ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how John Wesley attempted to validate his religious mission and defend the integrity of Methodism by distancing himself from a false enthusiasm. The implied culprits are the authors of the literature shown lying about the meeting house: the writings of George Whitefield and John Wesley, evangelists of revivalism. John Wesley employed a similar rhetoric when he described how, at a disrupted meeting in the Foundery Chapel in London, suddenly, ‘the hammer of the Word brakes the rocks in pieces’. John Wesley’s revivalist mission was dogged by the popular perception of Methodism as synonymous with a manic enthusiasm that offended both sense and decency. John Wesley–and later, William Wordsworth–were influenced by the teaching of William Law who, in his Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life advocated ‘reasonableness’ and ‘duty’ against extremism or didacticism in religious observance.
