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THE 
 
 LIFE OF WESLEY; 
 
 RISE AND PROGRESS 
 
 $$ttyohi$m. 
 
 By ROBERT SOUTHEY, Esq. 
 
 POET LAUREATE, 
 
 Member of the royal Spanish academy, of the royal Spanish academy 
 of history, and of the royal institute of the netherlands, &c. 
 
 Read not to contradict and confute ; nor to believe and take for granted ; 
 nor to find talk and discourse : but to weigh and consider. 
 
 Lord Bacon. 
 
 THE SECOND EDITION. 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 LONDON : 
 PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, KURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN, 
 
 PATERNOSTER-ROW. 
 1820. 
 
A-21 
 
 5 727UA 
 
 THE 
 
 LIFE OF WESLEY. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ©EATH OF MRS. WESLEY. WESLEY'S SISTERS. 
 
 WESLEY AT EPWORTH. 
 
 Methodism had now taken root in the land. 
 Mpeting-houses had been erected in various parts 
 of the kingdom, and settled, not upon trustees, 
 (which would have destroyed the unity of Wesley's 
 scheme, by making the preachers dependent upon 
 the people, as among the Dissenters,) but upon him- 
 self, the acknowledged head and sole director of 
 the society which he had raised and organised. 
 JFunds were provided by a financial regulation so 
 well devised, that the revenues would increase in 
 exact proportion to the increase of the members. 
 Assistant preachers were ready, in any number 
 that might be required, whose zeal and activity 
 compensated, in no slight degree, for their want 
 of learning ; and whose inferiority of rank and edu- 
 cation disposed them to look up to Mr. Wesley 
 with deference as well as respect, and fitted them 
 for the privations which they were to endure, and 
 the company with which they were to associate. 
 A system of minute inspection had been estab-. 
 lished, which was at once so contrived as to gratify 
 vol. n. B 
 
2 DEATH OF MRS. WESLEY. [174£. 
 
 every individual, by giving him a sense of his own 
 importance, and to give the preacher the most 
 perfect knowledge of those who were under his 
 charge. No confession of faith was required from 
 any person who desired to become a member : in 
 this Wesley displayed that consummate prudence 
 which distinguished him whenever he was not led 
 astray by some darling opinion. The door was 
 thus left open to the orthodox of all descriptions, 
 Churchmen or Dissenters, Baptists or Paedobaptists, 
 Presbyterians or Independents, Calvinists or Ar- 
 minians ; no profession, no sacrifice of any kind 
 was exacted. The person who joined the new so- 
 ciety was not expected to separate himself from 
 the community to which he previously belonged. 
 He was only called upon to renounce his vices, and 
 follies which are near a-kin to them. Like the 
 Free-mason, he acquired by his initiation new con- 
 nections and imaginary consequence ; but unlike 
 the Free-mason, he derived a real and direct benefit 
 from the change which in most instances was 
 operated in the habits and moral nature of the 
 proselytes. 
 
 To this stage Methodism had advanced when 
 Wesley lost his mother, in a good old age, ready 
 and willing to depart. Arriving in London from 
 one of his circuits, he found her "on the borders 
 of eternity 5 but she had no doubt or fear, nor any 
 desire but, as soon as God should call, to depart 
 and to be with Christ." On the third day after 
 his arrival, he perceived that her change was near. 
 «« I Sate down," he says, « on the bed-side. She 
 
174*2.] DEATH OF MltS. WESLEY. 3 
 
 was in her last conflict, unable to speak, but I be- 
 lieve quite sensible. He look was calm and se- 
 rene, and her eyes fixed upward, while we com- 
 mended her soul to God. From three to four the 
 silver cord was losing, and the wheel breaking at 
 the cistern ; and then, without any struggle, or 
 sigh, or groan, the soul was set at liberty. We 
 stood round the bed, and fulfilled her last request, 
 uttered a little before she lost her speech : 
 * Children, as soon as I am released, sing a psalm 
 of praise to God.' " He performed the funeral 
 service himself, and thus feelingly describes it: 
 " Almost an innumerable company of people be- 
 ing gathered together, about five in the afternoon 
 I committed to the earth the body of my mother to 
 sleep with her fathers. The portion of Scripture 
 from which I afterwards spoke was, / saw a great 
 white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face 
 the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was 
 found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small 
 and great, stand before God ; and the hooks were 
 opened, and the dead were judged out of those things 
 which were written in the books, according to their 
 works. It was one of the most solemn assemblies 
 I ever saw, or expect to see, on this side * eternity." 
 
 * The epitaph which her sons placed upon her tomb-stone is remark- 
 able. Instead of noticing the virtues of so extraordinary and exemplary 
 a woman, they chose to record what they were pleased to call her con- 
 version, and to represent her as if she had lived in ignorance of real 
 Christianity during the life of her excellent husband. 
 
 This is the inscription : — 
 
 Here lies the body of Mrs. Susannah Wesley, the youngest and last 
 surviving daughter of t)r. Samuel Annesley. 
 
4 DEATH OF MRS. WESLEY. 
 
 Mrs. Wesley had had her share of sorrow. 
 During her husband's life she had struggled with 
 narrow circumstances, and at his death she was 
 left dependent upon her children. Of nineteen 
 children she had wept over the early graves of far 
 the greater number : she had survived her son 
 Samuel, and she had the keener anguish of seeing 
 two of her daughters unhappy, and perhaps of fore- 
 seeing the unhappiness of the third ; an unhappi- 
 ness the more to be deplored, because it was not 
 altogether undeserved. 
 
 Among Wesley's pupils at Lincoln was a young 
 man, by name Hall, of good person, considerable 
 talents, and manners which were in a high degree 
 
 In sure and steadfast hope to rise 
 And claim her mansion in the skies, 
 A Christian here her flesh laid down, 
 The cross exchanging for a crown. 
 
 True daughter of affliction she, 
 Inured to pain and misery, 
 Mourn' d a long night of griefs and fears, 
 A legal night of seventy years. 
 
 The Father then reveal'd his Son, 
 Him in the broken bread made known, 
 She knew and felt her sins forgiven, 
 And found the earnest of her Heaven. 
 
 Meet for the fellowship above, 
 She heard the call, " Arise, my Love !** 
 I come, her dying looks replied, 
 And lamb-like as her Lord she died. 
 
