This yellowing copy is nearly two hundred years old, a slim volume of seventy-six pages, but the first edition appeared over twenty years earlier, in 1733, and was Wesley's first publication. He was engaged at the time in teaching at Oxford, having recently been ordained, and had gathered round him in the university from his pupils a religious group, the object of which was the revival of spiritual rule and discipline. It me with surprising success and out of it came, unforeseen at the history of Western Christendom, in its waves of mounting power and energy touching so many phases of the nation's life, in the sweep of its world influence, and in the shaping and destiny of the greatest figure of the English Church.