Medicine and moral reform: The place of practical piety in John Wesley's art of physic

It was the Primitive Christians of the “purest ages” who inspired and encouraged the Methodist leader, John Wesley, to create a movement based on his vision of the ancient Church. Wesley was convinced that Methodist doctrine, discipline, and depth of piety came nearer to the Primitive Church than to any other group. Methodism, he argued in his sermon for Laying the Foundation of the New Chapel in 1777, was the “old religion, the religion of the Bible, the religion of the Primitive Church.”