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Things Go Better with Coke– Thomas Coke (and Capt. Webb)

Things Go Better with Coke– Thomas Coke (and Capt. Webb)

Last updated on: October 29, 2026 at 1:26 am by Ben Witherington

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Things Go Better with Coke– Thomas Coke (and Capt. Webb) 2026-10-09T10:35:38-04:00 Ben Witherington

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These two men were not alone of course, and there were a series of less familiar names that Wesley encouraged to go to America and evangelize, for instance consider this letter from Wesley…

Or consider this action taken at a Conference meeting…

Wesley never took the title bishop for himself, but used the term General Superintendent, and below you see a list of the first series of them in the U.K. Asbury and Coke however had no problems assuming the title bishop, despite Wesley reproving them for doing so. As they told Wesley, there was no national church to react to, and so American Methodists would go their own way. It is interesting that even in the 1970s when I moved to the U.K. British Methodism was considerably more low church than in the Methodist Churches I grew up in, in the U.S. The British Methodists, mostly avoided liturgy, except when it came to the sacraments, and creeds were mostly missing in action too, and the service consisted of what some called the hymn sandwich— a hymn and prayer, and a hymn and a Scripture, and a hymn and an offering, and a sermon and did a mention a hymn, all five verses.

Mention should also be made of John Fletcher, a proper Methodist theologian and preacher, and Wesley had hoped he would take over the circuits when John died, but like Charles Wesley, John outlived both of these two men that could have succeeded him.

Notice in the second row of men Adam Clarke, a formidable exegete and preacher.

And it would be a serious mistake to overlook the greatest early Methodist preacher– George Whitefield. Whitefield came under the influence of the Countess of Huntingdon, and she was of the Calvinist persuasion, and George followed her lead in that direction, found Calvinistic Methodist chapels in the North, but as he was later to admit, he didn’t have John Wesley’ gift of organization and administration. He was instead the Billy Graham of his day, a very gifted preacher than Ben Franklin was enamoured with and befriended. See the excellent movie A Great Awakening that came out this year. Here’s the man himself…

Some of Wesley’s preachers were well educated, others not so much. So it is important to consider some things Wesley did, like found Kingswood school in Bristol, and things he said as well…..

In the early days of the revival, Charles Wesley was not only an equal partner with John and accomplished much, as the statement below will make clear, but when he got married, had children, instead he concentrated on poetry aka hymn lyrics, and eventually basically stopped itinerating to John’s chagrin, and even tried to marry John off in 1751 to a widow, Molly Vazeille, who to be fair was not well suited to itinerating with her husband, became jealous when she read some of the flowery letters female Methodists sent John, leading to tensions and anger and finally they separated with John remarking ‘I did not send her away, I will not recall her’. It had even been remarked at their wedding that it seemed more like a funeral than a wedding. This was after Charles became alarmed that John and Grace Murray, a good match for John and a fellow Methodist prepared to travel with him, had a private agreement to marry, and Charles carted her off and married her to another man, ‘so as not to stop the revival’. To say the least, this cause a real would in the relationship between John and Charles. But he deserves his due for the hymn lyrics, and the early success– as recorded here…

Charles differed from John on some things, for instance he regularly wore a wig, John thought that was too much. Read John Tyson’s excellent book on both Wesleys, The Way of the Wesleys. John is a man who did his doctoral dissertation on Charles.

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