Wesley's Sermons as Doctrine
I recently ran across this excellent article on John Wesley's Sermons and Methodist Doctrine from Dr. Cindy Wesley. Dr. Wesley compares the doctrinal function of John Wesley's sermons with the that of the Book of Homilies in the Church of England in 18th century England. Sermons were the English way of "doing theology". Dr. Wesley writes: Systematic theology was a continental tradition evident in Catholic and Protestant Scholasticism. It was not the methodology of eighteenth-century Church of England ‘divines’. Their sources were rooted in the pastoral and communal traditions of Christianity, and particularly the Church of England as it emerged after the Elizabethan settlement and re-emerged after the Restoration. For an Oxford-educated, High Church cleric like Wesley, Scripture, Patristic writings, the Thirty Nine articles, the Book of Homilies, the liturgies of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and the Church’s hymnody were taken as author...