John Wesley’s Conception and Practice of Primitive Christianity

Abstract

The sources of Wesley’s understanding of primitive Christianity were rooted in the revival of patristic scholarship in the Church of England in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Knowledge of the early church was conveyed to Wesley by his parents in the Epworth rectory and through his academic life at Oxford. However, his interest in the primitive church took a new, more intense direction beginning with his friendship with John Clayton in 1732. Clayton and his mentor, Thomas Deacon, propelled Wesley to investigate the doctrine, discipline, and practice of the early church. Wesley began a rigorous course of studying primarily the Apostolic Fathers (including the Apostolic Constitutions and Canons), secondarily the ante-Nicene Fathers, and thirdly select holy men of the fourth century. He utilized editions of the Fathers by recent Anglican patristic scholars supplemented by works on the primitive church by William Cave, Claude Fleury, and Anthony Horneck, amongst others.