 The third stanza alludes to her persuasion that she had recefved an 
 assurance of the forgiveness of her sins at the moment when her son. 
 in-law Hall was administering the sacrament of the Lord's Supper to 
 her — See vol. i. p. 291. 
 
wesley's sisters. 5 
 
 prepossessing, to those who did not see beneath 
 the surface of such things. Wesley was much at- 
 tached to him ; he thought him humble and teach- 
 able, and in all manner of conversation holy and 
 unblameable. There were indeed parts of his con- 
 duct which might have led a wary man to suspect 
 either his sanity or his sincerity ; but the tutor was 
 too sincere himself, and too enthusiastic, to enter- 
 tain the suspicion which some of his extravagancies 
 might justly have excited. He considered them 
 as " starts of thought which were not of God, 
 though they at first appeared to be ;" and was 
 satisfied, because the young man " was easily 
 convinced, and his imaginations died away." 
 Samuel formed a truer judgement. " I never liked 
 the man," says he, " from the first time I saw him. 
 His smoothness never suited my roughness. He 
 appeared always to dread me as a wit and a jester : 
 this with me is a sure sign of guilt and hypocrisy. 
 He never could meet my eye in full light. Con- 
 scious that there was something foul at bottom, he 
 was afraid I should see it, if I looked keenly into 
 his eye." John, however, took him to his bosom. 
 He became a visitor at Epworth, won the affections 
 of the youngest sister Kezia, obtained her promise 
 to marry him, fixed the day, and then, and not till 
 then, communicated the matter to her brother and 
 her parents, affirming vehemently that " the thing 
 was of God ; that he was certain it was God's will ; 
 God had revealed to him that he must marry, and 
 that Kezia was the very person." Enthusiastic as 
 Wesley himself was, the declaration startled him, 
 
 b S 
 
G wesley's sisters. 
 
 and the more so, because nothing could be more 
 opposite to some of Hall's former extravagancies. 
 Writing to him many years afterwards, when he 
 had thrown off all restraints of outward decency, 
 he says, " Hence I date your fall. Here were se- 
 veral faults in one. You leaned altogether to your 
 own understanding, not consulting either me, who 
 was then the guide of your soul, or the parents of 
 your intended wife, till you had settled the whole 
 affair. And while you followed the voice of Na- 
 ture, you said it was the voice of God." 
 
 In spite, however, of the ominous fanaticism or 
 impudent hypocrisy which Mr. Hall had mani- 
 fested, neither Wesley nor the parents attempted 
 to oppose the match : it was an advantageous 
 one, and the girl's affections were too deeply en« 
 gaged. But to the utter astonishment of all par- 
 ties, in the course of a few days, Mr. Hall changed 
 his mind, and pretending, with blasphemous ef- 
 frontery, that the Almighty had changed His, de- 
 clared that a second revelation had countermanded 
 the first, and instructed him to marry not her, but 
 her sister Martha. The family, and especially the 
 brothers, opposed this infamous proposal with proper 
 indignation ; and Charles addressed a poem * to 
 
 * TO MISS MARTHA WESLEY. 
 
 When want, and pain, and death, besiege our gate, 
 And every solemn moment teems with fate, 
 While clouds and darkness fill the space between, 
 Perplex th' event, and shade the folded scene, 
 In humble silence wait th' unuttered voice, 
 "Suspend thy will, and check thy forward choice ; 
 
Wesley's sisters. 7 
 
 the new object of his choice, which must have 
 stung her like a scorpion whenever the recollection 
 
 Yet, wisely fearful, for th' event prepare, 
 
 And learn the dictates of a brother's care. 
 
 How fierce thy conflict, how severe thy flight ! 
 
 When hell assails the foremost sons of light ! 
 
 When he, who long in virtue's paths had trod, 
 
 Deaf to the voice of conscience and of God, 
 
 Drops the fair mask, proves traitor to his vow, 
 
 And thou the temptress, and the tempted thou ! 
 
 Prepare thee then to meet th' infernal war, 
 
 And dare beyond what woman knows to dare; 
 
 Guard each avenue to thy flutt'ring heart, 
 
 And act the sister's and the Christian's part. 
 
 Heav'n is the guard of virtue; scorn to yield, 
 
 When screen'd by Heav'n's impenetrable shield: 
 
 Secure in this, defy th' impending storm, 
 
 Tho' Satan tempt thee in an angel's form. 
 
 And oh ! I see the fiery trial near : 
 
 I see the saint, in all his forms, appear ! 
 
 By nature, by religion taught to please, 
 
 With conquest flush'd, and obstinate to press, 
 
 He lists his virtues in the cause of hell, 
 
 Heav'n with celestial arms, presumes t' assail, 
 
 To veil, with semblance fair, the fiend within, 
 
 And make his God subservient to his sin ! 
 
 Trembling I hear his horrid vows renewed, 
 
 I see him come, by Delia's groans pursued ; 
 
 Poor injur'd Delia ! all her groans are vain ! 
 
 Or he denies, or list'ning, mocks her pain, 
 
 What tho' her eyes with ceaseless tears o'erflow, 
 
 Her bosom heave with agonising woe ! 
 
 What tho' the horror of his falsehood near, 
 
 Tear up her faith, and plunge her in despair! 
 
 Yet, can he think (so blind to Heav'n's decree, 
 
 And the sure fate of cursed apostacy) 
 
 Soon as he tells the secret of his breast, 
 
 And puts the angel ofif, and stands confess'd ; 
 
 When love, and grief, and shame, and anguish meet, 
 
 To make his crimes and Delia's wrongs complete, 
 
 That then the injur'd maid will cease to grieve, 
 
 Behold him in a sister's arms — and live? 
 
 Mistaken wretch ! by thy unkindness hurl'd 
 
 From ease, from love, from thee, and from the world, 
 
 B 4 
 
» WESLEY S SISTERS. 
 
 of its just severity recurred to her in after-life. 
 But these remonstrances were of no avail, for Hall 
 had won her affections also. " This last error," 
 says Wesley, " was far worse than the first. But 
 you was now quite above conviction. So, in spite 
 of her poor astonished parent, of her brothers, of 
 all your vows and promises, you jilted the younger 
 and married the elder sister. The other, who had 
 honoured you as an angel from heaven, and still 
 loved you much too well, (for you had stolen her 
 heart from the God of her youth 5 ) refused to be 
 comforted : she fell into a lingering illness, which 
 terminated in her death. And doth not her blood 
 still cry unto God from the earth ? Surely it is 
 upon your head." 
 
 Mr. Wesley died before the marriage : it is not 
 to be believed that, under such circumstances, he 
 
 Soon must she land on that immortal shore, 
 Where falsehood never can torment her more; 
 There all her suff'rings, all her sorrows cease, 
 Nor saints turn devils- there to vex her peaee. 
 Yet hope not then, all specious as thou art, 
 To taint, with impious vows, her sister's heart; 
 With proffer'd worlds her honest soul to move, 
 Or tempt her virtue to incestuous love. 
 No ! wert thou as thou wast ! did Heav'n's first rays 
 Beam on thy soul, and all the godhead blaze ! 
 Sooner shall sweet oblivion set us free 
 From friendship, love, thy perfidy and thee : 
 Sooner shall light in league with darkness join, "i 
 Virtue and vice, and heav'n and hell combine, > 
 Than her pure soul consent to mix with thine; 3 
 To share thy sin, adopt thy perjury, 
 And damn herself to be reveng'd on thee ; 
 To load her conscience with a sister's blood, 
 The guilt of incest, anil the curse of God I 
 
wesley's sisters. 9 
 
 would ever have consented to it ; and it is possible 
 that his strong and solemn prohibition might have 
 deterred his daughter from so criminal an union. 
 Samuel observed bitterly of this fatal connection : 
 " I am sure I may well say of that marriage, it will 
 not, cannot come to good." And he proposed 
 that Kezia should live with him, in the hope that it 
 might save her from " discontent perhaps, or from 
 a worse passion." But, like most of her family, this 
 injured girl possessed a lofty spirit. She subdued 
 her resentment, and submitted with so much ap- 
 parent resignation to the wrong which she had 
 received, that she accompanied the foul hypocrite 
 and his wife to his curacy. But it consumed her 
 by the slow operation of a settled grief. Charles 
 thus describes her welcome release in a letter to 
 John : " Yesterday morning sister Kezzy died in 
 the Lord Jesus. He finished his work, and cut it 
 short in mercy. Full of thankfulness, resignation, 
 and love, without pain or trouble, she commended 
 her spirit into the hands of Jesus, and fell asleep." 
 Till this time John Wesley believed that Mr. Hall 
 was, " without all question, filled with faith and 
 the love of God, so that in all England," he said, 
 " he knew not his fellow." He thought him a 
 pattern of lowliness, meekness, seriousness, and 
 continual advertence to the presence of God, and, 
 above all, of self-denial in every kind, and of suf- 
 fering all things with joyfulnessj " But now," he 
 says, " there was a worm at the root of the gourd." 
 For about two years after his marriage there was 
 no apparent change in his conduct ; his wife then 
 
