Wesley's Christian Library

[John Wesley, editor].
A Christian Library, Consisting of Extracts from and Abridgments of the Choicest Pieces of Practical Divinity. 50 volumes.
Bristol: Felix Farley, 1749-1755. (04883-04933)

The ideal Methodist lifetime reading program, the fifty-volume Christian Library is John Wesley’s heavily abridged anthology of English Christian classics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including works by Jeremy Taylor (vol. 21) and Richard Baxter (vol. 37). As he “extracted” the works of his favorite authors, preserving roughly one page out of every fifty pages of original text, Wesley was careful to edit out any hint of the doctrine of predestination so as to emphasize what he judged was their most edifying contributions to the common thread of Christian piety. This complete set of the Christian Library, bound in red morocco, was collected in the eighteenth century by one “G. Dixon,” who signed each volume. The set came to Bridwell Library from the collection of Perkins School of Theology Professor Albert C. Outler.