The Key Teachings of John Wesley

This is not a book by John Wesley. It is a companion to him — an independent work of exposition and appreciation, written by Ochorus, that gathers the heart of his teaching into nineteen short chapters for the ordinary reader, with a chapter on his life, a conclusion and a guide to his books.

Wesley’s one theme was the recovery of love. He believed that sin is a disease of the whole person and that the gospel is God’s cure for it: grace that awakens before we seek, grace that pardons when we believe, and grace that goes on working until the love of God fills the heart and governs the life. From that single conviction came everything else — his preaching of the new birth and assurance, his insistence on prayer, Scripture and the Lord’s Supper, his small groups, his rules about money, his care for the sick and the poor, and his hatred of the slave trade. This volume follows that thread from the Epworth rectory to the fields and the class meeting, weighs honestly the places where he must be read with care, above all his teaching on Christian perfection, and ends each chapter in a few questions and a prayer.

Wesley’s own writings are in the public domain and freely available, and every chapter here names them so the reader can go to the source; A Plain Account of Christian Perfection and his Sermons on Several Occasions are in the Ochorus library. This companion is offered only to open the door. It quotes Scripture from the Authorised (King James) Version, and it makes no claim to stand in for the plain, urgent pages of the man himself.