John Wesley Practical Divinity and the Defence of Literature

<p>John Wesley (1703-1791) leader of British Methodism was one of the most prolific literary figures of the eighteenth century responsible for creating and disseminating a massive corpus of religious literature and for instigating a sophisticated programme of reading writing and publishing within his Methodist Societies. <em>John Wesley Practical Divinity and the Defence of Literature</em> takes the influential genre of practical divinity as a framework for understanding Wesley's role as an author editor and critic of popular religious writing. It asks why he advocated the literary arts as a valid aspect of his evangelical theology and how his Christian poetics impacted upon the religious experience of his followers.</p>