by
Richard B. Steele¹

The recent publication of Michael Crawford’s monograph, Seasons of Grace,² should be a welcome event for students of eighteenth century religious history. Crawford analyzes with unprecedented thoroughness the reciprocal influences among the various religious revivals that erupted in Great Britain and her American Colonies during the 1730s and ‘40s,³ and shows how these revivals not only affected each other, but also how they affected and were affected by the social, political, ecclesiastical, and spiritual conditions of North Atlantic British culture during that period. Further, he demonstrates their enduring influence upon English, Scottish, and North American evangelicalism.

One of Crawford’s more suggestive—but I think ultimately unsatisfactory — claims is that by the year 1742 two quite distinct "models" of revivalism had emerged within the Anglo-American evangelical communions, one epitomized by the American Puritan pastor-theologian, Jonathan Edwards, and other by the itinerant Anglican orator, George Whitefield.⁴ Although Crawford’s differentiation between Edwardsian and Whitefieldian revivalism is illuminating, it seems to me that at least two other well-articulated approaches to religious "awakening" were operating in Great Britain and its American colonies by 1742, namely those developed by Nicholas von Zinzendorf and John Wesley respectively.

There were, of course, many family resemblances among the doctrines and practices espoused by these four evangelists, and indeed, a certain amount of borrowing back and forth among them. But Zinzendorf’s approach to evangelism was so different from those of Edwards and White-field, and his impact on Anglo-American religious life in the late 1730s and early ‘40s so considerable, that its omission from Crawford’s typology is egregious.⁵ Moreover, Crawford is mistaken in regarding Wesleyan Methodism as a mere variant of the Whitefieldian brand, for this both ignores Wesley’s deep indebtedness to Edwards and Zinzendorf and obliterates the originality and distinctiveness of Wesley’s own achievements.

My intent is to try to refine Crawford’s typology by showing that there were at least four distinct "models" of revivalism operating in Great Britain and America in the mid-eighteenth century. I shall begin by summarizing the two that Crawford proposes, amplifying his pictures with material from other sources. Then I will discuss briefly Zinzendorf’s model. Against this background, I then will chronicle the development of Wesley’s "hybrid" model, arguing that while he unabashedly appropriated elements from the other three, he also introduced some novelties of his own, and ultimately forged a synthesis that was far more than the sum of its parts. To delineate the similarities and differences between these four models, I will consider each evangelist’s understanding of the preacher’s office, his views on the role of religion (and/or church) in society, the literary genres he favored for publicizing and defending his work, and his methods of organizing and providing spiritual nurture for his converts.

The model of revivalism enunciated by Edwards presupposed the social structures of the typical Colonial New England town. The political, economic, and religious life of most Yankee communities was focused "inward," on the "commons" or town square. In the square stood the parish church, the town hall, and various shops and cottage industries. Privately owned farmlands and orchards, as well as public pasturage, were located on the outskirts. Even many of the community’s agricultural folk lived "in town." Commerce and trade grew steadily during the eighteenth century, and efficient means of transportation and communication were evolving. These developments ultimately broke down the isolation and parochialism of Puritan days. Nevertheless, many towns still were—or at least still thought of themselves as being—largely self-sufficient and autonomous, and so did their fiercely independent Congregationalist churches.

It was in and for this kind of society that Edwardsian revivalism was developed. Such revivalism was aimed at...

Such community-based revivals typically unfolded according to a standard pattern. At first there were stirrings of conscience among the members of the local church, often in response to the "preaching up" of traditional Calvinist doctrines by the pastor. Then followed a phase of several weeks or months when there was a dramatic increase in attendance at worship services, prayer meetings, songfests, etc. This phase typically was marked by a flood of conversions and a "visible" improvement in the morals and general esprit of the community.⁷ Eventually a third phase set in, during which the fervor abated and business gradually returned to usual, although the post-revival community was expected to show a net gain in godliness. This was often enforced by the passage of "blue laws."

The literary genre most often used to report such community-based religious awakenings was the revival narrative, a form perfected by Edwards in a book whose title precisely illustrates the sociological presuppositions of his evangelistic method: A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton, and the Neighboring Towns and Villages of the County of Hampshire, in the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay, in New England. In this work, local color, civic pride, and religious enthusiasm were delicately interwoven, and abundant practical advice was ingenuously dispensed on how to stage similar extravaganzas elsewhere. The revival methods developed at Northampton were put into practice in towns throughout New England and Scotland in the next decade, and the Faithfiil Narrative was, like all best-sellers in religion, breathlessly imitated by a host of lesser literary lights among the clergy.⁸

The second model for revivals which Crawford describes was developed by George Whitefield. According to Crawford:

