John Cennick, who came to faith independently in 1737, became the English Evangelical Revival's first lay preacher, and one of its best. Despite having left school at thirteen, he published a treatise replete with quotations from the Fathers, and wrote hymns that are still sung today. Initially the Methodist leader in Kingswood, Cennick sided with Whitefield when he parted company with the Wesleys. He formed societies in Wiltshire, and then led the English Calvinistic Methodists and their London Tabernacle during Whitefield's absence in America. His defection to the Moravians in 1745 (shortly before his twenty-seventh birthday) had a significant adverse effect on Calvinistic Methodism. He founded the Moravians' work in Dublin and Northern Ireland and led it until his death in 1755, building several chapels. The Moravian congregations there, and in Bristol, Kingswood, Bath, Wiltshire, and Leominster, all grew out of his evangelism.Given Cennick's significance for Wesleyan, Calvinistic Methodist, and Moravian history, he deserves greater attention than he has received. This first full-length biography helpfully highlights an important and interesting but neglected figure. Gary Best ably sets Cennick's life in the context of the Revival's early history. Cennick being the only person who played a significant role in all three groupings, the story is told from a unique and novel vantage point at the centre of the triangle. Best emphasizes Cennick's irenic character, striving for unity, peace, and reconciliation within and between the Revival's warring factions. He was bold in the face of persecution and danger, but reluctant to enforce discipline. He felt guilty at leaving the Tabernacle, but pleaded that internal infighting had left him no option.By contrast, John Wesley does not emerge well from this telling of the story. Best points out that it was Cennick's resistance to Wesley's encouragement of emotional—even hysterical—responses to his preaching, far more than the dispute over Calvinism, that divided them in 1739. It was ‘not without justification’ that some of the Wesleys' comments about Whitefield were ‘seen as character assassination’ (109). Cennick fell out with John in November 1740 over John's claim that some achieve sinless perfection in this life, not over predestination. The ‘harsh judgement’ that led John to expel Cennick in February 1741 was ‘perfectly understandable … but … heavy-handed and over-stated’; having turned against someone, Wesley could be ‘needlessly vindictive in what he chose to say’ (129). He later ‘falsely denied’ having made personal comments against Whitefield (143). Charles Wesley was usually more irenic. When the Dublin Methodists leased the hall from which the Moravians had been evicted, Charles threatened to leave Dublin if it were not returned, but when negotiations ended, John ‘sent a note insincerely wishing Cennick “much happiness”’, and ‘it may well have been true that consciously or subconsciously he engineered events so the house remained with the Methodists’ (318). Much of the content of Wesley's 1749 anti-Moravian tract was, in Best's view, ‘grossly unfair’ (340).Best has mastered most of the primary sources, using them to compile a narrative that is informative, contextualized, and often enriched by sound judgement and insightful comment. With regard to Moravian history and practice, there are occasional minor factual errors. More seriously, the discredited perspective of the early twentieth-century English Moravian apologist J. E. Hutton sometimes appears unduly influential. Recognition by Parliament as an ancient Protestant episcopal church conferred respectability on the Moravians but did not alter their status as Dissenters. Describing the anti-Moravian propaganda of 1753 as a ‘farrago of lies’ (395) is at best simplistic. The story's ending is less complete than the sources allow. In his last two years Cennick was not only tired, ill, and distressed by the public criticism of the Moravian Church: Best does not mention that he was also deeply disillusioned with its leadership, privately criticizing their debts, their ‘pomp’, and ‘tyranny’. In these ecumenical days, describing Cennick as ‘the apostle of Northern Ireland’ (where the gospel had already been preached for more than a millennium) jars.The many quotations are all footnoted, but sometimes older, obscure, secondary works or manuscript copies are referenced, rather than original manuscripts and/or recent publications. Citing the 1872 edition of John Wesley's works may be ‘fine for the purposes of this biography’ (426), but less idiosyncratic referencing—plus a select bibliography and an index—would have increased the book's usefulness to scholars. By contrast, to ask for the narrative structure to be similarly supported by references would certainly be to ask for a different kind of book.Gary Best has sought to produce not an academic treatise but a highly readable narrative, rooted in scholarship but accessible to the interested general reader (and sold at a remarkably low price). In this he has succeeded admirably. Ninety-two black-and-white illustrations enhance the book's attractiveness and help bring the early eighteenth-century context alive.