custodians of the Methodist Archives in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester [hereafter: JRULMj, and from the comments of John Walsh and Henry Rack, all of whom would have written a much better essay than this.
