Anti Methodist Publications Issued During The Eighteenth Century

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Textual Warfare and the Making of Methodism argues that the eighteenth-century Methodist revival participated in and was produced by a rich textual culture that includes both pro- and anti-Methodist texts; and that Methodism be understood and approached as a rhetorical problem-as a point of contestation and debate resolved through discourse. Methodist belief and practice attracted its share of negative press, and Methodists eagerly (and publically) responded to their critics; and the controversy generated by the revival ensured that Methodism would be conditioned by textual and rhetorical processes, whether in published polemic and apologia, or in private diaries and letters as Methodists navigated the complexities of their spiritual lives and anti-Methodist efforts to undermine their faith. While it may seem obvious to conclude that a controversial movement would be shaped by controversy, Textual Warfare examines the specific ways Methodist belief, practice, and self-understanding were filtered through the anti-Methodist critique; the particular historic and cultural conditions that informed this process; and the overwhelming extent to which Methodism in the eighteenth century was mediated by texts and rhetorical exchange. The proliferation of print media and the relative freedom of the press in the eighteenth century; the extent to which society generally and Methodism specifically promoted literacy; and a cultural sensibility predisposed to open debate on matters of public interest, ensured the development of a public sphere in which individuals came together to deliberate, in conversation and in print, on a range of issues relevant to the larger community. It was within this sphere that Methodist religiosity, including the intensely private nature of spiritual conversion, became matters of civic concern on an unprecedented scale and that Methodism ultimately took its form.

John Wesley and George Whitefield are remembered as founders of Methodism, one of the most influential movements in the history of modern Christianity. Characterized by open-air and itinerant preaching, eighteenth-century Methodism was a divisive phenomenon, which attracted a torrent of printed opposition, especially from Anglican clergymen. Yet, most of these opponents have been virtually forgotten. Anti-Methodism and Theological Controversy in Eighteenth-Century England is the first large-scale examination of the theological ideas of early anti-Methodist authors. By illuminating a very different perspective on Methodism, Simon Lewis provides a fundamental reappraisal of the eighteenth-century Church of England and its doctrinal priorities. For anti-Methodist authors, attacking Wesley and Whitefield was part of a wider defence of 'true religion', which demonstrates the theological vitality of the much-derided Georgian Church. This book, therefore, places Methodism firmly in its contemporary theological context, as part of the Church of England's continuing struggle to define itself theologically.

Linking the decline in Church authority in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries with the increasing respectability of fiction, Carol Stewart provides a new perspective on the rise of the novel. The resulting readings of novels by authors such as Samuel Richardson, Sarah Fielding, Frances Sheridan, Charlotte Lennox, Tobias Smollett, Laurence Sterne, William Godwin, and Jane Austen trace the translation of ethical debate into secular and gendered terms. Stewart argues that the seventeenth-century debate about ethics that divided Latitudinarians and Calvinists found its way into novels of the eighteenth century. Her book explores the growing belief that novels could do the work of moral reform more effectively than the Anglican Church, with attention to related developments, including the promulgation of Anglican ethics in novels as a response to challenges to Anglican practice and authority. An increasingly legitimate genre, she argues, offered a forum both for investigating the situation of women and challenging patriarchal authority, and for challenging the dominant political ideology.

In these days, when satire is a fashionable form of rhetoric, no book could make more fascinating reading than this. By comparison with the satire revealed in this book, the modern variety seems pale and mild. Methodism Mocked examines the hostile literary reaction expressed in satire to Methodism and the Methodist leaders, John Wesley and George Whitefield, in the eighteenth century. It considers the basis for satiric attacks on such Methodist practices as field preaching and hymn-singing and on the theological doctrines emphasized by the Methodists, particularly justification by faith and perfection. By considering the attacks on Methodism in terms of eighteenth-century religious thought and literary practice, Methodism Mocked makes comprehensible a reaction long considered as only spiteful and malicious.