Twenty-five Articles of Religion

Twenty-five Articles of Religion, creed that was prepared by John Wesley, founder of Methodism, for the Methodist church in the United States. The creed was accepted at the conference in Baltimore, Md., in 1784, when the Methodist Episcopal Church was formally organized.

The Twenty-five Articles was essentially an abridgment of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England that excluded references to specifically English situations and went beyond the original in excluding the strict Calvinist interpretation of predestination, adopting instead a more general Lutheran view. In general, Wesley simplified and liberalized the Church of England creed. His own Arminian (based on the views of the 17th-century Dutch Reformed theologian Arminius) beliefs (i.e., that man can by his own will accept or reject divine grace) were not explicitly stated in this creed.