John Wesley: A Man of One Book?

Wesley was a lover of the Bible. He believed in divine inspiration, religious authority, and truthfulness.... In the Preface to his Sermons, Wesley talked about the importance of the Bible, especially for the sake of salvation, and he famously described himself as homo unius libri (Latin, "A man of one book"): "I want to know one thing, the way to heaven-- how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way: for this very end he came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price give me the Book of God! I have it! Here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri." Wesley agreed with Protestants in their focus upon the primacy of Scriptural authority in matters of faith and practice. Although he lived two centuries after the Reformation, conflict between Protestants and Roman Catholics continued and Wesley affirmed "the written word of God to be the only and sufficient rule both of Christian faith and practice; and herein we are fundamentally distinguished from those of the Romish Church."

Although Wesley had a high view of the Bible, he was not simplistically a man of one book. On the contrary, Wesley was an Oxford University tutor who was well aware of church history, including its ecclesiastical and theological developments. He read, edited, and wrote vast numbers of books, and required that pastors and lay leaders he supervised read widely from the classics of Western civilization, logic, and rhetoric as well as the Bible in preparing them to provide leadership in churches and ministry In his "Minutes of Several Conversations," Wesley responded to Methodist leaders who argued that they only needed to study the Bible: "This is rank enthusiasm. If you read no book but the Bible, you are got above St. Paul. He wanted others too. 'Bring the books,' says he, 'but especially the parchments,' those wrote on parchment. 'but I have no taste for reading.' Contract a taste for it by use, or return to your trade." Wesley understood that theology, spirituality, and ministry are not narrow disciplines, isolated from a rich context of learning form multiple sources beyond the person and work of the Holy Spirit in people's lives as well as the Bible.
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Don Thorsen, Calvin vs. Wesley: Bringing Belief in Line with Practice, pp. 21-22.