If Edwards could still trade on the cohesiveness and self-sufficiency of the Yankee village for his revivals, Whitefield capitalized on the dramatic changes that were gradually reshaping North Atlantic society. The rigid, sometimes oppressive, social world of agrarian feudalism, in which everyone’s "place" was fixed by law and custom, was steadily giving way to the restless, contentious world of mercantilism and open-franchise democracy. As Harry Stout observes:

In such a context, religious revivals aimed not to reform the village or revitalize the parish, but to appeal to the increasingly rootless and dispossessed "masses," many of whom had no connection with any local church. Meetings were advertised well in advance—through word of mouth, in the newspapers, on broadsides, and by supportive local clergy. They were held where vast crowds could be assembled and where the orator’s homiletical histrionics could be displayed to full effect,¹¹ i.e., in fields, town squares, natural amphitheaters or huge, barn-like "tabernacles" constructed for the occasion.

The literary genre that proved most serviceable for Whitefieldian revivalism (and also, be it noted, for the Wesleyan variety) was the published journal.¹² Similar in some ways to conventional religious autobiographies and to the Edwardsian revival narrative, the evangelist’s journal nevertheless differed significantly from both.¹³ It had the exoticism of a foreign travelogue, the didacticism of an apologetic tract and, best of all, the edifying tone of a miracle story. By expressing (or at least by affecting) astonishment over what God had wrought, the evangelist could wrap the most brazen self-display in the mantle of humility and devotion.

But the very strength of Whitefield’s model of revivalism was also its weakness. It appealed to people who were either bored with the predictable parish routine or entirely alienated from religious and civic institutions, but it largely failed to provide them with follow-up spiritual nurture after the spiritual event. In America and Scotland, where the established churches shared his Calvinistic doctrinal convictions, Whitefield could depend on the local clergy to reap where he had sown—and often they were glad to oblige.¹⁴ In England, where the state church was often hostile to his doctrines and methods, he established a "connexion" of societies under the patronage of the Countess of Huntingdon. But organizational skill was not Whitefield’s specialty. "My brother Wesley acted wisely," he observed with a mixture of sadness and envy. "The souls that were awakened under his ministry he joined in class and thus preserved the fruits of his labors. This I neglected and my people are a rope of sand."¹⁵ After his death, most of "his people" joined Dissenting churches.

In short, Whitefieldian revivalism emerged at a time when the "private self" was coming into its own. The religio-political turmoil of the previous century had dealt the death blow to the Elizabethan notion that Britain was a "Christian commonwealth," i.e., a nation whose entire populous belonged (at least in theory) to a single state church. The Act of Toleration had made religious pluralism an accepted fact of British life, and thereby abolished the idea that people’s religious identity was part of their birthright as citizens of the state. Whitefield insisted, to the contrary, that it could and should be determined by their personal experiences and decisions; that it was, so to speak, a matter of re-birthright. And he was a master at evoking such life-changing "religious experiences" and appealing for the "personal decisions" which he said were so necessary. But he was less successful at providing his converts with a sense of place in the world, at organizing them into cells for the cultivation of their spiritual life and the practice of Christian discipleship. Almost everything of this sort that did exist was modest in scope, brief in duration, and run by some enterprising local leader, not by the evangelist himself.

If communitarianism was simply taken for granted in Edwardsian revivalism by the very nature of the New England town, and almost entirely neglected in Whitefieldian revivalism, with its appeal to the new "private individual" of the early industrial revolution, it was the central aim of the model to which we now turn, the one developed by Nicholas von Zinzendorf, the leader of the Moravian Brethren.

The Moravians traced their lineage back to Jan Hus, a forerunner of the Reformation who was executed for heresy at the Council of Constance in 1415. Forced underground, his followers maintained a precarious and shadowy existence in eastern Europe for the next three centuries. in 1722, several bands fled from the harassment to which the Czech authorities were then subjecting them. They emigrated to Saxony, where they were given refuge on the estates of Count Zinzendorf. Himself an ardent Hallensian Pietist,¹⁶ the Count nevertheless respected the Hussites’ ancestral customs. When in 1727 he refounded their church under the name of the Renewed Unity of the Brethren, the result was a curious blend of the tenacity and reclusiveness of the ancient and persecuted Czech Brethren and the introspectiveness and emotionalism of Lutheran Pietism.

