The following helpful information comes from the book, The People Called Methodists: The Heritage, Life and Mission of The Methodist Church in Singapore.
The 21st century prizes innovation above tradition. Everything from internet browsing, to marketing techniques and contemporary music discounts the time-tested and the traditional. Unfortunately, even in the church the traditional is sometimes pitted against the contemporary, as in whether to choose a traditional or praise and prayer worship service, or whether to sing a 200-year-old hymn or the latest Christian hit song.
In fact, Christian communities in every age have sought to interpret the truth of the gospel for their time, partly by reading the Scriptures afresh, but also by hearing again what past Christians had to say. Tradition is both the content of what has been said as well as the process of passing it on from one generation to the next. Over the centuries, a kind of consensus has developed, upholding the legacy of experience and affirming earlier Christians. Especially profound is the tradition found in the ecumenical creeds, the prayers and worship liturgies. We may see doctrinal differences within church history; but taken as a whole, the ongoing story of the church always comes back to the standard of the Scriptures.
If Scripture is the standard for Christian doctrine, tradition is the interpretation and transmission of that standard. Tradition plays an important role in Christian doctrine. John Wesley stood squarely within the Anglican tradition and drew from the theological insights of the great 16th century Reformers, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin. But, he held the view that the tradition of the church is unbroken and continuous, rooted and shaped by the Gospel. He thus re-acquired the theological wealth of the Patristic tradition represented by the early church fathers such as Polycarp, Origen and other writers of the 2nd to the 4th centuries.
In fact, Wesley’s knowledge of the Patristic tradition probably surpassed that of most of his peers. He regarded these early writings as a guide to understanding the Scriptures, especially the more difficult and obscure passages. These early writers received from the apostles, just as the apostles received from Christ. But Wesley was, of course, aware of problems even in the Patristic writings, and warned his readers that they must always be weighed against the plain teaching of Scripture. Thus, he did not accept tradition uncritically, since he believed that all tradition must be assessed in the light of the teaching of Scripture.
Wesley was certainly indebted to the Anglican tradition. He used and supported the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, and his Sunday Service of the Methodist in North America (1784), was based on the Prayer Book.
In line with the Protestant Reformers, Wesley emphasised the primacy of scripture (sola scriptura), as well as the priority of grace and faith (sola gratia, sola fidei). But, in his desire to be faithful to Scripture, he was known to criticise some aspects of the tradition. For example, when Wesley spoke of the importance of repentance prior to justification, he was accused of turning justification into a human initiative, contrary to the Reformers. For Wesley, however, repentance itself is a gift of God, in the sense that it is only by God’s prevenient (preventing) grace awakening the individual, that repentance is possible. The point is that, while affirming the insights of the Reformers, he did not embrace their theology uncritically.
One other tradition that influenced Wesley was Pietism. He saw it as part of the larger tradition of Christian spirituality, first encountering the Moravian variety when, in 1736, he and his brother Charles were sailing to Georgia as missionaries. When a storm broke out, everyone on board the vessel feared for their lives. However, a group of German Moravians remained calm and unmoved by the raging storm as they sang the psalms without intermission.
Wesley was profoundly and permanently impressed by the Moravians’ unperturbed calmness in the face of death. His subsequent theological engagements with leading Moravians, like Peter Böhler and Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf, helped him to form his doctrine of justification and the Christian life.
— The People Called Methodists, p. 67