I think the excerpt below from the website that Rusty posted last week kind of synopsizes what the author was trying to say in a lot of words about Wesley's development of the quadrilateral.
Wesley’s theological pluralism was evangelical in substance (firm and clear in its Christocentric focus) and irenic in its temper ("catholic spirit"). It measured all doctrinal statements by their Biblical base and warrants. He loved to summon his readers "to the letter and the testimony," understood as "the oracles of God." But this reliance on Scripture as the fount of revelation was never meant to preclude a concomitant appeal to the insights of wise and saintly Christians in other ages. And it never gave license to "enthusiasm" or to irrational arguments. Finally, since the devils are at least as clear in their theological assents as believers are, real Christians are called beyond "orthodoxy" to authentic experience—viz., the inner witness of the Holy Spirit that we are God’s beloved children, and joint heirs with Christ. It is this settled sense of personal assurance that is "heart religion": the turning of our hearts from the form to the power of religion. Christian experience adds nothing to the substance of Christian truth; its distinctive role is to energize the heart so as to enable the believer to speak and do the truth in love.
This complex method, with its fourfold reference, is a good deal more sophisticated than it appears, and could be more fruitful for contemporary theologizing than has yet been realized. It preserves the primacy of Scripture, it profits from the wisdom of tradition, it accepts the disciplines of critical reason, and its stress on the Christian experience of grace gives it existential force.
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