Compared with the evangelistic methods of Whitefield and Edwards, those of Zinzendorf hardly seem "revivalistic" at all. He shared their profound Christocentric devotionalism and their insistence on the necessity of the "New Birth" and "heart religion." But his way was less one of "outreach" than of "ingathering." He understood evangelism as the work, not of itinerant superstars like. Whitefield, but of Christian communities living and supporting themselves in their field of mission.¹⁷ The social, political, and economic life of these communities (which were further subdivided into classes, bands, and choirs) was minutely regulated according to the religious goals of the sect, sometimes to the detriment of their members’ economic prosperity and personal happiness. Mission minded the Moravians certainly were,¹⁸ and to some extent this offset the spiritual clannishness to which they were prone.¹⁹ But the nurture of the community was itself understood to be an indispensable feature of gospel proclamation. In a sermon titled, "Concerning the Proper Purpose of the Preaching of the Gospel," delivered (in German) at the Fetter Lane Society of London in 1746, Zinzendorf stated:

Thus, whereas small groups for mutual spiritual edification played a relatively minor role in Edwardsian and Whitefieldian evangelicalism, and no economic or social reorganization was contemplated in the towns that experienced their revivals, Moravian communities were expressly organized to facilitate religious devotion among their members, to provide financial support for those directly engaged in mission work, and to offer tangible evidence of what the corporate Christian life should be.

Regrettably, the introversion of Moravian life and the subjectivism of Moravian piety led eventually to bizarre excesses. During the so-called "Sifting Period," which spanned the years from 1738 to 1750 (and therefore coincided with the Great Awakening and the early Methodist Revival), the Moravians were decidedly self-absorbed. They fondly referred to Jesus as "Brother Lambkin," to Zinzendorf as "der Herzens Papa" (Heart’s Daddy), and to themselves as "little fools," "little blood worms in the sea of grace," and "little bees who suck on the wounds of Christ [and] who feel at home in the Sidehole and crawl in deep."²¹

The Moravian literature of this period reflects their inward-looking piety. Diaries and letters proliferated, some by individuals about their own religious experiences, others by community leaders about the spiritual and temporal affairs of their settlements and small groups. Hymns, litanies, sermons, catechisms, and liturgical rites, often composed in an effusively precious and sanguinary style, were typical. Sentimentality was often taken for sanctity, emotional intensity equated with spiritual integrity, and bridal mysticism confused with faith.

Despite this morbid enthusiasm, Zinzendorf clearly understood the importance of organizing his followers into cell groups—and indeed, into thriving theocratic communities—for corporate spiritual nurture. He could thus provide them with an experience, not only of "regeneration" in Christ, but of intimate fellowship with other Christians—something that was disappearing from the free-market, open-franchise society that was emerging in North Atlantic society, and something that the Edwardsian and Whitefieldian revivals could only partially restore.

In view of Michael Crawford’s stated objective to describe "Colonial New England’s revival tradition, in its British Context," he might be forgiven for overlooking Zinzendorf, whose methods for "awakening" the spiritually somnolent were hardly "revivalistic" (as that term is now generally understood) and whose followers made little headway into New England. But Zinzendorf and his followers had a profound impact on England and the Middle Atlantic Colonies during the 1730s and ‘40s, and were crucial in propelling Wesley to work out his model of revivalism. As I shall now try to show, Wesley’s model was so different from those of Edwards, Whitefield, and Zinzendorf—though it borrowed elements from each—that it must be accorded the status of a separate, though hybrid, type. Moreover, its results on both sides of the Atlantic have proven far more enduring than any of the others. To describe both the genesis and the genius of Wesley’s model, I will chronicle some of the major events in his life during the 1730s and ‘40s, adding some theological commentary.²²

It is well known that John and Charles Wesley and two of their fellow Oxford Methodists traveled from England to Savannah, Georgia in 1735 in order to serve the spiritual needs of the English colonists, provide administrative assistance to General Oglethorpe, and serve as missionaries to the Indians. They blundered badly in these tasks and all four of them retreated to England by early 1738. But during their stay, they came into contact with a group of Moravian settlers under the leadership of Augustus Spangenberg. Moreover, after Wesley’s return to England he promptly made contact with the Brethren society in London, led by Peter Bohler. Now Spangenberg and Bohler radiated that admirable combination of evangelical zeal, human warmth, and sober practicality that marks the Moravian spirit at its best, and were notably free of the sentimental mysticism into which their church was beginning to slide. Under their guidance, Wesley came to see the poverty of his own spiritual state and was propelled toward his famous ‘"Aldersgate Experience" of May 24, 1738, when he received the assurance of God’s love.²³

One might have expected Wesley to align himself thereafter with the Moravians, or at least to copy their model of inward-looking piety. But this is precisely what did not happen. Less than a month after Aldersgate, John Wesley left England to visit several Moravian settlements in Germany. Though evidently pleased to meet Zinzendorf and impressed by the fraternal love among the residents of these communities, he was troubled by the paternalistic autocracy of the Count and the secrecy and spiritual smugness of his followers. Shortly after returning to London in September, he penned (but apparently never posted) a letter to the Brethren that indicates his growing ambivalence:

This letter says as much about Wesley as it does about the Moravians. He had come both to admire the intimacy of their community life and to fear their spiritual elitism. As we shall see, his own emerging model of revivalism would be aimed at cultivating the former without lapsing into the latter.

