On 27 October 1754 the Presbyterian minister Samuel Davies, while visiting London to raise subscriptions for the College of New Jersey, later known as Princeton, met John and Charles Wesley and recorded his opinion that ‘the despised Methodists, with all their Foibles, seem to me to have more of the Spirit of Religion than any Set of People in this Island’. Davies, who became president of the College in 1759, did not enlarge upon these ‘Foibles’, but their relentless exposure before a critical and often hostile English reading public helps to explain the bitterly controversial circumstances in which Methodism had struggled during its formative years in the 1730s and 1740s, and of which Davies became well aware. The nature of attacks on early Methodism, together with responses from its sympathizers, form the subject of Simon Lewis’s excellent book. Dr Lewis brings to his tasks the impressive credentials of a much-admired...
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