John Wesley is
known for two things: co-founding Methodism and his
tremendous work ethic.
In the 1700s, when
land travel was by walking, horseback or carriage,
Wesley logged more than 4,000 miles a year. During his
lifetime he preached about 40,000 sermons.
Wesley could give
today's experts lessons in efficiency. He was a natural
organizer and approached everything diligently,
especially religion. It was at Oxford University in
England that he and his brother Charles participated in
a Christian club in such an orderly manner that critics
called them methodists, a title which they gladly
embraced.
Among his many writings, John Wesley edited and abridged
a number of devotional classics and republished them in
what he called A Christian Library.
These "Extracts from and Abridgments of the Choicest
Pieces of Practical Divinity Which Have Been Published
in the English Tongue," as Wesley subtitled them, were
first published in 50 volumes in 1750.
In this collection of writings, he mostly ignores the
church fathers (represented only by the apostolic
fathers and Macarius), the great medieval scholastics,
and the reformers. Instead, Wesley focuses on recent
centuries (from as far back as the sixteenth up to his
contemporaries like Jonathan Edwards in the eighteenth),
English works (including both Puritans and Established
churchmen who took turns persecuting each other), and
above all, “Practical Divinity.”
The present digital collection was scanned from the 1821
edition of these classics, published in 30 volumes, as
follows:
Volume 1:
The Apostolic Fathers, Macarius of Egypt, Johann Arndt’s
True Christianity.
Volume
2: Foxe’s Book of
Martyrs.
Volume
3: Additional Foxe’s
Martyrs, with supplements
Volume 4:
Additional Foxe supplements, Bishop Hall’s Meditations,
extracts from Robert Bolton.
Volume 5:
Additional Robert Bolton, John Preston.
Volume
6: Additional John
Preston, Richard Sibs, Thomas Goodwin.
Volume
7: Additional Thomas
Goodwin, William Dell, Thomas Manton, Isaac Ambrose.
Volume
8: Additional Isaac
Ambrose (Looking Unto Jesus).
Volume
9: Additional
Ambrose, Jeremy Taylor, Francis Rouse’s Academia
Celestis, Ralph Cudworth, Nathanael Culverwell.
Volume
10: Additional
Nathanael Culverwell, John Owen (Mortification of Sin,
Christologia, Communion with God).
Volume
11: Additional John
Owen, John Smith.
Volume
12: Herbert Palmer,
extracts from The Whole Duty of Man, William Whateley,
sermons of Bishop Robert Sanderson.
Volume
13: James Garden’s
Comparative Religion,
Volume
14: Pascal’s Pensees,
John Worthington’s Self-Resignation, Bishop Ken’s
Exposition of the Catechism.
Volume
15: Lives of Eminent
Christians, chiefly extracted from Clark.
Volume
16: Life of Bishop
Bedell, Life of Archbishop Butler, Letters of Samuel
Rutherford, Anthony Horneck’s Happy Ascetic & Lives of
Primitive Christians.
Volume
17: Works by Hugh
Binning, Matthew Hale, and Simon Patrick’s Christian
Sacrifice.
Volume
18: Richard Allen
(Vindication of Godliness, Rebuke to Backsliders,
Necessity of Godly Fear)
Volume
19: Dr. Cave’s
Primitive Christianity, Bunyan’s Holy War, Stuckley’s
Gospel-Glass.
Volume
20: Cowley’s Essays,
Goodman’s Evening Conference, works by Robert Leighton,
Bishop Beveridge.
Volume
21: Isaac Barrow,
John Brown, Antoinette Bourignon’s Solid Virtue, sermons
by Mr. Kitchen and Mr. Pool.
Volume
22: Richard Baxter’s
Saint’s Everlasting Rest, Edward Crane’s Prospect of
Divine Providence.
Volume
23: Fenelon, Molinos,
Henry More, Stephen Charnock, Dr. Calamy, Henry Scougal.
Volume
24: Sermons by Dr.
Annesley, Richard Lucas’ Inquiry after Happiness.
Volume
25: Sermons by
Bishop Reynolds, devotions.
Volume
26: Sermons by Dr.
South, Young, Howe’s Thoughts, Juan d’Avila, the
anonymous Parson’s Advice.
Volume
27: Archbishop
Tillotson, John Flavel’s Husbandry Spiritualized, Lives
of Sundry Eminent Persons.
Volume
28: Life of John
Howe, The Living Temple, Philip Henry, George Trosse,
John Eliot.
Volume
29: Additional
Eminent Persons, Alleine’s Letters, Francke’s Nicodemus.
Volume
30: Norris on
Christian Prudence; Edwards on Revivals of Religion;
Religious Affections.
Hard cover versions of these works
have sold for hundreds of dollars. With
our CD, you can read, study, and print out the pages as many
times as you want.