The word that best characterizes John Wesley’s life is faith, which became the means to almost superhuman efforts in evangelizing, in promoting good works of every kind, and in organizing men and women for a life of fulfillment through Jesus Christ. Indefatigable energy and boundless hope led him through a time of persecution to a time of nation-wide recognition. Through it all he remained humble and wholly dedicated to God’s work through men.
All of Europe legislated or fought wars to clarify lines of monarchial succession as either Protestant (as England) or Catholic (as Austria). The English government added a Prime Minister to guarantee the people’s rights under the Hanoverian Succession. Everywhere serfdom was being abolished and slavery coming under attack. England came to dominate the seas and pave the way for Empire. America was the first of two great late-century revolutionary centers; the other was France.
Inventions and advances in all the sciences thrust the world into a new age. Discovery was still advancing too with the voyages of Cook. The evangelism of Whitefield and Wesley struggled against Deism and atheism. Where the century led France to divisive revolution, it led England to a new appreciation of the universe in Romanticism.
John Wesley
1703 John Wesley born
1707 Charles Wesley born
1709 Rescued from a fire at Epworth Rectory “a brand plucked from the burning”
1714 Admitted to Charterhouse School
1720 John Wesley to Oxford
1725 Ordained deacon and friendship with “Veranese”
1726 Elected fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford
1727 Takes up assistant pastorale of Wroote, Lines
1729 Returns to Oxford, takes over leadership of Holy Club
1735 Death of father Samuel. John and Charles leave for Georgia
1737 Friendship with Sophy Hopkey. John departs from America
1738 John Wesley’s “conversion” Wednesday, May 24
1739 Wesley’s first open-air sermon modeled after the style of George Whitefield
1740 Separates from Moravians
1741 Preaches in South Wales for first time
1742 Preaches in the north of England for the first time with Charles. They establish an orphanage and Sunday School
1744 First Methodist Conference at the Foundry, division of the country into Methodist districts
1746 Wesley founds a dispensary for the poor
1747 Preaches in Ireland for first time (first of 42 trips). Publishes Primitive Physic
1749 Officiates at wedding of Charles Wesley and Sarah Gwynne. His friendship with Grace Murray
1751 John marries Mrs. Vazeille. Preaches in Scotland for first time (first of 22 trips)
1755 Separation of John Wesley from his wife
1768 Opening of Methodist Chapel in New York Founding of Lady Huntington’s College of Trevecca.
1771 Francis Asbury, later known as the “Wesley of America” sails across the Atlantic for America
1775 John Wesley publishes A Calm Address to Our American Colonies, urging obedience to Britain
1778 Opening of City Road Chapel, London
1781 Death of Wesley’s wife
1783 John Wesley visits Holland
1784 John Wesley ordains Thomas Coke and others for work in America which eventually and unintentionally leads to break with the Anglican Church: “ordination is separation”
1787 Richard Allen forms African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia
1788 March 29, Charles Wesley dies
1791 March 2, John Wesley dies
World Events
1698 Jeremy Collier successfully attacks immorality and profaneness on the English stage
1699 Captain Kidd buries treasure near New York
1701 Act of Settlement establishes Protestant Hanoverian succession in Britain
1702 Anne Queen of England (to 1714)
1702 Cotton Mather publishes ecclesiastical history of New England
1703 Jonathan Edwards, New England puritan divine, born
1704 Isaac Newton publishes Optics, latest in succession of influential works on physics—he dominates Oxfordian thought through the century
1705 Edmund Halley correctly predicts the return of the comet seen in 1682
1707 Act of Union uniting England and Scotland under name Great Britain
1707 Isaac Watts’ Hymns and Spiritual Songs—Watts is most prolific hymnwriter in England before Charles Wesley
1709 Steele’s The Tatler and The Spectator with writing by Addison, gentlemen’s newspaper with commentary on news and literary and art criticism. Wesley records reading them later.
1710 Leibnitz’s influential statement “God created the best of all possible worlds” ridiculed later in Voltaire’s Candide
1712 Last execution for witchcraft in England
1713 Scriblerian (literary) Club formed in London by Swift, Pope, Congreve, others. Samuel, John Wesley’s brother is friend of them.
