Mack explains the Methodist movement of the eighteenth century less in terms of social dislocation and more in emotional dislocation, without accepting E. P. Thompson's thesis of sexual repression or Abelove's fanciful view of its sexual excesses. She draws on a wide range of primary sources to explore the gender distinctions, of men of feeling and women in love, with some perceptive vignettes of notable preachers, both male and female, linking their writings to the friendships that they developed in their quest for Christian perfection taught by the Wesleys. In her in-depth study of Mary (Bosanquet) Fletcher and her reflections on the cross, she explores themes of pain, suffering and illness, drawing a distinction between an Enlightenment discourse of the body and the more Pietist religious discourse of the atonement (so central to the sermons and hymns of the Wesleys). Her analysis of dreams within Methodist testimonies and biographies highlights what she sees as the tension within the movement arising from its founder, who was both a product of the Enlightenment and also convinced of the reality of supernatural events. This ‘heart religion’, owing its origins to Moravianism and Pietism, is subsequently modified in a post-Wesleyan Methodism adjusting to modernity, exemplified in the life and ministry of Adam Clarke whom Mack sees as typifying the moving away of Methodism from hyper-selfconsciousness and the struggle for perfection towards social reformism and missions at home and overseas. Into these its energies are diverted in a new spirit of philanthropy and service, marking the coming of age of the movement. In this she sees the role of women shifting to a pious domesticity which marks out their place in Victorian religion. Mack's work builds on Hempton's Methodism: empire of the spirit by tracing the adjustment of the obsessive sincerity and interiority of early Methodists, amply illustrated from a wide range of sources to a new age of religious self-confidence built on a more diverse and educated male leadership. This is a significant addition to Methodist scholarship, taking us away from a preoccupation with the complex personalities of the founders of Methodism.