John Wesley

In 1751, at the age of forty-eight, Wesley married Mary Vazeille, a well-to-do widow with four children from her previous marriage. However, Wesley was too busy with his work to pay much attention to his wife. Unable to cope, she left him for good after a few years.

Wesley died in his bed on 2 March 1791. He was then eighty-seven years old. As his friends gathered around his death bed he bid them farewell and then said "The best of all is, God is with us", repeating the words several times and then died peacefully.

Later he was entombed at Wesley's Chapel, built in City Road, London. Wesleyanism, or Wesleyan theology, which refers to the theological system, inferred from his various sermons, theological treatises, letters, journals, diaries, hymns carry forward his legacy.

John Wesley was born on 28 June 1703, in Epworth, near Lincoln. His father, Samuel Wesley, was a clergyman belonging to the Church of England. His mother, Susanna Wesley (née Annesley), was a devout woman, who took care to inject moral values into her children.

The couple had nineteen children, out of which John was born fifteenth. The siblings, including the girls, were not only taught to read and write English, but were also expected to become skilled in Latin and Greek and learn major parts of the New Testament by heart.

On 9 February 1709, the roof of their home caught fire while they were all sleeping. Although his parents could evacuate his siblings, John was caught in the first floor, with no scope for escape. Ultimately, a parishioner, standing on a human-ladder, pulled him out through the window.

The memory of the fire remained with him forever. In later years, he often quoted the famous text from Bible, 'A Brand Plucked out of the Fire', to describe the incident.

In 1714, as he turned eleven, John Wesley was sent to the Charterhouse School in London. He graduated from there in 1720 and entered Christ Church, Oxford, on scholarship with classics and logic.

In 1727, Wesley started his career as a curate in his father’s parish. Although he was ordained as a priest on 22 September 1728 he continued serving as the curate till November 1729.

Thereafter, he returned to Oxford at the request of the Rector of Lincoln College and took up his position as a junior fellow. He mainly taught Greek Testament. Although he enjoyed the rich social life at Oxford he also began to delve deeper into religion.

Around this time, his younger brother, Charles Wesley, also a student at Oxford, started an association of like-minded individuals who met on regular basis to read and study scriptures and also to undergo rigorous self-examination. In addition, they took part in charity and visited the prison regularly.

Very soon, John Wesley took up the leadership of the group. In the beginning their detractors referred to them as ‘The Holy Club’. However from 1732, they began to be referred to as the Methodists because they followed a rigorous method and tried to ensure that each hour was used wisely.

This also had an adverse effect on his career. The authorities as well as the guardians began to fear that he was trying to indoctrinate the students. His father asked him to take charge of his parish; but Wesley refused the offer.

John Wesley, along with his brother Charles and George Whitefield laid the foundation of the Methodist movement within Protestant Christianity. Vigorous missionary work ensured that the movement spread throughout the British Empire and the USA. Today there are approximately 80 million adherents worldwide.

It is said that throughout his long career, Wesley had travelled over 250,000 miles and had preached 40,000 sermons across the country, trying to reach out to the poor and downtrodden. He also kept on working on social issues such as prison reform and universal education until his death.