10 Wesley's sisters. 
 
 began to receive her proper punishment from the 
 caprice and asperity of his temper. After a while 
 he seemed to recover his self-command, but soon 
 again he betrayed a hasty and contemptuous dis- 
 position : from having been the humble and de- 
 voted disciple of the Wesley s, he contracted gra- 
 dually a dislike towards them, and at length broke 
 off all intercourse with them, public or private, 
 because they would not, in conformity to his ad- 
 vice, renounce their connection with the Church 
 of England. He had now his own followers, whom 
 he taught first to disregard the ordinances of re- 
 ligion, then to despise them, and speak of them 
 with contempt. He began to teach that there was 
 " no resurrection of the body, no general judge- 
 ment, no Hell, no worm that never dieth, no fire 
 that never shall be quenched." His conduct was 
 now conformable to his principles, if indeed the 
 principles had not grown out of a determined pro- 
 pensity for vice and profligacy. Wesley addressed 
 an expostulatory letter to him, in which he reca- 
 pitulated, step by step, his progress in degrad- 
 ation. After stating to him certain facts, which 
 proved the licentiousness of his life, he concluded 
 thus : " And now you know not that you have 
 done any thing amiss ! You can eat, and drink, and 
 be merry 1 You are every day engaged with variety 
 of company, and frequent the coffee-houses ! Alas, 
 my brother, what is this ! How are you above mea- 
 sure hardened by the deceitfulness of sin ! Do you 
 remember the story of Santon Barsisa? I pray God 
 your last end' may not be like his ! Oh how have 
 
 19 
 
wesley's sisters. 11 
 
 you grieved the Spirit of God ! Return to him 
 with weeping, fasting, and mourning ! You are in 
 the very belly of Hell ; only the pit hath not yet 
 shut its mouth upon you. Arise, thou sleeper, and 
 call upon thy God ! Perhaps He may yet be found. 
 Because He yet bears with me, I cannot despair 
 for you. But you have not a moment to lose. 
 May God this instant strike you to the heart, that 
 you may feel His wrath abiding on you, and have 
 no rest in your bones by reason of your sin, till all 
 your iniquities are done away." 
 
 Soon after he had written this letter, which was 
 done more for the purpose of delivering his own 
 soul, as he says, than with any reasonable hope of 
 impressing a man so far gone in depravity, Wesley, 
 in the course of his travelling, came to Mr. Hall's 
 house, at Salisbury, and was let in, though orders 
 had been given that he should not be admitted. 
 Hall left the room as soon as he entered,- sent a 
 message to him that he should quit the house, and 
 presently turned his wife out of doors also. Having 
 now thrown off all restraint and all regard to de- 
 cency, he publicly and privately recommended po- 
 lygamy as comformable to nature, preached in its 
 defence, and practised as he preached. Soon he 
 laid aside all pretensions to religion, professed him- 
 self an infidel,' and led for many years the life of 
 an adventurer and a profligate, at home and 
 abroad ; acting sometimes as a physician, some- 
 times as a priest, and assuming any character ac- 
 cording to the humour or the convenience of the 
 d.ay B Wesley thought that this unhappy man would 
 
12 Wesley's sisters. 
 
 never have thus wholly abandoned himself to these 
 flagitious propensities, if the Moravians had not 
 withdrawn him from his influence, and therefore 
 he judged them to be accountable for his perdi- 
 tion. He seems to have felt no misgiving that he 
 himself might have been the cause ; that Hall 
 might have continued to walk uprightly if he had 
 kept the common path ; and that nothing could be 
 more dangerous to a vain and headstrong man of a 
 heated fancy, than the notion that he had attained 
 to Christian perfection, and felt in himself the ma- 
 nifestations of the Spirit. Weary of this life at last* 
 after many years, and awakened to a sense of its 
 guilt as well as its vanity, he returned to England 
 in his old age, resumed his clerical functions, and 
 appears to have been received by his wife. Wesley 
 was satisfied that his contrition was real, and 
 hastened to visit him upon his death-bed ; but it 
 was too late. " I came," he says, " just time 
 enough not to see, but to bury poor Mr. Hall, my 
 brother-in-law, who died, I trust, in peace, for God 
 had given him deep repentance. Such another 
 monument of divine mercy, considering how low 
 he had fallen, and from what height of holiness, I 
 have not seen, no, not in seventy years ! I had de- 
 signed to visit him in the morning, but he did not 
 stay for my coming. It is enough if, after all his 
 wanderings, we meet again in Abraham's bosom." 
 Mrs. Hall bore her fate with resignation, and with 
 an inward consciousness that her punishment was 
 not heavier than her fault : — that fault excepted, 
 the course of her life was exemplary, and she lived 
 
wesley's sisters. 13 
 
 to be the last survivor of a family whose years were 
 protracted far beyond the ordinary age of man. 
 
 Mehetabel, her sister, had a life of more un- 
 mingled affliction. In the spring freshness of youth 
 and hope, her affections were engaged by one who, 
 in point of abilities and situation, might have been 
 a suitable husband ; some circumstances, however, 
 occasioned a disagreement with her father, the 
 match was broken off, and Hetty committed a 
 fatal error, which many women have committed in 
 their just but blind resentment — she married the 
 first person who offered. This was a man in no 
 desirable rank of life, of coarse mind and manners, 
 inferior to herself in education and in intellect, and 
 every way unworthy of a woman whose equal in 
 all things it would have been difficult to find. For 
 her person was more than commonly pleasing, her 
 disposition gentle and affectionate, her principles 
 those which arm the heart either for prosperous or 
 adverse fortune, her talents remarkable, and her 
 attainments beyond what are ordinarily permitted 
 to women, even those who are the most highly 
 educated. Duty in her had produced so much af- 
 fection towards the miserable creature whom she 
 had made her husband, that the brutal profligacy 
 of his conduct almost broke her heart. Under 
 such feelings, and at a time when she believed and 
 hoped that she should soon be at peace in the grave, 
 she composed this Epitaph for herself: — 
 
 Destined while living to sustain 
 An equal share of grief and pain, 
 All various ills of human race 
 Within this breast had once a place. 
 
14 wesley's sisters. 
 
 Without complaint she learnM to bear 
 A living death, a long despair; 
 Till hard oppressed by adverse fate, 
 O'ercharged, she sank beneath the weight, 
 And to this peaceful tomb retired, 
 So much esteem'd, so long desired. 
 The painful mortal conflict's o'er; 
 A. broken heart can bleed no more. 
 
