ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1739, Joseph Butler, Bishop of Bristol and author of Analogy of Religion, was alarmed. He had heard that a fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, one John Wesley, was preaching to thousands in the open fields of Kingswood, a mining village near Bristol. In August he had an interview with the young revivalist and told him: "Sir, the pretending to extra-ordinary revelations and gifts of Holy Spirit is a horrid thing—a very horrid thing!" 1 Wesley was not intimidated. "I pretend," he replied, "to no extra-ordinary revelations, or gifts of the Holy Ghost, none but what every Christian may receive and ought to expect and pray for." Wesley then expounded on the importance of the doctrine of justification by faith, which he defined as "the conviction, wrought in a man by the Holy Ghost, that Christ hath loved him and given Himself for him, and that.. .through the merits of Christ, his sins are forgiven and he is reconciled to the favor of God." To the philosophical Butler, "gifts of the Holy Ghost" opened the door to enthusiasm.
