Charles Wesley

Charles Wesley was born in 1707 at Epworth in Lincolnshire, the eighteenth child of the rector Samuel Wesley and his wife Susanna. At Christ Church, Oxford, he gathered a few students for prayer, study and visiting prisoners, a group mocked as the Holy Club and the Methodists, which his elder brother John soon led. Both brothers sailed to the colony of Georgia in 1735, an unhappy mission. In May 1738, days before John's experience at Aldersgate, Charles recorded an evangelical conversion, and he began writing hymns almost at once. For years he travelled as an open-air preacher; after marrying Sarah Gwynne in 1749 he settled in Bristol and later London. He wrote some six thousand hymns, among them And Can It Be, Love Divine, All Loves Excelling, O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing and Hark! the Herald Angels Sing. He remained loyal to the Church of England and opposed his brother's ordinations for America. He died in London in 1788. His hymns teach doctrine in song and are sung across denominations.

Faith: Anglican priest and leader, with his brother John, of the Methodist revival; he had an evangelical conversion in 1738 and wrote thousands of hymns. Source: Wikipedia

See also: John Wesley · Isaac Watts