 From that illness, however, she recovered, so 
 far as to linger on for many years, living to find in 
 religion the consolation which she needed, and 
 which nothing else can bestow. The state of her 
 mind is beautifully expressed in the first letter 
 which she ever addressed to John upon the subject. 
 " Some years ago," she says, " I told my brother 
 Charles I could not be of his way of thinking then, 
 but that if ever I was, I would as freely own it. 
 After I was convinced of sin, and of your opinion, 
 as far. as I had examined your principles, I still 
 forbore declaring my sentiments so openly as I 
 had inclination to do, fearing I should relapse into 
 my former state. When I was delivered from this 
 fear, and had a blessed hope that he who had be- 
 gun would finish his work, I never confessed, so 
 fully as I ought, how entirely I was of your mind ; 
 because I was taxed with insincerity and hypocrisy 
 whenever I opened my mouth in favour of religion, 
 or owned how great things God had done for me. 
 This discouraged me utterly, and prevented me 
 from making my change as public as my folly and 
 vanity had formerly been. But now my health is 
 gone, I cannot be easy without declaring that I 
 have long desired to know but one thing, that is 
 
• wesley's- sisters. 15 
 
 Jesus Christ, and him crucified; and this desire 
 prevails above all others. And though I am cut 
 off from all human help or ministry, I am not 
 without assistance ; though I have no spiritual 
 friend, nor ever had one yet, except perhaps once 
 in a year or two, when I have seen one of my 
 brothers, or some other religious person, by stealth; 
 yet (no thanks to me) I am enabled to seek Him 
 still, and to be satisfied with nothing less than God, 
 in whose presence I affirm this truth. I dare not 
 desire health, only patience, resignation, and the 
 spirit of an healthful mind. I have been so long 
 weak, that I know not how long my trial may last; 
 but I have a firm persuasion, and blessed hope, 
 (though no full assurance,) that, in the country I 
 am going to, I shall not sing Hallelujah, and holy, 
 holy, holy, without company, as I have done in 
 this. Dear brother, I am unused to speak or write 
 on these things : I only speak my plain thoughts 
 as they occur. Adieu 1 If you have time from 
 better business to send a line to Stanmore, so great 
 a comfort would be as welcome as it is wanted/' 
 
 She lived eight years after this letter was written, 
 bearing her sufferings with patience and pious 
 hope. Charles was with her in her last illness. He 
 says in his journal, " Prayed by my sister Wright, 
 a gracious, tender, trembling soul ; a bruised 
 reed, which the Lord will not break." " Thy sun 
 shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon 
 withdraw itself,, for the Lord shall be thine ever- 
 lasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall, 
 be ended/' From these words he preached her 
 
16 WESLEY AT EPWOHTH. [1742. 
 
 funeral sermon, with a feeling which brought him 
 into " sweet fellowship with the departed ;" and 
 he says, that all who were present seemed to par- 
 take both of his sorrow and his joy. 
 
 Another of the sisters married a clergyman by 
 name Whitelamb, who had been John's pupil at 
 Oxford, was beholden to the family * during his 
 stay at college, and obtained the living of Wroote 
 after his father-in-law's death. John, in the begin- 
 ning of his regular itinerancy, on his way back 
 from Newcastle, after his first appearance in that 
 town, came to Ep worth. Many years had elapsed 
 since he had been in his native place, and not 
 knowing whether there were any persons left in it 
 who would not be ashamed of his acquaintance, he 
 went to an inn, where, however, he was soon found 
 out by an old servant of his father's. The next 
 day being Sunday, he called upon the curate. 
 Mr. Romley, and offered to assist him either by 
 preaching or reading prayers ; but his assistance 
 was refused, and the use of the pulpit was denied 
 him. A rumour, however, prevailed, that he was 
 to preach in the afternoon j the church was filled 
 in consequence, and a sermon was delivered upon 
 the evils of enthusiasm, to which Wesley listened 
 with his characteristic composure. But when the 
 sermon was over, his companion gave notice, as the 
 
 * Writing to his brother Samuel in 1732, Wesley says, " John 
 Whitelamb wants a gown much : I am not rich enough to buy him one 
 at present. If you are willing, my twenty shillings (that were) should 
 go towards that, I will add ten to them, and let it lie till I have tried 
 my utmost with my friends to make up the price of a new one." 
 
 17 
 
1742.] WESLEY AT EPWORTH. 17 
 
 people were coming out, that Mr. Wesley, not 
 being permitted to preach in the church, would 
 preach in the church-yard at six o'clock. " Ac- 
 cordingly," says he, " at six I came, and found 
 such a congregation as I believe Epworth never 
 saw before. I stood near the east end of the 
 church, upon my father's tomb-stone, and cried, 
 * The kingdom of heaven is not meat and drink, 
 but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy 
 Ghost.' " 
 
 Wesley has been accused harshly and hastily of 
 want of feeling, because he preached upon his 
 father's grave. But it was from feeling, as much 
 as enthusiasm, that he acted, knowing that he 
 should derive a deeper passion from the ground 
 upon which he stood ; like the Greek tragedian, who 
 when he performed Electra, brought into the theatre 
 the urn containing the ashes of his own child. 
 Nor was there any danger that the act should be 
 misconstrued by those who heard him : mad they 
 might think him, but they knew his domestic cha- 
 racter, and were assured that he had not stood with 
 a holier or more reverential feeling beside that grave 
 when his father's body was consigned to it, earth to 
 earth. Seven successive evenings he preached upon 
 that tomb-stone, and in no place did he ever preach 
 with greater effect. " Lamentations," he says, 
 " and great groanings were heard, God bowing their 
 hearts so, and on every side, as, with one accord, 
 they lifted up their voices and wept aloud ; several 
 dropt down as dead ; and, among the rest, such a 
 cry was heard of sinners groaning for the righteous- 
 
 VOL. II. c 
 
18 WESLEY AT EPWORTH. £1742. 
 
 ness of faith, as almost drowned my voice. But 
 many of these soon lifted up their heads with joy, 
 and broke out into thanksgiving, being assured 
 they now had the desire of their soul, the forgive- 
 ness of their sins." Whitelamb was one of his au- 
 ditors, and wrote to him afterwards in terms which, 
 while they show a just sense of the rash doctrine 
 that he preached, and the extravagance that he 
 encouraged, show also the powerful ascendancy 
 which "Wesley had obtained over him by his talents 
 and his virtues. " Dear brother," he says, " I 
 saw you at Ep worth on Tuesday evening. Fain 
 would I have spoken to you, but that I am quite at 
 a loss how to address or behave. Your way of 
 thinking is so extraordinary, that your presence 
 creates an awe, as if you were an inhabitant of an- 
 other world. God grant you and your followers 
 may always have entire liberty of conscience : will 
 you not allow others the same ? Indeed I can- 
 not think as you do, any more than 1 can help ho- 
 nouring and loving you. Dear Sir, will you credit 
 me? I retain the highest veneration and affection 
 for you. The sight of you moves me strangely. 
 I feel, in a higher degree, all that tenderness and 
 yearning of bowels with which I am affected toward 
 every branch of Mr. Wesley's family. I cannot re- 
 frain from tears when I reflect, this is the man 
 who at Oxford was more than a father to me ! this 
 is he whom I have there heard expound or dispute 
 publicly, or preach at St. Mary's with such ap- 
 plause ! and, oh that I should ever add, whom I 
 have lately heard preach at Epworth ! Dear Sir, 
 
1742.] WESLEY AT EPWORTH. 19 
 
 is it in my power to serve or oblige you in any 
 way ? Glad I should be that you would make use 
 of me. God open all our eyes, and lead us into 
 truth whatever it be." 
 
