A Zealous (but Respected) Adversary: John Lewis's Correspondence with John Wesley

This article contains annotated transcriptions of several previously unknown letters between John Wesley and Revd John Lewis of Holt, Wiltshire, in the mid-1740s. Holt's letters articulate the concerns of a typical Anglican parish priest about irregular ecclesial practices and some doctrinal emphases of the Methodist revival. Wesley's responses contain his most frank (or pessimistic) evaluation of Anglican clergy—that two thirds of those he has known are ‘blind leaders of the blind, dumb dogs that cannot bark, priests of Baal rather than God’. Together the letters provide an instructive window into the reception of early Methodism.