Charles Wesley
18th-century Anglican priest, Methodist co-founder, and the most prolific hymn writer in English-language Christian history.
Charles Wesley was an 18th-century Anglican priest and the younger brother of Methodist founder John Wesley. He was a co-founder of the Methodist movement and the most prolific hymn writer in English-language Christian history, with approximately 6,500 hymns to his name. Born December 18, 1707 at Epworth in Lincolnshire, the youngest son of the Anglican rector Samuel Wesley, he was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, where he founded the 'Holy Club' that included his brother John and George Whitefield. He was ordained an Anglican priest in 1735 and accompanied John Wesley on the failed missionary expedition to the new colony of Georgia in 1735-1736. On May 21, 1738, he experienced an evangelical conversion he described as 'a strange palpitation of heart,' three days before his brother John's parallel 'heart-strangely-warmed' conversion at Aldersgate Street. The brothers' twin conversions are the symbolic origin of the Methodist movement. For the next fifty years Charles wrote hymns at an extraordinary pace, producing many of the foundational texts of English-language Christian worship: 'Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,' 'Christ the Lord Is Risen Today,' 'Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,' 'O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing,' 'Jesus, Lover of My Soul,' 'And Can It Be,' 'Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus,' and many more. His hymns shaped not only Methodist worship but also Anglican, Baptist, Presbyterian, and most subsequent Protestant hymnody. Unlike his brother John, Charles remained an Anglican priest his entire life and opposed the separation of Methodism from the Church of England that eventually occurred after John's death. He died March 29, 1788.