Aldersgate

In February 1738 John Wesley came home from Georgia a failed missionary, asking who would convert him. Fourteen months later he was the most talked-of preacher in England. This is the story of the year between — the months in which a defeated clergyman met a young Moravian named Peter Böhler, argued his way to the brink of a faith he could not yet feel, and, on the evening of the twenty-fourth of May, in a society room in Aldersgate Street, felt his heart strangely warmed.

Aldersgate is the hinge of Methodist memory and the most mythologized moment in Wesley's life. This volume returns it to its setting, following the whole arc the one famous sentence stands for: the long argument with Böhler over whether faith can be given in a moment; the warmed heart and the doubt that came the very next morning; the pilgrimage to the Moravian town of Herrnhut; and the doors of the London churches closing against him one by one.

Includes an editorial introduction on the making and the myth of Aldersgate, a cast of characters, a glossary, and an appendix gathering the view from outside — how the year looked to the Moravians, the Hutton household, and the friends Wesley's new certainty unsettled.