Roman Methodist
John Wesley and the Catholic Church. By John M. Todd. (Hodder and Stoughton, 15s.)
MR. TODD has tried to do two things. Firstly, he describes the nature of Wesley's inspiration and that of his movement, born so incongruously inside the supine structure of the eighteenth-cen- tury established church. Secondly, he discusses the extent to which this inspiration of Wesley's is identical with the 'inner force of the Catholic faith,' and tries to see how far his doctrines were the same as traditional Catholic ones. As Mr. Todd remarks, Wesley taught, and lived by, traditional Christian revelation, with the simple difference (and it was this that made his approach so distinct from the usual one of his time) that he spoke as one very aware of his own inner experience of the Christian message. With his mystical belief in the uniqueness of the Sermon on the Mount combined with pn intense respect for the Anglican Church one can see very easily why Wesley's message had such a great influence in changing Hogarth's England into that of Gladstone. M RA and Mr. Billy Graham are really doomed to failure in Great Britain where a sense of innate social obedience and a careless devotiop to established religious groups exist so strongly. Mr. Todd suc- ceeds in bringing out in his book that Wesley's traditionalism was one of doctrine as well as of organisation. He believed in the apostolic succes- sion and the Trinity, of course; if in the Church of Rome, he stated, he would conform to all its doctrines not contrary to plain scripture. And per- haps Mr. Todd's book succeeds best of all in its plea , for sympathetic consideration of Wesley's views on Rome, when he tells us that Wesley was so certain of Christ's will that he 'felt bound to keep open house to all mankind.'
DAVID REES
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