The Medieval Church in Early Methodism and Anti-Methodism

Abstract

John Wesley’s sermon ‘Of Former Times’ (1787) provides just one example of his belief in the historical importance of the eighteenth-century Great Awakening. In its conclusion he noted that ‘[n]o “former time” since the apostles left the earth has been “better than the present”’. In another sermon he argued explicitly that religious progress in the eighteenth century was greater than during the Reformation. Undecided about a more suitable comparison, he could not choose between the apostolic age and the rule of Constantine the Great. In these arguments the early Methodists understandably afforded little time to the Middle Ages, which were seen as a dark period between the light of early Christianity and the brightness of their own movement. Yet this essay will argue that, despite this general approach to the history of the medieval church, there is an early Methodist medievalism worth recovering and that it can be best understood in the context of eighteenth-century religious polemic and debate.