SOURCE: Abelove, Henry. “Notes and Documents: John Wesley's Plagiarism of Samuel Johnson and Its Contemporary Reception.” The Huntington Library Quarterly 59, no. 1 (1996): 73-79.

In the following essay, Abelove discusses the charges of plagiarism and lack of political credibility, brought by the Baptist minister Caleb Evans against Wesley.

About the last week of September, 1775, John Wesley published A Calm Address to Our American Colonies. In it he argued that “the supreme power in England” had a clear, legal right to tax the colonies and that the Americans who thought otherwise and were “all in an uproar” had been misled by a small cabal of designing Englishmen. What these Englishmen secretly hoped to do was overthrow the monarchy, and they were fomenting civil unrest in America and in England, too, as a means to that end. If the Americans wanted to be sensible, they would stop acting as dupes of the...