The Methodists began as a reform movement within the Church of England. The movement’s key leader, John Wesley, began to organize the Methodists at Oxford in the 1730s with a group of students disparagingly called the “Holy Club.” Among these intense students were Wesley’s brother Charles, and George Whitefield, soon to become the greatest evangelist of the Great Awakening in Britain and America. John Wesley struggled to find assurance of salvation until a famous church meeting in London on May 24, 1738, when, as he wrote in his journal, “I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt that I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me, that he had taken away my sins.” Wesley soon proved to be a master religious entrepreneur, developing the Methodists’ vast system of chapels and lay preachers.