1713 Treaty of Utrecht ends War of Spanish Succession
1713 Completion of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London
1714 George I King of England (to 1727)—speaks no English
1715 First Jacobite uprising in Scotland. Catholic attempt to take over Britain through Scotland
1716 Christian religious teaching prohibited in China
1717 Inoculation against smallpox introduced into England by Lady Mary Wortley Montague
1719 Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe
1720 Great South Sea Bubble, financial scheme that ruined many great bankers, especially in France
1721 Robert Walpole is Britain’s first Prime Minister (to 1742)
1722 Herrnhut founded as Moravian settlement in Saxony by Count von Zinzendorf
1726 Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels
1727 George II King of England (to 1760)
1728 William Law’s A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. Law was John Wesley’s mentor for ten years
1731 Expulsion of Protestants from Salzburg
1732 George Washington born
1732 Threshing machine developed by Michael Menzies
1735 Sale of spirits prohibited in Gerogia (to 1738)
1736 English statutes on witchcraft repealed
1737 Cruden’s Concordance to the Bible.
1737 Carolus Linnaeus produces the first classification of plants by genus and species
1742 Handel’s Messiah
1742 Voltaire, renowned atheist and biting satirist, publishes play Mahomet the Prophet
1743 Thomas Jefferson born
1745 The ‘Forty Five,’ second Jacobite uprising in Scotland and Ireland (see 1715)
1748 David Hume’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding sets the tone of rational philosophy for the rest of the century
1749 Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones depicts farm, city, and prison life at mid-century
1750 Johann Sebastian Bach dies
1752 Benjamin Franklin invents lightning conductor
1755 Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language, a landmark of lexicography
1755 Great earthquake of Lisbon kills 30,000 people
1755 French and Indian War begins in America (to 1763)
1756 Mozart born
1756 Mayonnaise first made by Duc de Richlieu
1760 First British school for deaf and dumb opened in Edinburgh
1760 George III King of England (to 1820)
1762 Jean Jacques Rosseau’s Social Contract revolutionizes political theory and later influences American Declaration of Independence and Constitution
1763 Peace of Paris among Britain, France and Spain ends Seven Years War. Britain gains Canada and virtually all land east of Mississippi River
(1763–1774) James Watt’s improved design of the steam engine heralds the industrial age
1764 James Hargreaves invents Spinning Jenny
1767 World’s first public piano concert
1768 Captain James Cook discovers Australia
1770 Benjamin West’s painting The Death of Wolf, a celebration of contemporary heroism
1771 Carl Scheele discovers oxygen
1773 Pope Clement XIV suppresses Society of Jesus (Jesuits) who have become economically and politically powerful
1773 Boston Tea Party
1775 George III releases women and children from bondage in Britain’s coal and salt mines
1775 Christianity introduced in Korea
1776 American Declaration of Independance
1777 Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, landmark work of capitalism
1778Modern flush toilet invented
1779 Franz Anto Mesmer’s pseudoscientific experiments in “mesmerizing” with the power of the eye
1779 War of Bavarian Succession ends with Peace of Teschen
1780 Robert Raikes establishes a Sunday School in Gloucester
1781 American War of Independence ends with surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown
1783 First Successful hot air balloon
1784 Shaker leader Mother Ann Leedies at Waterviliet, New Yourk
1785 Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire completed, claims that Christianity caused the fall of a great culture
1787 William Wilberforce, 28, begins agitating against slavery in the British colonies
1789 French Revolution begins with storming of Bastille
1792 Denmark is first country to prohibit slave trade
1792 Eli Whitney, 27, invents Cotton Gin, as result, US cotton production jumps from 140,000 pounds in 1791 to 35 million pounds in 1800
1793 Worship of God abolished in France in extremes of French Revolution
1794 Reign of Terror in France
1798 Napoleon Bonaparte leads French Army into Egypt
1798 S.T. Coleridge and William Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads with “Romantic Manifesto” in Preface to 1800 Second Edition forms basis of Romantic Age to come
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