In the wake of Aldersgate, Wesley came to believe that God’s grace is free for all who will receive it. On September 17, 1738, Wesley "began again to declare in my own country the glad tidings of salvation. . . to a large company" in London, and on the following day he "went to the condemned felons in Newgate and offered them free salvation."²⁵ This new doctrine of "free salvation" would eventually embroil him in controversy with the Calvinists, who believed that Christ’s atoning work was applicable only to the elect. But at this point it was apparently the ecclesiological exclusivism of the Moravians, rather than the soteriological exclusivism of the Calvinists, to which Wesley was objecting. He needed what might be called a "centrifugal" model of evangelism for his message of God’s free grace, in contrast to the "centripetal" approach of the Moravians.

This he found three weeks later in a book by Jonathan Edwards. For he tells us that on Monday, October 9, while hiking from London to Oxford...

The book that Wesley read and abridged was, of course, Edwards’ Faithful Narrative, and as Albert Outler observes, the spiritual crisis which reading it precipitated in him "ranks with Aldersgate in importance if not in drama."²⁷ It induced him to make a thorough self-examination, the results of which were far-reaching both for his personal piety and for his evangelical methodology.

Wesley does not slavishly reiterate Edwards’ ideas, but uses them as a point of departure for his own meditation on the characteristics of the regenerate. He lists five aspects of one’s "new life in Christ": (1) new judgments of oneself and of what makes for true happiness and holiness; (2) new purposes in life; (3) new desires, passions, and inclinations; (4) a new manner of personal comportment in one’s dealings with others; and (5) new actions which either "spring from, or lead to, the love of God and man." This list is reminiscent of the Puritan autobiographies and conversion narratives with which both Edwards and Wesley were familiar. The sober introspection avoids the illuminism and sentimentality then popular among the Moravians, and the ethical rigorism is typical of British Calvinism.

But did Wesley think that he actually possessed these five characteristics of regeneration at that point?

So Outler is correct. Just as hearing Luther’s "Preface to Romans" at Aldersgate in May had facilitated Wesley’s experience of renewal, reading Edwards’ Faithful Narrative during the Oxford excursion in October equipped him with the conceptual tools for diagnosing that experience.

But we are less concerned here with Wesley’s personal piety than with his evangelistic methodology,²⁹ and it would exceed the evidence provided by this Journal entry alone to suppose that Wesley immediately repudiated Moravian exclusivism in favor of the Edwardsian—or for that matter the Whitefieldian—approach to revival. What can be said is that from this point forward, Wesley grew both increasingly disenchanted with the Brethren and increasingly attracted to the methods, if not the doctrines, of the two Calvinist evangelists. A brief discussion of his contacts with them in the years which followed will demonstrate this.

In December, 1738, Whitefield returned from his first journey to America. His dramatic success there stood in sharp contrast to Wesley’s dismal failure, but Wesley bore him no grudges. They collaborated amicably during the following year, until Whitefield left again for America. It was during this period that Whitefield first experimented with field-preaching and bade the reluctant Wesley .to follow suit. This practice, of course, would become the stock-in-trade for both Methodist itinerants.

Yet it was also during this period that their dispute over the doctrine of predestination first erupted. Wesley had come to reject the Calvinist view that while God commands the church to call everyone, He intends to save only a few.³⁰ In his programmatic sermon called "Free Grace" and first preached on April 29, 1739, Wesley agreed with the Calvinists that an absolute difference exists between the natural and regenerate states, but he denied that God has unalterably assigned each person to one or the other. He saw no way to offer salvation to sinners without assuming that they possessed the freedom to accept or reject that offer. Whitefield, on the other hand, saw no way to grant them that theoretical freedom of choice without implying that they deserved credit for their own salvation. One passage from "Free Grace" is particularly instructive for our purposes:

It is important to note that Wesley’s rejection of double predestination is in no way rooted in a bland humanitarianism that makes conversion unnecessary, and good works sufficient, for salvation. On the contrary, it is based on his belief that human beings are naturally depraved and that each person’s salvation depends upon the exercise of faith in Jesus Christ. This far Wesley was in complete agreement with the Calvinists. Where he differed was in asserting that each person must decide whether or not to believe in Christ. That is, he denied that God foreordains anyone’s salvation. The significance of this fact for our purposes is evident. It shows the clear advantage that Wesleyan Arminianism had over Whitefieldian Calvinism for people who were increasingly feeling that "the private self [is] the repository of spiritual experience," namely that it made their choice to believe the Gospel, rather than God’s act of electing them, decisive for their ultimate destiny.

