For the I don't know how many times, I took this book down this morning. I've had it since it was published in 1981. It's my first port of call when I'm looking for some good warm Arminian correctives to the hard to argue with theology of the Reformed tradition! More seriously, this is a book I've read through more than once and consulted time without number.
It's by no means the most complete Wesley anthology, but it has several outstanding features. The 5 page Preface is written by Albert C Outler, who was an outstanding Wesleyan scholar and one of the driving forces behind the Bicentennial Edition of The Works of John Wesley. This is a succinct apologia for Wesleyan theology.
The Introduction by Frank Whaling is a sixty page essay covering biography, the rise of Methodism as a movement, the hymns, the sermons, the letters, and some of the theological controversies. It is a succinct summary that does what it says; introduces the reader the the people who wrote the texts contained in the anthology. More than that, it is a superb account of the spirituality and the lived experience of Wesleyan Christianity with its emphases on a free gospel, a universal atonement, the call to Christian perfection, and the experiential chain of conversion, justification, sanctification and assurance as a lived process of salvation enabled by grace and imparted by the Holy Spirit.
The chosen texts are arranged in three sections. Section I includes several extracts from key documents of Methodism, letters of spiritual counsel, John's translations of some German hymns and the Wesleyan Covenant Service. Section II has over 100 pages of representative hymns of Charles Wesley; these are well chosen and touch on the major themes of Charles hymn output. Section III contains the main texts relating to Christian Perfection, the most controversial of John Wesley's doctrines, and along with the brothers' insistence that Christ died for all, the focal points of the fiercest arguments between the Wesleys and Whitefield, Toplady and various other Reformed protagonists.
My copy has three splits on the spine, caused by frequent use. This is a good thing! What's more, there are pencil notes on most of the pages, and some of them enhanced by frequent underlinings, marginal notes, and cross references.
Opening somewhere near the middle I found these verses, their theological optimism one of the reasons my own spirituality has strongly coloured strands of Wesley woven through:
Thou lov'st whate'er thy hands have made;
Thy goodness we rehearse,
In shining characters displayed
Throughout our universe.
Mercy, with love, and endless grace
O'er all thy works doth reign;
But mostly thou delight'st to bless
Thy favourite creature - man.
I mentioned A C Outler above. Here's a sentence from his Preface:
"Wesleyan spirituality carries within it an implicit theory of social revolution that is non-violent and conservative, a faith in the human future based on an unfaltering optimism of grace."
And I guess when push comes to shove, that's where I hang my theological bunnet too!
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