arity of their lives the name was given to them, by those who
were laxer in conduct, of "Methodists."

[Picture: Wesleyan Chapel]

In 1729 the Rector of Lincoln College summoned John Wesley to resume
residence at Oxford, and he became Tutor of the College. In this
capacity he was careful to look after the souls, as well as the
intellectual training, of those under his influence. The brothers began
missionary work in Oxford, about the year 1730, in which they were
assisted by a few other kindred spirits. They visited the sick and
needy, with the permission of the parish clergy, as well as offenders
confined in the gaol. This continued for some time, but gradually John
began to long for a wider field for his spiritual energies. He had
gathered about him a small band of equally earnest associates, and they
went out to Georgia, North America, in 1735, to work among the English
settlers and North American Indians. After two years John returned to
England, in 1737, and then began the work of his life.

It is said that he was a good deal influenced by the _De Imitatione
Christi_ of Thomas a Kempis (of which he published an abridged edition in
1777), {66a} also by Jeremy Taylor's _Holy Living and Dying_; and he
imputed his own conversion to his study of Law's _Serious Call_. His
"first impression of genuine Christianity," as he called it, was from the
Moravian sect, with whom he came in contact at Hirnuth in Saxony, which
he visited in 1738, after his return from America; but his complete
"conversion," he was wont to say, occurred at a meeting of friends, in
Aldersgate Street, London, where one of them was reading Luther's
_Preface to St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans_, the exact time being 8.45
p.m., May 24, 1738.

Though taking an independent course, and appointing only lay workers as
his agents, he regarded himself to the end of his days as an ordained
minister of the Church of England, and his society as still being a part
of it, and he urged all faithful Wesleyans to attend church service once
on Sunday, and to receive the Holy Communion at church, it being only
after his death that the society's secession became complete. {66b}

The first Wesleyan congregation of about 50 members, some of them
Moravians, was formed in London, where they met in Fetter Lane, once a
week; the first meeting being on May 1st, 1738, and from that day the
society of "Methodists" may be regarded as having begun.