Whitefield had rightly seen that the private self needed "religious experience," but his theology left that self essentially passive. Wesley took the step that the logic of evangelicalism in that social world demanded: he made the private self fully responsible for its acceptance or rejection of divine grace. He extended the domain of human moral agency in matters of the spirit, just as the Whigs were expanding the influence of the middle classes in national politics and as the venture capitalists were developing new products and breaking into new overseas markets. Evangelical Arminianism proved to be an attractive theological option for "the nation of shopkeepers."

Despite Whitefield’s protests, Wesley published "Free Grace," though he tactfully (or guilefully) waited until after Whitefield had sailed for Philadelphia (early August, 1739) before doing so. When Whitefield later learned that Wesley had publicly avowed Arminianism, he launched a volley of public and private letters of protest, to which Wesley replied in kind. Their friendship was sorely strained for three years. But by late 1742, peace between them had been restored. For, in spite of their doctrinal differences, Wesley and Whitefield had a deep personal regard for one another and employed many of the same evangelistic methods (e.g., itinerant field preaching, extemporaneous prayer, the publication of journals, etc.).

Perhaps more importantly, they shared certain fundamental religious sensibilities. Both preferred the staunch biblicism and rigorous work ethic of the Puritan tradition to the illuminism and quietism then growing among the Moravians. Both accepted the Calvinist notion of "progressive sanctification" (although Wesley’s twist on it, his famous doctrine of Christian perfection, was anathema to those like Whitefield who thought sin ineradicable in this life). And both were convinced that the Church of England would never be "awakened" by its lordly bishops and comfortable vicars. Extraordinary methods were needed, and Wesley readily acknowledged that for more than two centuries it had been the Calvinists who had provided most of the "evangelical" impetus in British Christianity.³²

This is especially evident in the heavy use he made of the devotional and ethical writings of Puritan and Dissenting divines—suitably amended by himself, of course! We saw above how deeply affected Wesley had been by Edwards’ Faithful Narrative. His abridgment of this work was published in 1744, and over the next thirty years he published shortened versions of four more of Edwards’ revival treatises, namely The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion iii New England, The Life of David Brainerd, and A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections. The appearance of these abridgments—and their frequent reprinting, right up to the twentieth century, on both sides of the Atlantic, and often by publishing houses affiliated with various Wesleyan denominations—indicates the great extent to which the Edwardsian theory and methods of revivalism influenced Wesley and the whole course of British-American evangelicalism.³³ Moreover, between 1749 and 1755 Wesley brought out his mammoth Christian Library, which, as its subtitle indicates, consisted "of extracts from and abridgments of the choicest pieces of practical divinity which have been published in the English tongue."³⁴ Most of the featured authors were British Dissenters.

But, although Wesley’s affinities for the British nonconformist tradition were deep enough to immunize him against Moravian quietism, he could not abide the supralapsarian Calvinism to which many of them subscribed. Indeed, he was opposed in principle to all religious dogmaticism, and sought to honor and publicize the personal sanctity and spiritual insights of Christians from all periods of church history and all positions on the theological spectrum. Thus he also featured in his Christian Library selections from the Apostolic Fathers, several Catholic mystics, and various Anglican divines. Moreover, he and his brother published several hymnals in the late l730s and early ‘40s that included translations or adaptations of poetry from such diverse sources as the Moravians, various continental Catholic ascetical writers, and the British metaphysical poet, George Herbert. Thus, while Wesley’s theology can probably be classified as "Reformed" in the broadest sense, it was certainly not Calvinistic, and quite self-consciously (if not always self-consistently) borrowed elements from many sources.

Indeed, it seems not entirely whimsical to suggest that the distinctive literary genre of Wesleyan revivalism was precisely the digest. Wesley purloined and blue-penciled the revival narratives of Edwards and the christocentric hymns of Zinzendorf, imitated the journals of Whitefield, and expurgated dozens of other writers of "practical divinity." And this was not simply because he happened to have an editor’s fondness for trimming other people’s copy. His habit of culling and condensing material from diverse sources was an expression of his "catholic spirit," his fundamental theological conviction that God’s Spirit has been active in the Church all ages and places. His distaste for sectarian wrangling, pedantic disputation and speculative abstraction bade him to cut; but his intuitive appreciation for holy living bade him to keep. As he says in the preface to the Christian Library:

Thus, in contrast to Michael Crawford, who appears to regard Wesleyan Methodism as a mere variant of the Whitefieldian model on the grounds that the former borrowed so much from the latter, I maintain that Wesley drew so much from so many different sources that he cannot be said to have called any man father. His eclecticism was his originality. His methodology of revival was a hybrid, a synthesis of many divergent approaches that was nevertheless greater than the sum of its constituent parts.

