{"id":230,"date":"2008-08-26T21:58:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-26T21:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2008\/08\/methodism-founder-charles-wesleys-secret-code-diary-cracked-by-anglican-priest.html"},"modified":"2008-08-26T21:58:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-26T21:58:00","slug":"methodism-founder-charles-wesleys-secret-code-diary-cracked-by-anglican-priest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2008\/08\/methodism-founder-charles-wesleys-secret-code-diary-cracked-by-anglican-priest.html","title":{"rendered":"Methodism founder Charles Wesley&#8217;s secret code diary cracked by Anglican priest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_MCBNSn1DlAU\/SLS1FHUrqCI\/AAAAAAAABMY\/UEsZZr8o7hk\/s1600-h\/3260605.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;cursor:pointer;cursor:hand\" src=\"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_MCBNSn1DlAU\/SLS1FHUrqCI\/AAAAAAAABMY\/UEsZZr8o7hk\/s400\/3260605.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Charles Wesley is one of the most interesting of all the early Methodists, not least because of the kind of relationship he had with his older brother John. Some long time ago, Richard Heitzenrater and other fine Methodist scholars decoded and translated John Wesley&#8217;s secret diary, and now the same has been done to Charles Wesley&#8217;s diary.   You can read the story in the Times, and here is the string&#8212;-<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/comment\/faith\/article4614293.ece<\/p>\n<p>A professor from Liverpool Hope University, Kenneth Newport, has done the decoding and translating of the some 1000 handwritten pages, that cover the years 1736-1756.  The diary begins with his time in Georgia in Savannah and elswhere and it provides various clues as to why Charles so opposed John Wesley&#8217;s marriage to Grace Murray, and how that whole mess (which included Charles kidnapping Grace and forcing her to marry another Methodist!)  put an enormous strain on the relationship between the brothers.  The work of John Tyson and others has opened up the study of Charles Wesley in recent decades and he deserves further scrutiny not only for his enormous hymn output (over 6,000 hymn texts)but for the role he played in birthing the Methodist movement.  This diary will add grist to the mill and help us understand this crucial figure in the English revival of the 18th century.<\/p>\n<p>Here is a juicy little sample of one page from the diary translated:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Monday, March 22 [1736] While I was persuading Mr Welch not to concern himself in this disturbance, I heard Mrs Hawkins cry out: \u201cMurder!\u201d and walked away. Returning out of the woods, I was informed by Mr Welch that poor blockhead Mrs Welch had joined with Mrs Hawkins and the Devil in their slanders of me. I would not believe it till half the town told me the same, and exclaimed against her ingratitude.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Oh those Wesley boys and their tempestuous relationship with women!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Charles Wesley is one of the most interesting of all the early Methodists, not least because of the kind of relationship he had with his older brother John. Some long time ago, Richard Heitzenrater and other fine Methodist scholars decoded and translated John Wesley&#8217;s secret diary, and now the same has been done to Charles&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Methodism founder Charles Wesley&#039;s secret code diary cracked by Anglican priest - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2008\/08\/methodism-founder-charles-wesleys-secret-code-diary-cracked-by-anglican-priest.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Methodism founder Charles Wesley&#039;s secret code diary cracked by Anglican priest - The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Charles Wesley is one of the most interesting of all the early Methodists, not least because of the kind of relationship he had with his older brother John. Some long time ago, Richard Heitzenrater and other fine Methodist scholars decoded and translated John Wesley&#8217;s secret diary, and now the same has been done to Charles&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2008\/08\/methodism-founder-charles-wesleys-secret-code-diary-cracked-by-anglican-priest.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-08-26T21:58:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_MCBNSn1DlAU\/SLS1FHUrqCI\/AAAAAAAABMY\/UEsZZr8o7hk\/s400\/3260605.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ben Witherington\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Methodism founder Charles Wesley's secret code diary cracked by Anglican priest - The Bible and Culture","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2008\/08\/methodism-founder-charles-wesleys-secret-code-diary-cracked-by-anglican-priest.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Methodism founder Charles Wesley's secret code diary cracked by Anglican priest - The Bible and Culture","og_description":"Charles Wesley is one of the most interesting of all the early Methodists, not least because of the kind of relationship he had with his older brother John. 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A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&amp;E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}