 Wesley has said that Whitelamb did not at this 
 time believe in Christianity, nor for many years 
 afterwards. If it were so, the error was not im- 
 probably occasioned by a strong perception of the 
 excesses into whieh the Methodists had been be- 
 trayed ; just as monkery and the Romish fables 
 produce irreligion in Catholic countries. But it is 
 most likely a hasty, or a loose expression, for 
 Whitelamb was a man of excellent character : no 
 tendency to unbelief appears in such of his letters 
 as have been published ; and the contrary inference 
 may be drawn from what he says to Charles : " I 
 cannot but look upon your doctrines as of ill con- 
 sequence ; — consequence, I say ; for, take them 
 nakedly in themselves, and nothing seems more 
 innocent j nay, good and holy. Suppose we grant 
 that in you and the rest of the leaders, who are 
 men of sense and discernment, what is called the 
 se,al and testimony of the Spirit is something real, 
 yet I have great reason to think that, in the gene- 
 rality of your followers, it is merely the effect of a 
 heated fancy." This is judicious language, and 
 certainly betrays no mark of irreligion. He offered 
 his pulpit to Wesley, and incurred much censure 
 for so doing, from those who neither considered 
 the relation in which he stood to him, nor did 
 justice to his principles and feelings. 
 
 c % 
 
20 WESLEY AT EPWORTH. [1742. 
 
 Some remarkable circumstances attended Wes- 
 ley's preaching in these parts. Some of his oppo- 
 nents, in the excess of their zeal against enthusiasm, 
 took up a whole waggon load of Methodists, and car- 
 ried them before a justice. When they were asked 
 what these persons had done, there was an awkward 
 silence ; at last, one of the accusers said, " Why, 
 they pretended to be better than other people ; 
 and, besides, they prayed from morning till night." 
 The magistrate asked if they had done nothing 
 else. — " Yes, Sir," said an old man, " an't please 
 your worship, they have converted my wife. Till 
 she went among them she had such a tongue ! and 
 now she is as quiet as a lamb !" — " Carry them 
 back, carry them back," said the magistrate, * and 
 let them convert all the scolds in the town." 
 Among the hearers in the church-yard was a gen- 
 tleman, remarkable for professing that he was of 
 no religion : for more than thirty years he had not 
 attended at public worship of any kind ; and, per- 
 haps, if Wesley had preached from the pulpit in- 
 stead of the tomb-stone, he might not have been 
 induced to gratify his curiosity by hearing him. 
 But when the sermon was ended, Wesley perceived 
 that it had reached him, and that he stood like 
 a statue ; so he asked him abruptly, " Sir, are you 
 a sinner?" — "Sinner enough," was the reply, 
 which was uttered in a deep and broken voice ; and 
 he continued staring upwards, till his wife and 
 servants, who were all in tears, put him into his 
 chaise and took him home. Ten years afterwards, 
 Wesley says in his journal, " I called on the gentle- 
 
 10 
 
174-'] WESLEY AT EPWORTH. 21 
 
 man who told me he was * sinner enough,' when 
 I preached first at Epworth on my father's tomb, 
 and was agreeably surprised to find him strong in 
 faith, though exceeding weak in body. For some 
 years, he told me, he had been rejoicing in God 
 without either doubt or fear, and was now waiting 
 for the welcome hour when he should depart and 
 be with Christ." 
 
 There were indeed few places where his preach- 
 ing was attended with greater or more permanent 
 effect than at Epworth, upon this first visit. " Oh," 
 he exclaims, " let none think his labour of love is 
 lost, because the fruit does not immediately ap- 
 pear ! Near forty years did my father labour here, 
 but he saw little fruit of all his labour. I took 
 some pains among this people too ; and my strength 
 also seemed spent in vain. But now the fruit ap- 
 peared. There were scarce any in the town on 
 whom either my father or I had taken any pains 
 formerly, but the seed so long sown now sprung 
 up, bringing forth repentance and remission of 
 sins." The intemperate and indecent conduct of 
 the curate must undoubtedly have, provoked a feel- 
 ing in favour of Wesley ; for this person, who was 
 under the greatest obligations to the Wesley fa- 
 mily, behaved toward him with the most offensive 
 brutality. In a state of beastly intoxication him- 
 self) he set upon him with abuse and violence in 
 the presence of a thousand people ; and when some 
 persons, who had come from the neighbouring 
 towns to attend upon the new preacher, by his di- 
 rection* waited upon Mr. Romley to inform him 
 
 c 3 
 
9PI WESLEY AT EPWORTH. [1742. 
 
 that they meant to communicate on the following 
 Sunday, he said to them in reply, " Tell Mr. 
 Wesley I shall not give him the sacrament, for he 
 is not Jit." This insult called forth from Wesley a 
 strong expression of feeling in his journal : " How 
 wise a God," says he, " is our God ! There could 
 not have been so Jit a place under Heaven where 
 This should befal me : first, as my father's house, 
 the place of my nativity, and the very place where, 
 according to the strictest sect of our religion, I had 
 so long lived a Pharisee. It was also Jit, in the 
 highest degree, that he who repelled me from that 
 very table, where I had myself so often distributed 
 the bread of life, should be one who owed his all 
 in this world to the tender love which my father 
 had shown to his, as well as personally to himself." 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 OUTCRY AGAINST METHODISM. VIOLENCE OF MOBS 
 
 AND MISCONDUCT OF MAGISTRATES. 
 
 Methodism had now assumed some form and con- 
 sistence. Meeting-houses had been built, societies 
 formed and disciplined, funds raised, rules enacted, 
 lay preachers admitted, and a regular system of 
 itinerancy begun. Its furious symptoms had sub- 
 sided, the affection had reached a calmer stage of 
 its course, and there were no longer any of those 
 outrageous exhibitions which excited scandal and 
 compassion, as well as astonishment. But Wesley 
 continued, with his constitutional fervour, to preach 
 the doctrines of instantaneous regeneration, assur- 
 ance, and sinless perfection. These doctrines gave 
 just offence, and became still more offensive when 
 they were promulgated by unlettered men, with 
 all the vehemence and self-sufficiency of fancied 
 inspiration. Wesley himself added to the offence 
 by the loftiness of his pretensions. In the preface 
 to his third journal he says, *' It is not the work 
 of man which hath lately appeared; all who 
 calmly observe it must say, * This is the Lord's 
 doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes.' The man- 
 ner wherein God hath wrought is as strange as the 
 work itself. These extraordinary circumstances 
 seem to have been designed by God for the farther 
 
 c 4 
 
24f OUTCRY AGAINST METHODISM. [1742 
 
 manifestation of his work, to cause his power to be 
 known, and to awaken the attention of a drowsy 
 world." He related cures wrought by his faith 
 and his prayers, which he considered, and repre- 
 sented as positively miraculous. By thinking 
 strongly on a text of Scripture which promised that 
 these signs should follow those that believe, and by 
 calling on Christ to increase his faith and confirm 
 the word of his grace, he shook off instantane- 
 ously, he says, a fever which had hung upon him 
 for some days, and was in a moment freed from 
 all pain, and restored to his former strength. He 
 visited a believer at night who was not expected to 
 live till the morning : the man was speechless and 
 senseless, and his pulse gone. " A few of us," says 
 Wesley, " immediately joined in prayers. I relate 
 the naked fact. Before we had done, his senses 
 and his speech returned. Now, he that will ac- 
 count for this by natural causes has my free leave. 
 But I choose to say, this is the power of God." So, 
 too, when his own teeth ached, he prayed, and the 
 pain left him. And this faith was so strong, that 
 it sufficed sometimes to cure not only himself but 
 his horse also. " My horse," he says, " was so ex- 
 ceedingly lame, that I was afraid I must have lain 
 by. We could not discern what it was that was 
 amiss, and yet he could scarce set his foot to the 
 ground. By riding thus seven miles I was 
 thoroughly tired, and my head ached more than it 
 had done for some months. What I here aver is 
 the naked fact : let every man account for it as he 
 sees good. I then thought, * Cannot God heal 
 
1742.] OUTCRY AGAINST METHODISE 25 
 
 either man or beast, by any means, or without 
 any? Immediately my , weariness and headache 
 ceased, and my horse's lameness in the same in- 
 stant. Nor did he halt any more either that day 
 or the next. A very odd accident this also." 
 
