Notes Upon the New Testament

Wesley's exegetical commentary — Methodist doctrinal standard

Tradition: Methodism / Wesleyan theology

Wesley's 1755 Methodist NT commentary — companion to Standard Sermons

Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament (1755) is John Wesley's (1703-1791) practical commentary on the entire New Testament, drawing principally on Johann Albrecht Bengel's Gnomon Novi Testamenti (1742) and Wesley's own preaching-shaped exegetical sensibility. Wesley translated, abridged, and adapted Bengel's exceptionally compressed Latin philological observations, then added his own pastoral and theological commentary aimed at literate Methodist readers without classical-language training. The Notes function alongside Wesley's Forty-four Sermons (Standard Sermons, 1746-1760) as the constitutional doctrinal-exegetical standard of Methodism — both are explicitly referenced in the Methodist Trust Deed of 1763 and subsequent Methodist constitutional documents as the standards by which Methodist preachers and doctrine are to be assessed. The Notes embody several characteristic Wesleyan emphases: (1) the universal scope of Christ's atonement (against high-Calvinist limited-atonement); (2) the doctrines of justification by faith alone, regeneration, and progressive sanctification toward Christian perfection (a defining Wesleyan teaching); (3) the role of prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying grace; (4) the practical-pastoral orientation in which doctrine serves the formation of holy living; (5) a generous Arminian-leaning soteriology, while remaining within the broad Protestant evangelical mainstream. The Notes were carried by every Methodist circuit-rider, deployed across the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Anglo-American Methodist expansion, and remain a constitutional standard for the United Methodist Church, the Wesleyan Church, the Free Methodist Church, the Salvation Army (founded by William Booth in the Wesleyan tradition), and Methodist denominations worldwide. Wesley later produced a complementary Notes Upon the Old Testament (1765).