Wesley and the People Called Methodists Quotes

“The new prayer book, The Sunday Service for the Methodists in North America, was Wesley’s abridgement of the Book of Common Prayer. He had wished to improve the prayer book ever since his association with Thomas Deacon and the Manchester nonjurors during his Oxford days when they were trying to pattern liturgy and worship after the Early Church. Wesley’s diary indicates that he also experimented with the order of the service while in Georgia. And when quoting the Psalms, he had almost always used the language of the prayer book Psalter, derived from the early Coverdale text, rather than the Authorized Version (King James). His reverence for the traditional BCP is evident in the way he preserved the tone and much of the text of the work in the Sunday Service.”
― Richard P. Heitzenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodists

“Moreover, Wesley was making increasing numbers of concessions. In 1788, Mr. Clulow, his solicitor, advised him to license all the preaching-houses and traveling preachers under the Conventicle Act, not as dissenters but as “preachers of the gospel.” This decision, though thought to be politically necessary, was legally awkward, in the face of continuing protestation of loyalty to the Church, and therefore the licenses as dissenters were often not granted. Wesley protested one such confusing case to Dr. Tomline, Bishop of Lincoln, the following year: “The Methodists . . . desire a license to worship God after their own conscience. Your Lordship refuses it, and then punishes them for not having a license!” (JWL, 8:224).”
― Richard P. Heitzenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodists

“One attractive, unique feature of the worship services in Georgia was their use of hymns, facilitated by Wesley’s publication of A Collection of Psalms and Hymns in 1737, the first English hymn book published in America. None of the hymns are by Charles, who had not yet been tapped by his poetic muse. These texts, many translated by John from the German, express the heart of a pietism grounded in Scripture and elucidate the themes that are central to Wesley’s spiritual quest—utter dependency upon grace, the centrality of love, and the desire for genuine fire to inflame his cold heart (see Zinzendorf’s bridal song of the soul).”
― Richard P. Heitzenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodists