Description
A 4 part dialogue of the beginnings of Methodist local preaching with John Wesley's and his mothers thoughts.
LOCAL PREACHER ROOTS
(A four speaker Dialogue)
NARRATOR: WOMAN: LAY-PREACHER: JOHN WESLEY:
(Based upon events in John Wesley’s diaries and also recorded in other books on the rise of Methodism & Wesley’s life)
WOMAN: “Stop him at your peril!”
NARRATOR: Said Mrs Canning of Evesham to John Wesley.
WOMAN: “He preaches the truth, and the Lord owns him as truly as he does you or you brother, Mr Wesley!”
JOHN WESLEY: “That’s what I like, plain honest speaking.”
NARRATOR: ‘He’ was Thomas Westhill, a carpenter from the first society formed by Wesley at Bristol in 1739, who made a preaching excursion. When John Wesley visited Bristol in 1742, he heard that Thomas Maxfield. Layman, had begun to preach in London, he set off to investigate. The previous year he had said to his brother Charles.
JOHN WESLEY: “I am not clear that Brother Maxfield should expound at Greyhound Lane; nor can I as yet do without him.”
Continues...
D J Woodman July 1996