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D. STEPHEN LONG. John Wesley's Moral Theology: The Quest for God and Goodness. Nashville, Tennessee: Kingswood Books, 2005. Pp. xx + 257, indices. $34.00 (paper).
It has always been difficult to locate trans-Atlantic religious reform movements within the more familiar setting of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment Project. From Pietism in Germany to the Great Awakening in North America to Methodism in England, the call for a return to the personal God of Christianity clashed radier awkwardly with Enlightenment efforts to demolish the heavenly city of St. Augustine. Rather than concede the clash of cultures, later scholars portrayed theologians like John Wesley (1703-1791) as non-doctrinal protopragmatists who shifted positions in response to contemporary needs and evolving situations. D. Stephen Long takes issue with this modern reading of Wesley's commitments, arguing that Wesley remained...