Let us now summarize the Wesleyan hybrid: From Edwards he borrowed his spiritual diagnostics and learned the value of the revival narrative and the spiritual autobiography for promoting the work. But Edwardsian revivals were meant to be staged by and for the citizens of a town and led by its settled pastor. Under the circumstances of mid-eighteenth century British society, Wesley could not rest content with this.³⁵ Hence he turned to Whitefield, who showed that an evangelist could be most effective as an itinerant, preaching wherever he could gain an audience and often in the face of opposition from the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. Wesley also learned from Whitefield the value of publishing his journals for propagandistic and apologetic purposes. And from Whitefield and Edwards alike, Wesley learned that preaching had to animate the affections if it was to galvanize the will for holy living. But against the two great Calvinists, Wesley realized that in the world of growing free-market capitalism, social mobility, and open-franchise democracy (none of which he himself wholeheartedly endorsed!) an evangelist had to respect the right and ability of private individuals to make their own moral and religious decisions. Hence the power—and the staying-power—of his Arminian doctrinal position, which has, in the intervening centuries, largely supplanted high Calvinism among English and American Evangelicals.

Finally, Wesley learned from Zinzendorf that in an increasingly depersonalized world, many people still crave genuine community, even if few are willing to surrender their individualism and autonomy to the kind of theocracy and "general economy" found in the early Moravian settlements. Hence he imitated the Brethren in subdividing his societies into bands and classes for the purpose of nurturing the piety and supervising the morals of his followers, but never tried to organize them into socially exclusive and economically self-sufficient colonies.

¹An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the New England Historical Association on October 17, 1992 in Providence, RI. I wish to express my thanks to Dr. Charles L. Cohen for his judicious criticisms of that version, most of which have been incorporated below. A revised version was delivered at the annual meeting of the Midwest American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies on October 14, 1994 in Normal, IL. The present redaction differs only slightly from the second.

²Michael Crawford. Seasons of Grace: Colonial New England’s Revival Tradition in Its British Context (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

³For a briefer treatment, see my "Gracious Affection" and "True Virtue" According to Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley (Metuchen, Í .J.: Scarecrow Press, 1994), ch. 4.

⁴Crawford, op. cit., 165.

⁵Crawford makes no direct reference to Zinzendorf at all, despite the Count’s visits to London in 1737 and 1746 and to Pennsylvania in 1741, visits which had the effect of considerably strengthening the Moravian presence in Great Britain and America. Crawford does make a few sporadic references to the Moravians, but accords them no extended treatment. This may be forgivable in view of Crawford’s stated objective, which is to explore "Colonial New England’s revival tradition in its British context." The Brethren, though interested in religious "awakening," were hardly "revivalists," and they never made much headway in New England. Yet the influence they had upon Anglo-American evangelicalism—or perhaps we should say, the rivalry that many Anglo-American evangelicals resented them for posing—cannot be overlooked. Consider, for example, the following facts: Wesley’s early disciple, Benjamin Ingham, later broke with his mentor, became a popular independent evangelist in Yorkshire, and ultimately turned his societies over to the Moravians in 1741 (though without joining them himself). (See Clifford W. Towlson, Moravian and Methodist: Relationships and Influences in the Eighteenth Century [London: The Epworth Press, 1957], 133, 256; and John R. Weinlick, Count Zinzendorf [New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1956], 142-143). Another Oxford Methodist, John Gambold, ultimately became the first bishop of the English Moravian Church (See Towlson, op. cit., 245-255). From the German side, Henry Melchior Mühlenberg was sent in 1742 by the Pietists of Halle to check the spread of Moravian influence among the German settlers in Pennsylvania. (See Weinlick, op. cit., 162-169.) And David Brainerd, a colleague of Edwards and a missionary to the Indians of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, feared Moravian influence among his flock in the mid-1740s. (See Norman Pettit, "Editor’s Introduction" to Jonathan Edwards, The Life of David Brainerd, Vol. 7 in The Works of Jonathan Edwards [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985], 30-32.)

⁶Crawford, op. cit., 165.

⁷Cf. Edmund S. Morgan, Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea (New York: New York University Press, 1963).

