Some time back my friend Andrew Thompson called me and asked if I would be interested in writing the introduction to a very interesting volume. It would include, first of all, John Wesley’s journal entry of May 24, 1738, which recounts his “Aldersgate experience”–you know, the one where he felt his heart “strangely warmed.” You may remember that when Wesley had this experience, he was listening to a reading of Luther’s Preface to Romans, so the volume would include this as well. And finally, it would include Wesley’s notes on Romans in his Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament. Of course, an opportunity like this was too good to pass up, and I gratefully agreed to write the introduction.

This volume is part of a larger Seedbed project called The John Wesley Collection. As the publisher describes the project,

The writings represented in The John Wesley Collection resourced the early Methodists in their quest to spread the gospel by providing the intellectual and spiritual moorings for the messengers of the movement. Seedbed believes these writings are as relevant to our context today as they were in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Consequently, we consider it a sacred calling to join with those who are recapturing John Wesley’s publishing vision for the twenty-first century.

The great treasures of Wesley’s wisdom are, by and large, lost to most North American United Methodists today, and perhaps to many other members of the wider Wesleyan movement. This project looks to make a very important contribution by recovering some of Wesley’s most important writings and making them accessible in affordable volumes. I hope you will avail yourself of these excellent forthcoming resources.