Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist Periodicals, 1744-1960

Although Methodism has come to be associated most closely with the Protestant Christian denomination founded by John Wesley (1703-1791), the term was already current in the seventeenth century, encompassing a number of different non-conformist churches including Calvinistic Methodism, to whose doctrine of predestinarianism Wesley, with his faith in universal redemption, was deeply opposed. Primitive Methodism emerged as a movement in the early 19th century from within the Wesleyan connexion, with which it eventually re-merged as part of the Methodist Union between the two World Wars. This resource from the special collections of the Oxford Brookes University brings together the main periodicals of the Wesleyan movement, beginning with the minutes of its earliest conference in 1744 and The Arminian magazine in 1790, and continuing through to the twentieth century. The materials in this collection are reproduced from items at the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History (Oxford Brookes University), which holds the library of the Wesley Historical Society.