Adam Clarke Books: A Guide to All 4 and Where to Start

TheologySermonsPreachingBiography

Adam Clarke (c. 1762–1832) was the great scholar of early Methodism. John Wesley sent him out as a preacher in 1782, and he went on to write a commentary on the whole Bible, lead the Methodist Conference three times, and read more languages than almost anyone in England. His commentary isn't in TheWay Library yet, but four of his other books are, all free to read: a body of doctrine drawn from his writings, a book of sermons, a letter of advice to young preachers, and a family history of the Wesleys. For his life story, see who was Adam Clarke.

This guide tells you what's in each one and where to begin.

Where to start

If you want to know what Clarke believed, start with Christian Theology. It's arranged by subject, so you can turn straight to faith, prayer, the Holy Spirit or heaven, and every chapter is in Clarke's own words.

After that, choose by what you want:

• To hear him preach: A Collection of Discourses on Various Subjects.
• If you preach or teach: A Letter to a Preacher.
• For the story of the Wesleys, and of Susanna Wesley above all: Memoirs of the Wesley Family.

Every quotation below is checked against the book it comes from. For many more, see our collection of Adam Clarke quotes.

Christian Theology

Clarke's friends urged him to write a full system of doctrine, but he died before he could. So his friend Samuel Dunn, a fellow Methodist preacher, gathered passages from his commentary, sermons and other writings and set them in order. The result is a Wesleyan body of divinity in Clarke's own voice.

The book opens with Dunn's life of Clarke, about a hundred paragraphs long, full of letters and memories. It's the best short account of Clarke you'll find. Then come thirty-six chapters:

• God and Scripture: why we need a revelation, God and His attributes, the Trinity, man, and the deity and work of Christ.
• The way of salvation: repentance, faith, justification, regeneration, the witness of the Holy Spirit, and entire sanctification, a heart cleansed from sin and filled with love.
• The Christian life: the moral law, public worship, prayer, praise, the church, baptism and the Lord's Supper.
• Duties at home and in society: husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, rulers, rich and poor, ministers and people.
• Last things: angels, temptation, affliction, providence, falling away, death, judgment, hell and heaven.

The chapter on prayer is one of the best places to dip in:

The eloquence of prayer consists in the fervency of desire and the simplicity of faith.

Christian Theology, Chapter XV: Prayer

And the chapter on parents and children is full of plain, loving counsel:

Tell them about Jesus: and how he loves them: and what he has done for them; and what he will do in them; and how happy he will eternally make them!

Christian Theology, Chapter XXI: Parents and Children

Read Christian Theology.

A Collection of Discourses on Various Subjects

Six long sermons, each one closer to a short treatise than a Sunday talk. Clarke says of himself in the second that he had "watched with the ancients" and "laboured with the moderns" in search of truth, and you can feel it. These are the best place to hear him preach.

1. The Rich Man and the Beggar (Luke 16): the parable phrase by phrase, and a warning about riches.
2. The Doctrine of Salvation by Faith Proved: from the Philippian jailer's question, what it means to be saved and why faith, not merit, receives it.
3. The Love of God to a Lost World (John 3:16): why God loved a world of offenders, and what He gave.
4. God's Willingness That All Men Should Be Saved (1 Timothy 2:4–6): Clarke's case that Christ gave Himself a ransom for all.
5. The Christian Prophet and His Work (1 Corinthians 14:3): preaching as edification, exhortation and comfort.
6. The Nature and Design of the Eucharist: the longest, a study of the Passover behind the Lord's Supper, of when Christ ate it, and of the Supper as a memorial of His sacrifice, with Clarke's case against transubstantiation.

The fifth sermon has a line every Christian should hear:

What Christ has done for us, is a favourite subject with many; but what Christ is to do in us, is a topic well considered but by few.

A Collection of Discourses on Various Subjects, The Christian Prophet and His Work

Read A Collection of Discourses. If you're studying the Lord's Supper, our guide to the best Christian books on the Lord's Supper suggests others.

A Letter to a Preacher

Clarke first wrote this for a young man in London who was entering the ministry, then enlarged it for every new Methodist preacher. It's short, practical and often funny. He covers the call to preach, the spirit of the work, choosing texts, behavior in the pulpit and in the homes where you stay, study, marriage and health. An appendix tells congregations how to profit from their preachers.

You preach, not merely to explain God's word, but to save souls: whenever you forget this, you go astray.

A Letter to a Preacher, Concerning the Spirit in Which You Should Do Your Work

A dull, dead preacher makes a dull, dead congregation.

A Letter to a Preacher, Concerning Your Behaviour in the Pulpit

The second half of the volume reprints his discourse on the Lord's Supper, with an introduction on whether Christ ate the Passover with His disciples. It's the same study found at the end of the Discourses.

A note on this edition: the text was restored from a scan and still has misread words and stray page headings, so compare the scan if you plan to quote it. Read A Letter to a Preacher. For more on the subject, see our guide to the best Christian books on preaching.

Memoirs of the Wesley Family

The Methodist Conference asked Clarke to write the story of John Wesley's family, and he built it from letters and papers that had been kept in the family. He believed you learn a great deal about a great man by studying the soil he grew in.

He traces the family back to Bartholomew Wesley and John Wesley of Winterborn, Puritan ministers ejected from their churches. Then comes the longest chapter, on Samuel Wesley, the learned, poor and much-tried rector of Epworth. A separate chapter reprints the family's accounts of the strange noises in the Epworth parsonage. The richest portrait is of Susanna Wesley: her mind, her way of teaching her many children, her letters to John and her peaceful death. Clarke admired her more than any woman he had read about:

I have been acquainted with many pious females, I have read the lives of several others, and composed memoirs of a few: but such a woman take her for all in all, I have not heard of, I have not read of, nor with her equal have I been acquainted.

Memoirs of the Wesley Family, Mrs. Susanna Wesley

The book closes with chapters on Samuel Jr., on Charles Wesley, and on the Wesley sisters, Emilia, Mary, Anne, Susanna, Hetty, Martha and Kezzia, several of whom had hard lives and unhappy marriages. Letters and poems fill much of the text. Read Memoirs of the Wesley Family, and for John Wesley himself, see our guide to John Wesley's books.

Why read Adam Clarke today

Clarke joins deep learning to a simple, glad faith. He'll weigh what the Church Fathers said about a verse, then turn to you and ask whether you've come to Christ. Begin with Christian Theology, keep A Letter to a Preacher near if you teach, and read the Memoirs for the family that gave Methodism its founders. All four books are on the Adam Clarke author page.