“I Wish Them Well, but I Dare Not Trust Them”: John Wesley's Anti‐Catholicism in Context

Abstract

This article explores John Wesley's relationship both to Ireland and to the Roman Catholic faith and argues that Wesley's reputation as a proto‐ecumenist needs to become more muted and less idealised. Many in Ireland drew the intellectual content of their grievances against British rule from the rhetoric of liberty employed to support the Americans. Wesley's opposition to the rebellion of the colonists, as well as his support for the Church of Ireland and the Protestant landed gentry weakened the appeal of his message to the Catholic Irish. Wesley's ministry among the Pietist diaspora communities in Ireland, shows that he preferred their form of piety to that of the Catholic population. Wesley's anti‐Catholic sentiment was in keeping with widely‐held fears about Catholicism as a threat to Protestant liberty, and is considered here in the context of the rising strength of the Irish Catholic population in England and corresponding Acts to grant them greater liberties from the late 1770s. Wesley's support for the Protestant Association and the false accusation that he was an instigator of the 1780 Gordon Riots, his numerous anti‐Catholic pamphlets, and his correspondence with the Irish Capuchin monk Arthur O'Leary bring together an outline of Wesley's approach to Roman Catholicism which he saw as both a false religion and a threat to Britain's role as a global Protestant power.