 Even those persons who might have judged fa- 
 vourably of Wesley's intentions, could not but 
 consider representations like these as discreditable 
 to his judgement. But those who were less cha- 
 ritable impeached his veracity, and loudly accused 
 him of hypocrisy and imposture. The strangest 
 suspicions and calumnies were circulated ; and 
 men will believe any calumnies, however prepos- 
 terously absurd, against those of whom they are 
 disposed to think ill. He had hanged himself, and 
 been cut down just in time; — he had been fined 
 for selling gin ; — he was not the real John Wesley, 
 for every body knew that Mr. Wesley was dead. 
 Some said he was a Quaker, others an Anabaptist : 
 a more sapient censor pronounced him a Presby- 
 terian-Papist. It was commonly reported that he 
 was a Papist, if not a Jesuit ; that he kept Popish 
 priests in his house ; — nay, it was beyond dispute 
 that he received large remittances from Spain, in 
 order to make a party among the poor, and when 
 the Spaniards landed, he was to join them with 
 20,000 men. Sometimes it was reported that he 
 was in prison upon a charge of high treason; and 
 there were people who confidently affirmed that 
 they had seen him with the Pretender in France. 
 Reports to this effect were so prevalent, that when, 
 in, the beginning of the year 1744, a proclamation 
 
26 OUTCRY AGAINST METHODISM. [1742, 
 
 was issued requiring all Papists to leave London, 
 he thought it prudent to remain a week there, that 
 he might cut off all occasion of reproach ; and this 
 did not prevent the Surry magistrates from sum- 
 moning him, and making him take the oath of al- 
 legiance, and sign the declaration against Popery. 
 Wesley was indifferent to all other accusations; 
 but the charge of disaffection, in such times, might 
 have drawn on serious inconveniences j and he 
 drew up a loyal address to the King, in the name 
 of " The Societies in derision called Methodists." 
 They thought it incumbent upon them to offer this 
 address, the paper said, if they must stand as a 
 distinct body from their brethren ; but they pro- 
 tested that they were a part, however mean, of the 
 Protestant Church established in these kingdoms ; 
 and that it was their principle to revere the higher 
 powers as of God, and to be subject for conscience 
 sake. The address, however, was not presented; 
 probably because of an objection which Charles 
 started, of its seeming to allow that they were a 
 body distinct from the National Church, whereas 
 they were only a sound part of that Church. 
 Charles himself was more seriously incommoded 
 by the imputation of disloyalty than his brother; 
 When he was itinerating in Yorkshire, an accusa- 
 tion was laid against him of having spoken treason- 
 able words, and witnesses were summoned before 
 the magistrates at Wakefield to depose against him. 
 Fortunately for him, he learnt this in time to pre- 
 sent himself, and confront the witnesses. He had 
 prayed that the Lord would call home his banished 
 ones j and this the accusers construed, in good faith, 
 
174*2.] OUTCRY AGAINST METHODISM. 27 
 
 to mean the Pretender. The words would have 
 had that meaning from the mouth of a Jacobite. 
 But Charles Wesley, with perfect sincerity, dis- 
 claimed any such intention. " I had no thoughts," 
 he said, " of praying for the Pretender, but for 
 those who confess themselves strangers and pil- 
 grims upon earth, — who seek a country, knowing 
 this it not their home. You, Sir," he added, ad- 
 dressing himself to a clergyman upon the bench ; 
 " you, Sir, know, that the Scriptures speak of us 
 as captive exiles, who are absent from the Lord 
 while present in the body. We are not at home 
 till we are in Heaven." The magistrates were men 
 of sense : they perceived that he explained him- 
 self clearly — that his declarations were frank and 
 unequivocal, and they declared themselves per- 
 fectly satisfied. 
 
 Yet these aspersions tended to aggravate the in- 
 creasing obloquy under which the Wesleys and 
 their followers were now labouring. " Every Sun- 
 day," says Charles, " damnation is denounced 
 against all who hear us, for we are Papists, Jesuits, 
 seducers, and bringers-in of the Pretender. The 
 clergy murmur aloud at the number of communi- 
 cants, and threaten to repel them." He was him- 
 self repelled at Bristol, with circumstances of in- 
 decent violence. " Wives and children," he says, 
 " are beaten and turned out of doors, and the 
 persecutors are the complainers : it is always the 
 lamb that troubles the water!" A maid-servant 
 was turned away by her master* " because^" he 
 said, " he would have none in his house who had 
 
28 OUTCRY AGAINST METHODISM. [1742. 
 
 received the Holy Ghost !" She had been thrown 
 into the convulsions of Methodism, and continued 
 in them fourteen hours. This happened at Bath, 
 where, as Charles expresses himself^ " Satan took 
 it ill to be attacked in his head quarters." John 
 had a curious interview there with Beau Nash, for 
 it was in his reign. While he was preaching, this 
 remarkable personage entered the room, came close 
 to the preacher, and demanded of him by what 
 authority he was acting. Wesley made answer, 
 " By that of Jesus Christ, conveyed to me by the 
 present Archbishop of Canterbury, when he laid 
 his hands upon me and said, « Take thou authority 
 to preach the Gospel.' " — Nash then affirmed that 
 he was acting contrary to the laws : " Besides," said 
 he, " your preaching frightens people out of their 
 wits." — " Sir," replied Wesley, " did you ever hear 
 me preach ?" — tc No," said the Master of the Ce- 
 remonies. — " How then can you judge of what 
 you never heard ?" — Nash made answer, " By com- 
 mon report." — " Sir," said Wesley, " is not your 
 name Nash ? I dare not judge of you by common 
 report : I think it not enough to judge by." 
 However accurate common report might have 
 been, and however rightly Nash might have judged 
 of the extravagance of Methodism, he was deliver- 
 ing opinions in the wrong place ; and when he de- 
 sired to know what the people came there for, one 
 of the congregation cried out, " Let an old woman 
 answer him : — you, Mr. Nash, take care of your 
 body, we take care of our souls, and for the food 
 of our souls we come here." He found himself a 
 
1742.] VIOLENCE OF MOBS. 29 
 
 very different person in the meeting-house from 
 what he was in the pump-room or the assembly, 
 and thought it best to withdraw. 
 
