Note 7 — Chapter XVI · THE WESLEYS AND THEIR ERA
Reading edition
Dr. Benson in his exhaustive treatise on The English Hymn remarks: “The Wesleys inaugurated a great spiritual revival; and their hymns did as much as any human agency to kindle and replenish its fervor.... John Wesley led an ecclesiastical revolt and, failing to conquer his own church, established a new one of phenomenal proportions: the hymns prefigured the constitution of the new church and formed the manual of its spiritual discipline.”