Abstract

A study of the Hutchinsonian interests of John Wesley shows that the founder of Methodism over a long period had a recurrent engagement with this predominantly High-Church Anglican combination of Physics and Theology. The argument of this paper is that Wesley had several reasons to take an interest in Hutchinsonianism. Firstly, Wesley was dissatisfied with the systematisation of Newtonian Cosmology, in the form of Newtonianism, in its ambitions to be a scientific paradigm that tried to explain everything in its own terms. Hence Hutchinsonianism seemed to Wesley a promising alternative, and a refreshing approach to Natural Philosophy. What also interested him was the Hutchinsonian approach to biblical interpretation, heavily based on the unpointed Hebrew text of the Old Testament. By throwing into question the conventionally accepted vowel-pointing of the Old Testament text, Hutchinson and his followers had potentially opened up a rich vein for reinterpretation. While Wesley, in general, questioned a scriptural monopoly over cosmology, he was at the same time a Lockean sensationalist who believed that the human capacity to attain any kind of knowledge, let alone divine knowledge, was limited, thereby leaving an important role for the written divine revelation contained in the bible. Lastly, although Hutchinsonianism appealed mostly to certain High Church Anglicans, its attractions did extend across boundaries between different forms of Anglicanism and even to different denominations, because in many ways these different groups had common philosophical concerns in the eighteenth century. Wesley's constant evocation of Hutchinsonian teachings throughout his life, which will be illustrated through an investigation of his correspondence, journals and published works, stemmed from his struggle to negotiate his understanding of the cosmos and of the Old Testament's account of it, and from his perception that Hutchinsonian ideas represented a similar effort. ☆ A preliminary version of the paper was read at An International Conference at the University of Manchester on John Wesley: Life, Legend and Legacy 15–18 June 2003.