⁸See, for example, James Robe, A Faithful Narrative of the Extraordinary Work of the Spirit of God at Kilsyth and other Congregations in the Neighborhood. . . (Glasgow, 1742); D. Macfarlan, The Revivals of the Eighteenth Century, particularly at Cambuslang ... (Edinburgh: Johnston & Hunter, 1847; reprint ed., Wheaton, IL: Richard Own Roberts, Publishers, 1980); and Joseph Tracy, The Great Awakening: A History of the Revival of Religion in the Time of Edwards and Whitefield (Boston: Charles Tappan, 1841, 1845; reprint ed., New York: Arno Press and The New York Times, 1969).

It should be noted that while Edwards’ Faithful Narrative was unprecedented in its documentation of a New England revival, and unrivaled in its influence upon subsequent American and Scottish revivalism, the Northampton revival of 1734-1735 was by no means the first of its kind. For example, both Solomon Stoddard and Timothy Edwards, Jonathan Edwards’ maternal grandfather and father, respectively, were New England pastors renowned for the revivals they led in their parishes in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

⁹Crawford, op. cit., 165.

¹⁰Harry Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1991), xvi-xvii.

¹¹For an insightful (and very amusing) account of Whitefield’s "theatricality," see Stout, op. cit., pp. xviii-xxiv and chapters 1 and 2.

¹²The first of Whitefield’s published Journals, covering the period between December 28, 1737 and May 7, 1738, was first circulated privately and published without the author’s knowledge in 1738: this was followed later that year by a revised edition published by Whitefield himself. Wesley’s first published Journal covered the period from October 14, 1735 through February 1, 1738, but it was not published until 1740. Thus, while Wesley had been writing copious diaries and journals long before Whitefield started, and continued to do so long after Whitefield stopped, Whitefield was the first Methodist to use this literary genre as a means of evangelistic propaganda.

¹³On the tradition of autobiography before and after Wesley, see W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater, eds., "Introduction" to John Wesley, Journals and Diaries / (1735-1738), Vol. 18 of The Works of John Wesley (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1988), 1-36 and 105-119. See also Patricia Caldwell, The Puritan Conversion Narrative: The Beginnings of American Expression

(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); and Charles Lloyd Cohen, God’s Caress: The Psychology of Puritan Religious Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), chapters 5-8.

Note: The edition of Wesley’s Works referred to above, known as the "Bicentennial Edition," will henceforth be abbreviated as WJW (Bi). Publication information for each volume used will be provided at the time of its first citation.

¹⁴It is worth noting at this point that while the Edwardsian model was indigenous to New England and the Whitefieldian model to old England, both models were used on both sides of the Atlantic. Thus, for example, during his second American tour, Whitefield preached at Northampton at Edwards’ invitation, and conversely, Edwards’ writings were expressly used in designing the community-based revival at Cambuslang, where, again, Whitefield was a featured guest preacher. In other words, the heuristic value of Crawford’s models is not diminished, but rather enhanced, by recognizing that, in any given revival, methods characteristic of different models might be used.

¹⁵Quoted in Stanley Ayling, John Wesley (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1979), 201.

¹⁶That is, he was reared in a home steeped in the methods of Philip Jacob Spener and August Hermann Francke and trained at the universities of Halle and Wittenberg. However, Zinzendorf was always something of a "loose cannon" in the movement and was ultimately repudiated by the Hallensians.

¹⁷For detailed studies of some of these Moravian settlements, see Adelaide L. Fries, The Moravians in Georgia, 1 735-1 740 (Raleigh: n.p., 1905; reprint ed., Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1967); Gillian Lindt Gollin, Moravians In Two Worlds: A Study of Changing Communities (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1967); Jacob John Sessler, Communal Pietism Among Early American Moravians (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1933; reprint ed., New York: AMS Press Inc., 1971).

¹⁸For the dramatic and inspiring story of their evangelistic exploits among oppressed and disenfranchised peoples in European colonies around the globe, see John Taylor Hamilton, A History of the Missions of the Moravian Church, During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Bethlehem, PA: Times Publishing Co., 1901); and J. Taylor Hamilton and Kenneth G. Hamilton, History of the Moravian Church: The Renewed Unitas Fratrum, 1 722-1 957 (Bethlehem, PA and Winston-Salem, NC: Interprovincial Board of Christian Education, Moravian Church in America, 1967).

¹⁹Gollin, op. cit., 18.

²⁰Nicholaus Ludwig Count von Zinzendorf, Nine Public Lectures on Important Subjects in Religion Preached in Fetter Lime Chapel in London in the Year 1746, trans. and ed. George W. Foreli (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1973), 25.

