During the twentieth century, a time of buoyant ecumenical action for Methodists worldwide, John Wesley's sermon Catholic spirit often appeared as something of a lodestar for church union and dialogue, prodded by Wesley's sanguine illocution: ‘Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike?’ In more recent years, the sermon continues to bolster hope among those who wish to avoid further divisions, as Churches wrestle with schism over issues of doctrine and practice (everything from biblical inspiration and Christology to, most prominently, sexuality). In The limits of a Catholic spirit, Kelly Diehl Yates raises the question seemingly too obvious for historians to have either asked or answered in all these years: What did John Wesley actually believe about Roman Catholicism (or Roman Catholics, for that matter)?

As Diehl Yates explains, the phrase ‘catholic spirit’ predates Wesley's sermon, perhaps most significantly in the works of Richard Baxter. Wesley knew Baxter's writing well – his maternal grandfather, too, numbered among the ministers ejected after the 1662 Act of Uniformity. Yet while Baxter's use of the phrase was rooted in a deep-seated rejection of Roman Catholicism as the one true Church, Wesley's aim was to bolster cooperation through a liberty of conscience among Protestants in a time when Methodists straddled the ecclesial fence and found themselves embroiled in theological controversy: ‘This book asserts that Wesley never intended the concept of catholic spirit to apply to Catholics. He aimed the sermon at Dissenters and Anglicans’ (p. 43).

John Wesley's legacy remains that of a relentlessly complicated church leader. On the one hand, as Diehl Yates effectively delineates in the third chapter, Wesley maintained strong High Church commitments both politically and theologically (this, despite his embrace of practices we almost always associate with Protestant Dissent, a topic Diehl Yates largely elides). Amidst the charged political environment of 1740s England, as fears of a Jacobite invasion and rebellion swept the land, John and Charles Wesley each attempted to distance themselves from the accusation of Jacobitism, warning that a Roman Catholic monarch would inevitably turn the nation to sins of dishonesty and ill-repute.

On the other hand, Wesley's efforts to gain a foothold for the Methodist movement in Ireland seemed to indicate a far more amenable spirit. In the fourth chapter, Diehl Yates explores the Irish mission as a pivotal context leading up to the sermon and the subsequent appearance of Wesley's Letter to a Roman Catholic only three months after. She argues in painstaking detail that – all appearances to the contrary – his real aim was to encourage restraint among Irish Catholics rather than some progressive assessment of Roman Catholicism. While Wesley claimed a common heritage of shared doctrine with Roman Catholics – perhaps most surprisingly to some, his affirmation of the perpetual virginity of Mary (p. 85) – he nevertheless rejected many other aspects of Catholic belief, including distinctives in Mariology, the veneration of icons and relics, indulgences, eucharistic beliefs and that perennial bugbear, the supremacy of the pope (pp. 155, 198). In short, Wesley only hoped Irish Catholics would stop interfering with Methodist preaching, as rioting mobs threatened the welfare of his lay preachers and disturbed the reputation of the movement that had already grown rapidly elsewhere.

Wesley's advocacy for a ‘catholic spirit’ belongs to his complicated legacy. For one, in the fifth chapter, Diehl Yates shows that Wesley did not always treat others with the sort of tolerant attitude he espoused in public. In addition to Roman Catholics, whose legal emancipation he opposed as a necessary good for national security, Wesley privately labelled erstwhile friends among the Moravians as deceitful ‘Jesuits’ (pp. 114–17). However, in a stroke of irony, the Methodists themselves were similarly castigated by their fellow Anglicans as tainted by a ‘papist’ or ‘Jesuit’ spirit: mystic enthusiasm filled their meetings, women played an uncommon (and allegedly sensual) role in the societies and their doctrine of sanctification leading to perfection struck Calvinists as little more than thinly veiled Pelagianism. Of course, as Diehl Yates admirably traces in the sixth chapter, allegations such as these did not hinder widespread accusations that the Wesleys had fomented the crowds to anti-Catholic violence in the Gordon Riots of 1780.

Perhaps the most representative example of John Wesley's complicated relationship with Roman Catholicism is his attitude towards the great spiritual devotions of the Church. Wesley believed that Methodists ought to be ‘a reading people’, so he took it upon himself to develop an unparalleled publishing industry for their welfare – so much so that Wesley became the foremost author/editor/publisher in the eighteenth century (p. 181). Roman Catholic devotionals comprised a significant portion of Wesley's publishing record, especially works by Thomas á Kempis, Madame Guyon and François de Sales. Wesley thought that works penned by these authors, once abridged by his own hand, spoke truly about matters of prayer and the spiritual life, even when falling short on the doctrine of justification. The influence of these writings on his own thought is profound, yet while Wesley persistently admonished his followers to avoid the errors of mysticism and quietism, even he could slip into casuistry (see the startling account of his callous response to the death of Adam Clarke's infant child on p. 194).

By the end of this valuable study, I found myself drawing the conclusion that, in terms of a ‘catholic spirit’, Wesley founded his commitment to mutual forbearance on a non-negotiable belief that all people require the new birth, whatever their mode of worship. But Wesley was surely not so focused on a theology of love that he was unprincipled, latitudinarian, or indifferent towards Roman Catholics (or anyone else for that matter). In this, Diehl Yates has shown how meticulous work in published and unpublished archival materials continues to bear fruit in the ongoing, critical reception of John Wesley and the early Methodists in Britain. This revised dissertation has a workmanlike tone – steady in explaining basic political realities and almost unyielding in its corrective to anachronism, though repeatedly summarising her argument along the way almost to a fault – but always in a manner that made me think my undergraduate and postgraduate students alike would be wise to read this scrupulous monograph conscientiously.

Wesley's ability to sift wheat and tares in everything from evangelism to devotional publications reveals the upside of his Enlightenment commitment to a principle of mutual toleration. Even if Wesley remained very much a man of his times in his persistent anti-Catholic rhetoric, and never supported the full repeal of Catholic disabilities that became a matter of public debate towards the end of his life, the foundation was laid for the subsequent ecumenical commitments that many Methodists have perceived in works such as Catholic spirit. Diehl Yates tells the story of Wesley's life predominantly against the grain of such a reading, but the closing lines of the book hint that even she sees that Wesley could have lived out what his disciples saw better than he ever managed to observe in practice.