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constant peace and a sense of forgiveness.” Back in London, England, Wesley attended a Bible meeting at a house on Aldergate Street, May 24, 1738, where he found the assurance of salvation that he had been seeking. “I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine and saved me from the law of sin and death.”4

Wesley was also influenced greatly by his mother Susanna Wesley, a Puritan, who had instilled strict rules of conduct in her eighteen children. These were the beliefs that Wesley hoped would bring change to the Church of England. While he soon ended up being banned from speaking in the churches of London he did not separate from the Church. Rather, he took the “whole world as his parish” and started to organize his own followers by 1739. He groomed his societies as disciplined, dedicated, small groups that would eventually uplift and leaven the entire church. Those against him charged Wesley with dissension, disobedience, and disrup- tion. In 1743, he drafted rules for his Methodist societies. Methodist members were to:

1. Avoid evil in any form — cursing, drunkenness, fighting, railing, unprofitable conversation, costly apparel, ribald songs, racy reading, theft, and so forth.

2. Do as much good as possible by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, helping the sick, instructing, reproving, being patient, and living frugally.

3. Keep the ordinance of God, hear the word, take com- munion, search the scriptures, fast, and pray.5

Historians believed that the rules over time became means in themselves. John Wesley strongly believed that faith has degrees, that it grows as it is expressed in love and that the fullness of faith and perfection in love develops gradually. Justification by faith meant forgiveness of sins and newness of life displayed in acts of love toward others. The freedom of faith was from sin, not from works of God. Justification by faith alone was not an invitation to antinomianism.6

Always considered his own man, Wesley parted ways with several groups based on his belief that Christ died for all, his grace is free for all, not just for those predestined (not just for

ORIGINS OF OUR FAITH