 But Wesley had soon to encounter more danger- 
 ous opposition. Bristol was the first place where he 
 received any serious disturbance from the rabble. 
 After several nights of prelusive uproar, the mob 
 assembled in great strength. " Not only the 
 courts and the alleys," he says, * but all the street 
 upwards and downwards, was filled with people, 
 shouting, cursing and swearing, and ready to swal- 
 low the ground with fierceness and rage. They 
 set the orders of the magistrates at nought, and 
 grossly abused the chief constable, till a party of 
 peace officers arrived and took the ringleaders into 
 custody. When they were brought up before the 
 mayor, Mr. Combe, they began to excuse them- 
 selves, by reviling Wesley ; but the mayor properly 
 cut them short by saying, " What Mr. Wesley is is 
 nothing to you. I will keep the peace. I will 
 have no rioting in this city." And such was the 
 effect of this timely and determined interposition 
 of the civil power, that the Methodists were never 
 again disturbed by the rabble at Bristol. In Lon- 
 don also the same ready protection was afforded. 
 The chairman of the Middlesex justices, hearing 
 of the disposition which the mob had shown, called 
 upon Mr. Wesley, and telling him that such things 
 were not to be suffered, added, " Sir, I and the 
 other Middlesex magistrates have orders from above 
 to do you justice whenever you apply to us." 
 This assistance he applied for when the mob stoned 
 
SO VIOLENCE OF MOBS. [1742. 
 
 him and his followers in the streets, and attempted 
 to unroof the Foundry. At Chelsea they threw 
 wildfire and crackers into the room where he was 
 preaching. At Long-Lane they broke in the roof 
 with large stones, so that the people within were in 
 danger of their lives. Wesley addressed the rabble 
 without effect ; he then sent out three or four steady 
 and resolute men to seize one of the ringleaders : 
 they brought him into the house, cursing and 
 blaspheming, dispatched him under a good escort 
 to the nearest justice, and bound him over to the 
 next sessions at Guildford. A remarkable circum- 
 stance occurred during this scene. One of the 
 stoutest champions of the rioters was struck with 
 sudden contrition, and came into the room with a 
 woman who had been as ferocious as himself — 
 both to fall upon their knees, and acknowledge the 
 mercy of God. 
 
 These disturbances were soon suppressed in the 
 metropolis and its vicinity, where the magistrates 
 knew their duty, and were ready to perform it ; but 
 in some parts of the country, the very persons whose 
 office it was to preserve the peace, instigated their 
 neighbours and dependants to break it. Wesley 
 had preached at Wednesbury, in Staffordshire, both 
 in the town-hall, and in the open air, without mo- 
 lestation. The colliers in the neighbourhood had 
 listened to him peaceably; and between three and 
 four hundred persons formed themselves into a 
 society as Methodists. Mr. Egginton, the minister 
 of that town, was at first well pleased with this ; 
 but offence was given him by some great indis- 
 
 12 
 
1742.] MISCONDUCT OF MAGISTRATES. 31 
 
 cretion, and from that time he began to oppose the 
 Methodists by the most outrageous means. Some 
 of the neighbouring magistrates were ignorant 
 enough of their duty, both as magistrates and as men, 
 to assist him in stirring up the rabble, and to refuse 
 to act in behalf of the Methodists, when their per- 
 sons and property were t attacked. Mobs were col- 
 lected by the sound of horn, windows were de- 
 molished, houses broken open, goods destroyed or 
 stolen, men, women, and children beaten, pelted, 
 and dragged in the kennels, and even pregnant 
 women outraged to the imminent danger of their 
 lives, and the disgrace of humanity. The mob said 
 they would make a law, and that all the Methodists 
 should set their hands to it ; and they nearly mur- 
 dered those who would not sign a paper of recant- 
 ation. When they had had the law in their own 
 hands for four or five months, (such in those days 
 was the state of the police !) Wesley came to Bir- 
 mingham on his way to Newcastle ; and hearing 
 of the state of things at Wednesbury, went there, 
 like a man whose maxim it was always to look 
 danger in the face. He preached in mid-day, and 
 in the middle of the town, to a large assembly of 
 people, without the slightest molestation either 
 going or coming, or while he was on the ground. 
 But in the evening the mob beset the house in 
 which he was lodged : they were in great strength, 
 and their cry was, " Bring out the minister ! we 
 will have the minister !" Wesley, who never, on any 
 occasion, lost his calmness or his self-possession, 
 desired one of his friends to take the captain of 
 
S9. VIOLENCE OF MOBS. [1743. 
 
 the mob by the hand, and lead him into the house. 
 The fellow was either soothed or awed by Wesley's 
 appearance and serenity. He was desired to bring 
 in one or two of the most angry of his companions : 
 they were appeased in the same manner, and made 
 way for the man whom, five minutes before, they 
 would fain have pulled to pieces, that he might go 
 out to the people. Wesley then called for a chair, 
 got upon it, and demanded of the multitude what 
 they wanted with him ? Some of them made 
 answer, they wanted him to go with them to the 
 justice. He replied, with all his heart; and added 
 a few sentences, which had such an effect, that a 
 cry arose, " The gentleman is an honest gentleman, 
 and we will spill our blood in his defence." But 
 when he asked whether they should go to the justice 
 immediately, or in the morning, (for it was in the 
 month of October, and evening was closing in,) 
 most of them cried, " To-night, to-night !" Ac- 
 cordingly they set out for the nearest magistrate's, 
 Mr. Lane, of Bentley-Hall. His house was about 
 two miles distant : night came on before they had 
 walked half the way : it began to rain heavily : the 
 greater part of the senseless multitude dispersed, 
 but two or three hundred still kept together ; and 
 as they approached the house, some of them ran 
 forward to tell Mr. Lane they had brought Mr. 
 Wesley before his worship. " What have I to do 
 with Mr. Wesley ?" was the reply : " go and carry 
 him back again." By this time the main body 
 came up, and knocked at the door. They were 
 told that Mr. Lane was not to be spoken with ; but 
 
1743.] VIOLENCE OF MOBS. 33 
 
 the son of that gentleman came out, and enquired 
 what was the matter. " Why, a'nt please you," 
 said the spokesman, " they sing psalms all day ; 
 nay and make folks rise at five in the morning. 
 And what would your worship advise us to do ?" 
 * e To go home," said Mr. Lane, " and be quiet." 
 
 Upon this they were at a stand, till some one ad- 
 vised that they should go to Justice Persehouse, at 
 Walsal. To Walsal, therefore, they went : it was 
 about seven when they arrived, and the magistrate 
 sent out word that he was in bed, and could not 
 be spoken with. Here they were at a stand again: 
 at last they thought the wisest thing they could do 
 would be make the best of their way home ; and 
 about fifty undertook to escort Mr. Wesley ; not as 
 their prisoner, but for the purpose of protecting him, 
 so much had he won upon them by his command- 
 ing and yet conciliating manner. But the cry had 
 arisen in Walsal that Wesley was there, and a fresh 
 fierce rabble rushed out in pursuit of their victim. 
 They presently came up with him. His escort 
 stood manfully in his defence j and a woman, who 
 was one of their leaders, knocked down three or 
 four Walsal men, before she was knocked down 
 herself, and very nearly murdered. His friends 
 were presently overpowered, and he was left in the 
 hands of a rabble too much infuriated to hear him 
 speak. " Indeed," he says, " it was in vain to at- 
 tempt it, for the noise on every side was like the 
 roaring of the sea." The entrance to the town was 
 down a steep hill, and the path was slippery, be- 
 cause of the rain. Some of the ruffians endea- 
 