²¹For documentation of these and other such cloying expressions used during the Sifting Period, see Sessler, op. cit., pp. 162-163; and Weinlick, op. cit., 199-200.

²²For a much fuller account, see my "Gracious Affection" and "True Virtue" according to Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley, op. cit., ch. 4.

²³WJW (Bi) 18:214-215, Jan. 29-Feb. 1, 1738. Cf. Sermon No. 2, "The Almost Christian," in Albert Outler, ed., Sermons I, Vol. 1 of WJW (Bi) (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984), 131-141. For a thorough study of the Aldersgate Experience and its meaning for Wesley and his followers, see Randy L. Maddox, ed., Aldersgate Reconsidered (Nashville: Kingswood Books/Abingdon Press, 1990).

²⁴Unfinished and unposted letter to the Moravians at Marienborn and Herrenhut, in The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., ed. John Telford, 8 vols. (London: The Epworth Press, 1931, 1960), 1.257f., dated September, 1738. Cf. Wesley’s open letter "To the Moravian Church, More especially that part of it flow or lately residing in England," dated June 24, 1744, which prefaces An Extract of the Reverend Mr. John Wesley’s Journal, from November 1, 1739 to September 3, 1741 (London: W. Strahan, 1744), in W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater, eds. Journal and Diaries II (1738-1743), Vol. 19 of WJW (Bi) (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990), 116-118.

²⁵WJW(Âi) 19:12.

²⁶WJW (Bi) 19:16, Oct. 9, 1738. Unaccountably, there is no reference to Wesley’s reading of Edwards’ Faithful Narrative on this date in F. M. Jackson, "A Study of John Wesley’s Readings," Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 4 (1904): 17-19, 47-5 1, 74-81, 107-111, 134-140, 173-176, 203-210, 232-238.

²⁷In his editor’s "Introduction" to John Wesley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 15.

²⁸WJW (Bi) 19:19, Oct. 9, 1738.

²⁹It hardly needs to be said that these cannot be neatly separated from one another.

³⁰See, e.g., WJW (Bi) 19:5 1, Apr. 26, 1739.

³¹John Wesley, Sermons ‘: 1-33, Vol. 3 of WJW (Bi), ed. Albert C. Outler (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984), 55 1-552.

³²Wesley’s debts to and affinities for English Puritanism have been thoroughly documented by George Croft Cell, The Rediscovery of John Wesley (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1935); and Robert C. Monk, John Wesley: His Puritan Heritage. A Study of the Christian Life (Nashville & New York: Abingdon Press, 1966; reprint ed., London: Epworth Press, 1967). For a fine account of Wesley’s battles with the hyper-Calvinists in the 1770s, see W. Stephen Gunter, The Limits of ‘Love Divine’: John Wesley’s Response to Antinomianism and Enthusiasm (Nashville: Kingswood Books/Abingdon Press, 1989).

It is important to note that not all eighteenth century English Calvinists were technically Dissenters. In addition to the likes of Whitefield, there was a small but active band of a non-revivalistic evangelical Anglican clergy. See G. C. Â. Davies, The Cornish Evangelicals, 1735-1760: A Study of Walker of Truro and Others (London: S.P.C.K., 1951). Conversely, not all Dissenters were strict Calvinists. Philip Doddridge and Isaac Watts, for example, staked out a position that was in many ways closer to Wesley’s "evangelical Arminianism" than the vitriolic double predestinarianism of their colleague, Augustus Toplady.

³³The publication dates of Edwards’ originals and Wesley’s abridgments are as follows: Distinguishing Marks: 1741/1744; Some Thoughts: 1743/1745; Religious Affections: 1746/1773; and Life of Brainerd: 1749/1768. For a detailed account of the publication histories of these treatises and the Wesley abridgments, as well as an analysis of Wesley’s redactional principles as applied to Edwards, see my "Gracious Affection" and "True Virtue" According to Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley, op. cit., ch. 5.

³⁴First ed., 50 [duodecimo] vols. (Bristol: Felix Farley, 1749-1755); 2nd ed., 30 [octavo] vols. (vols. 1-18, London: T. Cordeaux, 1819-1824; vols. 19-30, London: J. Kershaw, 1825-1827). The contents of the two editions are substantially the same, although the 2nd ed. does contain some material not included in the 1st, most notably four of the five revival treatises by Edwards that Wesley abridged.

³⁵However, the continuing popularity of Wesley’s abridgments of Edwards’ revival treatises into the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries suggests that when Methodism itself became virtually the "established church" in the American South and Midwest, the community-based paradigm gained a greater pertinence than it had in mid-eighteenth century England.

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