A Christian Library

Between 1749 and 1755, John Wesley compiled and published A Christian Library: fifty small volumes of extracts from the devotional and practical writings he judged most useful for the formation of Methodist preachers and societies. It was not a scholar's anthology — Wesley pruned, abridged, and occasionally rewrote his sources for a reader with little time and less money, meant to be carried on a circuit and read in pieces.

This edition restores that original shape. Later reprints compressed Wesley's fifty volumes into thirty or fewer; this one follows Wesley's own volume divisions instead, verified one at a time against the 1755 printing. The text is lightly modernized, each work carries an editor's headnote, and — where Wesley traced a connection himself — cross-references to his sermons, Notes, journal, and hymns are marked.

Volumes are published one at a time, in order, as each is finished. A free digital reading edition tracks the same progress at achristianlibrary.org.