A notable body of Charles Wesley’s correspondence survives. This includes over 855 letters written by Wesley (if one includes his “poetic epistles”), and over 1,000 letters written to Wesley. This collection is dedicated to making both sides of the correspondence available, with attention to interconnections. Users of this collection are encouraged to read Dr. Frank Baker’s essay placing John Wesley’s correspondence in historical context (Works, 25:1–140), as much of it applies to Charles as well. Note in particular the guidelines established by Baker (107–128) and later editors of John Wesley’s letters (Works, 27:iii–iv) for the presentation of John’s letters—since we observe these guidelines in this collection of Charles’s correspondence.

Charles Wesley’s Letters

The Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition is in the process of publishing a print collection of all known letters with surviving content written by Charles Wesley [it will include about 130 items not in any previous edition]. In the meantime, a list of all known letters, showing where the text (in part or full) has been published previously is available here:

Letters to Charles Wesley

Wesley’s in-correspondence is transcribed in chronological order, gathered in half-decade increments to allow manageable file sizes. The texts are in a (pdf) format that is searchable using Adobe Reader 7.0 and above.

• 1781–88 (in process)

There is no surviving evidence of Charles Wesley preaching prior to his departure for Georgia on October 14, 1735. He apparently envisioned his future vocation akin to that of his older brother Samuel (under whose care he resided from age 8–19), as a teacher rather than a parish priest. Thus while John Wesley was engaged in other tasks, Charles “writ sermons” on many mornings during their voyage to Georgia (see JW, Journal, Oct. 21, 1735). Part of this time (at sea and after arrival in Georgia) was devoted to making longhand copies of sermons John had preached previously, several of which Charles then presented himself (much like budding Church of England priests were encouraged to read the Homilies from the pulpit). But Charles also composed his own earliest sermons in longhand during this time (see the first five sermons below).

After Charles’s evangelical awakening in May 1738 he began to record the text of his sermons in the form of shorthand he learned from John Byrom. This change reflected growing comfort in the preaching role, and produced a smaller manuscript for carrying to the multiple settings in which Charles now preached. However, only six of these sermons in shorthand survive—largely because by 1743 Charles Wesley adopted the practice of preaching extemporaneously.

While his brother John published numerous sermons, both separately and in collected volumes, Charles Wesley published only two sermons during his life. The first of these was a sermon Charles preached before the University of Oxford in 1742, and published soon after. Then his brother John included it in 1746 in the first volume of Sermons of Several Occasions, under the title “Awake Thou that Sleepest.” Charles’s other published sermon was The Cause and Cure of Earthquakes (1750), occasioned by a trembler in London that year.

The first published access to sermons that Charles Wesley left in manuscript at his death was in Sermons by the Late Rev. Charles Wesley (London: T. Blanshard, et al., 1816). Charles’s daughter Sarah Wesley Jr. discovered several sermons written in longhand among her father’s papers and delivered them to Joseph Benson, who arranged their publication. Unfortunately, neither Sarah nor Benson were aware that the collection she delivered included both Charles’s copies of his brother John’s early sermons and those composed by Charles (Charles’s notation of this dependence on some of them was in shorthand, which neither of them read). Only later did scholars come to recognize that at least eight of the twelve sermons ascribed to Charles in the 1816 collection were surely written by John (see the introduction to the sermon on Luke 16:10, for one other possibility). Their presence among Charles’s papers is reflective of his practice of preaching (particularly those on which he records the date he preached them). But they are not “Charles Wesley sermons” in the strict sense.

The sermons in the 1816 collection were limited to those composed in longhand. The tight constraints John Byrom maintained over who learned his distinctive form of shorthand rendered Charles Wesley’s shorthand sermons inaccessible for over two centuries! Only in 1987 did the public gain access—with the publication of Thomas R. Albin and Oliver A. Beckerlegge (eds.), Charles Wesley’s Earliest Evangelical Sermons: Six Shorthand Manuscript Sermons Now for the First Time Transcribed from the Original (Ilford: Wesley Historical Society, 1987).

In 2001 Kenneth G. C. Newport published The Sermons of Charles Wesley: A Critical Edition with Introduction and Notes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), including sermons from the 1816 collection and those in the volume by Albin and Beckerlegge.

The transcriptions of Charles Wesley’s sermons provided below were prepared fresh from his manuscripts and two published sermons, independent of the later published collections (correcting them in scattered instances). Stylistically, we have adopted the precedent of Frank Baker, in the John Wesley Works project, of balancing historical accuracy with modern readability (see JW, Works, 25:123–28). We routinely expand CW’s abbreviations (whenever clear), including abbreviated names and his frequent use of the ampersand. We silently update archaic spellings (though retaining typical British spellings). And we impose modern practices of capitalisation and punctuation. 

The sermons are presented in the order they were likely composed.

In addition to his sermons, journals, and correspondence, a few other prose items by Charles Wesley survive that merit attention.

Five of these items were published during Wesley’s life. Of those that remained unpublished at his death, it is important to distinguish between manuscripts that Wesley composed and manuscripts where CW was copying the work of another writer (in longhand or in shorthand).

Prose Publications

Prose Manuscripts Composed by Wesley

[available elsewhere on this site]

• Account of the Prophetess Lavington’s Case (1739; see Journal Letters, 35–42)
• Case of Magdalen Hunter (Nov. 1771; see Journal Letters, 416–21)
• Case of Edward Davies (1772–74; see Journal Letters, 422–33)
• Accounts of Musical Sons Charles and Samuel (1769–77; see Journal Letters, 439–67)

Prose Manuscript Items Copied by Wesley

[available elsewhere]

MS Shorthand (MARC, MA 1977/567), section 1 (shorthand copies by CW)

         pp. 1–14       Accounts of “Old Jeffrey” (1716–17; see Journal Letters, 3–29)

         pp. 17–25     JW letter to his father, Dec. 10–19, 1734 (see JW, Works 25:397–409)

         p. 26             JW to John Burton, Oct. 10, 1735 (see JW, Works, 25:439–42)

[other secondary copied prose items]

• DDCW 6/84a (shorthand transcription by CW of François Fénelon, The Adventures of Telemachus, Book 6)
• MARC, DDCW 8/6 (shorthand copy by CW, in 1779, of prayers in BCP)
• MARC, DDCW 8/10 (shorthand copy by CW of Edward Young’s Night Thoughts)
• MARC, DDCW 8/11 (longhand set of materials for studying French—exercises, vocabulary and grammar—with some shorthand annotations)
• MARC, DDCW 8/16 (longhand transcription of William Law, A Demonstration of the Gross and Fundamental Errors of a late Book, called, ‘A Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper’. London: W. Innys & R. Mansby, 1737)
• MARC, DDCW 9/1 (shorthand copy, by CW, of the four Gospels in AV).
• MARC, WCB, D2/9 (longhand copy in French, by CW, of first section of François Fénelon, Sentimens de Piété. [S.l.: s.n., 1713])