John Wesley lived by the Bible, even using it when
making difficult decisions. (See last week's blog entry). He claimed to be a
man of one book: the Bible. But in fact he was a man of many books. His
devotion to scripture did not prevent him from reading a wide range of authors
on a great variety of subjects: history, medicine, natural science, grammar,
and devotional literature. Wesley knew how to learn from others and achieved much
learning through reading. He wanted to pass on this knowledge to others, and to
that end he published a number of extracts from many of the 17th and
18th century’s best devotional writers.
Although it never had the success of many of his
other writings, Wesley put together what he considered the ideal Methodist
lifetime reading program. The fifty-volume Christian Library, with the subtitle, “Extracts from the Abridgements
of the Choicest Pieces of Practical Divinity. . . .” (Pictured to the right is a complete set in the library at Southern Methodist University.)
This collection consists of John Wesley’s heavily
abridged anthology of mostly English Christian classics of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, including works by Jeremy Taylor (vol. 21) and Richard
Baxter (vol. 37). As he “extracted” the works of his favorite authors,
preserving roughly one page out of every fifty pages of original text, Wesley
was careful to edit out any hint of the doctrine of predestination so as to
emphasize what he judged were their most important contributions to the common
thread of Christian piety.
The selections show Wesley’s bend towards piety over
strict theological treatises. He included sermons from many of the well-known
clerics of the previous generations, including his maternal grandfather, Dr.
Annesley. Also prominent was John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, up to two-and-a-
half volumes (vol. 2, 3 and 4). The
first edition was published from 1749-1755. One can find all 50 vols. on line at http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/a-christian-library-by-john-wesley/
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