Definition of "Aldersgate"

Aldersgate is the expression Methodists use to refer to the powerful spiritual experience in which, in Wesley's own words, his "heart was strangely warmed."

2000, Jan Shipps, Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years Among the Mormons‎

Consequently, Aldersgate is perceived as one more spiritual experience along the way of salvation

2004, Methodist History‎, volumes 43-44, page 268

J. Earnest Rattenbury, in his book, Wesley's Legacy in the World, quotes a man by the name of Riggs, author of The Churchmanship of John Wesley, as saying that: the Wesley before Aldersgate was not the same man as after Aldersgate.

2007, John Fremont Beeson, John Wesley and the American Frontier‎, page 150

Must our Aldersgate experience help us meet the needs of common men ?

1938, Edward Laird Mills, Christian Advocate‎, Pacific edition, volume 87, page 565

Now we know that only the road ahead can be our Aldersgate. And it can happen there, albeit, that road may lead through new battlefields of moral struggle for a Christian society before it emerges upon the heights of spiritual ecstasy.

1943, Michigan Christian Advocate‎, volume 70, page xxii

We will not have had our Aldersgate until we can, on the one hand, confess with incredible joy that Christ has taken away our sins and then, on the other hand, plunge into the work of his kingdom

1962, Motive‎, volume 23, page 16