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The sources of Wesley’s understanding of primitive Christianity were rooted in the revival of patristic scholarship in the Church of England in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Knowledge of the early church was conveyed to Wesley by his parents in the Epworth rectory and through his academic life at Oxford. However, his interest in the primitive church took a new, more intense direction beginning with his friendship with John Clayton in 1732. Clayton and his mentor, Thomas Deacon, propelled Wesley to investigate the doctrine, discipline, and practice of the early church. Wesley began a rigorous course of studying primarily the Apostolic Fathers (including the Apostolic Constitutions and Canons), secondarily the ante-Nicene Fathers, and thirdly select holy men of the fourth century. He utilized editions of the Fathers by recent Anglican patristic scholars supplemented by works on the primitive church by William Cave, Claude Fleury, and Anthony Horneck, amongst others.

In chapter 3, Wesley’s relations with the leaders of the Moravians and Lutheran Salzburgers are analysed through the lens of his devotion to his High Church Anglican view of primitive Christianity, which dominated his interactions with them. He discussed the nature of the primitive church with them, including communal practice and discipline, episcopacy and apostolic succession, the Eucharist and baptism, and hymns. Apart from the subject of hymns, differing conceptions of primitive Christianity led to tensions between Wesley and the leaders of both communities. While the leaders of both Pietist groups respected Wesley’s pastoral diligence, the Moravians criticized his conceptions of the early church as being overly prescriptive and the Salzburgers believed that they were too legalistic. Though Moravian and Lutheran hymnody and theology exerted a long-term influence on Wesley, his High Church primitivism was a source of division.

Chapter 2 examines the theme of primitive Christianity on the voyage to Georgia. On the Simmonds, Wesley and his fellow missionaries resumed the ascetical and devotional practices characteristic of the Oxford Methodists, including the adoption of religious resolutions, vegetarianism, fasting, and apostolic poverty. Wesley spent considerable time investigating the Eucharistic theology and practice of the High Churchman John Johnson and the extreme sect of Usager Nonjurors. Alongside this, he examined the baptismal doctrine and practice of the primitive church and Church of England, particularly through the work of William Wall, which was influential amongst High Churchmen. Wesley engaged in this intensive study with the aim of restoring the ecclesiology of the primitive church in Georgia as advocated by the Usager Nonjurors. At sea he began to implement his clerical practices, which emphasized the centrality of the sacraments in worship inspired by the example of the early church and Nonjurors.

The centrality of Wesley’s vision for restoring primitive Christianity is most clearly seen in the manner he conducted his ministry in Georgia. The application of his view of primitive Christianity in his clerical practice in the colony is the focus of chapter 4. His endeavours to imitate the practices of Christ and the early church manifested themselves variously through interest in prayer book revision, precise sacramental observance, confession, penance, ascetical discipline, deaconesses, religious societies, and missions to the Indians. Not surprisingly, Wesley’s implementation of practices encouraged by the Usager Nonjurors was met with varying degrees of approval and opposition. By the end of his time in Georgia, his confidence in the early church councils and canons was diminished, but his pursuance of the form and spirit of the primitive church was maintained.

Despite the sudden end to the Georgia mission, a close analysis of Wesley’s ministry calls for a carefully nuanced view on the vexed question of his success or failure there. An evaluation of his ministry in context necessitates a balanced view that does not simply compare it with his subsequent leadership in the Evangelical Revival. This study also demonstrates that Wesley’s interest in primitive Christianity did not end when he left the shores of America. As one might expect, his view of the early church was not static; areas of continuity and discontinuity can be observed in over fifty years of ministry after Georgia. Wesley maintained his belief in the primitive church as a normative model for Christian faith and practice. With this conviction in mind he worked tirelessly towards the goal of seeing primitive Christianity restored in the Methodist movement.

This chapter, the first in the book’s second part, analyses Albrecht Ritschl’s understanding of theology as Wissenschaft. Ritschl’s complex relationship with his sometime teacher, F. C. Baur is then explored through a full analysis of his polemical exchange with E. Zeller over the use of ‘historical method’ in theology. A final section of the chapter offers a full analysis of Ritschl’s exegetical work and his theory of Primitive Christianity, the relevance of which for his theology has rarely been observed. On the basis of a close study of Ritschl’s account of the Early Catholic Church (1857) it is shown how Ritschl, step by step, transforms the Tübingen consensus about the origins of Christianity. This transformation is couched in historical analysis, but it also and at the same time sets up an idea of early church history conducive to Ritschl’s own theology.

Traditionally, Wesley’s biographers have not seen his ministry in Georgia as crucially important except insofar as it was perceived to have contributed to a crisis in his Christian faith. This has been partly due to the central role his post-Georgia evangelical ‘conversion’ at Aldersgate has played in the Wesleyan tradition. Along with this, his Methodist successors on both sides of the Atlantic tended to disparage the Georgia period as a misguided High Church phase. Therefore, it is not surprising that many biographers have seen little of value in the Georgia mission and have labelled it a failure. As a result, Wesley’s passion for restoring primitive Christianity has been underappreciated. In order to re-evaluate this period of his life, a careful consideration of the documents written by him (including his journals, diary, and letters) and by his contemporaries is essential.

The final chapter of the book is an exploration and analysis of the opposition to Wesley’s ministry. He was variously accused by some colonists, who rejected his conception and practice of primitive Christianity, as being an enthusiast, a Roman Catholic, and a divisive clergyman. The argument is made that the ‘Sophia Williamson controversy’ is best understood within the context of opposition by male colonists to Wesley’s ministry to women. Significant conflict also arose with the magistrates of Savannah due to his strident advocacy for poor colonists he believed were being oppressed. The Williamson affair, combined with opposition to Wesley’s High Churchmanship, ministry to women, and advocacy for poor and oppressed colonists, joined together to bring his Georgia sojourn to a swift conclusion.

This chapter focuses on the Christological writings of Jacques Souverain and Stephen Nye during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It argues that these heterodox authors did not seek to reject Christianity tout court. Instead they sought to recover true primitive Christianity shorn of Platonic straitjackets and priestly mitres. Yet the critical method that they employed itself inadvertently helped to pave the way for the rise of modern biblical studies. That method owed much to Renaissance humanist scholarship.

This chapter explores the ways that late medieval Spaniards thought about the Mediterranean and the lands surrounding its shores. The chapter mentions the geographers' belief that the three constituent parts of the earth, namely Asia, Africa, and Europe, met in the Mediterranean and that the lordship of the world could only be attained through control of the inner sea. It also points out that the early expansion of primitive Christianity suggest that the Mediterranean possessed a latent religious unity. Aware of the history of the early Church in North Africa and western Asia, jurists devised arguments to the effect that Christian conquests in those regions were in fact acts of recuperation or defense. It then describes the nuances of fifteenth-century Spaniards' perspectives on Mediterranean space by demonstrating that the proximate western Mediterranean was familiar and known, while the more distant eastern Mediterranean was more exotic and often depicted as the site of fabulous wonders.