 VOL. II. d 
 
8t4f VIOLENCE OF MOBS. [17*13. 
 
 voured to throw him down, and, if they had ac- 
 complished their purpose, it was not likely that he 
 would ever have risen again : but he kept his feet. 
 Part of his clothes was torn off; blows were aimed 
 at him with a bludgeon, which, had they taken 
 effect, would have fractured his skull ; and one 
 cowardly villain gave him a blow on the mouth 
 which made the blood gush out. With such out- 
 rages they dragged him into the town. Seeing the 
 door of a large house open, he attempted to go in, 
 but was caught by the hair, and pulled back into 
 the middle of the crowd. They hauled him to- 
 ward the end of the main street, and there he made 
 toward a shop-door, which was half open, and 
 would have gone in, but the shopkeeper would 
 not let him, saying, that, if he did, they would pull 
 the house down to the ground. He made a stand, 
 however, at the door, and asked if they would 
 hear him speak ? Many cried out, " No, no ! 
 knock his brains out ! down with him ! kill him at 
 once !" A more atrocious exclamation was uttered 
 by one or two wretches. " I almost tremble," says 
 Wesley, " to relate it I — * Crucify the dog ! crucify 
 him!' " Others insisted that he should be heard. 
 Even in mobs that opinion will prevail which has 
 the show of justice on its side, if it be supported 
 boldly. He obtained a hearing, and began by 
 asking, " What evil have I done ? which of you 
 all have I wronged in word or deed ?" His power- 
 ful and persuasive voice, his ready utterance, and 
 his perfect self-command, stood him on this peril- 
 ous emergency in good stead. A cry was raised, 
 
1743.] VIOLENCE OF mobs.- 35r 
 
 ct Bring him away ! bring him away !" When it 
 ceased, he then broke out into prayer;, and the 
 very man who had just before headed the rabble, 
 turned and said, " Sir, I will spend my life for 
 you ! follow me, and not one soul here shall touch 
 a hair of your head !" This man had been a prize- 
 fighter at a bear garden ; his declaration, there- 
 fore, carried authority with it ; and when one man 
 declares himself on the right side, others will se- 
 cond him w r ho might have wanted courage to take 
 the lead. A feeling in Wesley's favour was now 
 manifested, and the shopkeeper, who happened to 
 be the mayor of the town, ventured to cry out, 
 " For shame ! for shame ! let him go ;" having, 
 perhaps, some sense of humanity, and of shame 
 for his own conduct. The man who took his part 
 conducted him through the mob, and brought him, 
 about ten o'clock, back to Wednesbury in safety, 
 with no other injury than some slight bruises. The 
 populace seemed to have spent their fury in this 
 explosion ; and when, on the following morning, 
 he rode through the town on his departure, some 
 kindness was expressed by all whom he met. A 
 few days afterwards, the very magistrates who had 
 refused to see him when he was in the hands of the 
 rabble, issued a curious warrant, commanding dili- 
 gent search to be made after certain " disorderly 
 persons, styling themselves Methodist preachers, 
 who were going about raising routs and riots, to 
 the great damage of His Majesty's liege people, 
 and against the peace of 'our Sovereign Lord the 
 King." 
 
 d 2 
 
30 VIOLENCE OF MOBS. [1743. 
 
 It was only at Wednesbury that advantage was 
 taken of the popular cry against the Methodists to 
 break open their doors and plunder their houses ; 
 but greater personal barbarities were exercised in 
 other places. Some of the preachers received se- 
 rious injury ; others were held under water till they 
 were nearly dead ; and of the women who attended 
 them, some were so treated by the cowardly and 
 brutal populace, that they never thoroughly re- 
 covered. In some places they daubed the preacher 
 all over with paint. In others"* they pelted the 
 people in the meetings with egg-shells, which they 
 had filled with blood and stopt with pitch. The 
 progress of methodism was rather furthered than 
 impeded by this kind of persecution, for it rendered 
 the Methodists objects of curiosity and compassion; 
 and in every instance the preachers displayed that 
 fearlessness which enthusiasm t inspires, and which, 
 when the madness of the moment was over, made 
 even their enemies respect them. 
 
 * The most harmless mode of annoyance was practised at Bedford. 
 The meeting-room was over a place where pigs were kept. An alder- 
 man of the town was one of the society; and his dutiful nephew took 
 care that the pigs should always be fed during the time of preaching, 
 that the alderman might have the full enjoyment of their music as well 
 as their odour. Wesley says, in one of his Journals, " the stench from 
 the swine under the room was scarce supportable. Was ever a preach- 
 ing place over a hog-stye before ! Surely they love the gospel who come 
 to hear it in such a place." 
 
 f When John Leach was pelted near Rochdale in those riotous days, 
 and saw his brother wounded in the forehead by a stone, he was mad 
 enough to tell the rabble that not one of them could hit him, if he 
 were to stand preaching there till midnight. Just then the mob began 
 to quarrel among themselves, and therefore left off pelting. But the 
 anecdoto has been related by his brethren for his praise ! 
 
1743.] MISCONDUCT OF MAGISTRATES. 3J 
 
 These things were sufficiently disgraceful to the 
 nation ; but the conduct of many of the provincial 
 magistrates was far more so, for they suffered them- 
 selves to be so far influenced by passion and po- 
 pular feeling, as to commit acts of abominable 
 oppression under the colour of law. The vicar 
 of Birstal, which was John Nelson's home and 
 head-quarters, thought it justifiable to rid the parish 
 by any means of a man who preached with more 
 zeal and more effect than himself; and he readily 
 consented to a proposal from the alehouse-keepers 
 that John should be pressed for a soldier ; for, as 
 fast as he made converts, they lost customers. He 
 was pressed accordingly, and taken before the 
 commissioners at Halifax, where the vicar was one 
 of the bench, and though persons enough attended 
 to speak to his character, the commissioners said 
 they had heard enough of him from the minister of 
 his parish, and could hear nothing more. " So, 
 gentlemen," said John, " I see there is neither law 
 nor justice for a man that is called a Methodist :" 
 and addressing the vicar by his name, he said, 
 " What do you know of me that is evil ? Whom 
 have I defrauded ? or where have I contracted a 
 debt that I cannot pay?" — " You have no visible 
 way of getting your living," was the reply. He 
 answered, " I am as able to get my living with my 
 hands as any man of my trade in England is, and 
 you know it." But all remonstrances were in vain, 
 he was marched off" to Bradford, and there, by 
 order of the commissioners, put in the dungeon : 
 the filth and blood from the shambles ran into the 
 
 d 3 
 
38 MISCONDUCT OF MAGISTRATES. [174<3v 
 
 place, and the only accommodation afforded him 
 there was some stinking straw, for there was not 
 even a stone to sit on. 
 
 John Nelson had as high a spirit and as brave a 
 heart as ever Englishman was blessed with ; and he 
 was encouraged by the good offices of many zealous 
 friends, and the sympathy of some to whom he was 
 a stranger. A soldier had offered to be surety for 
 him, and an inhabitant of Bradford, though an 
 enemy to the Methodists, had, from mere feelings 
 of humanity, offered to give security for him if he 
 might be allowed to lie in a bed. His friends 
 brought him candles, and meat and water, which 
 they put through a hole in the door, and they sang 
 hymns till a late hour in the night, they without 
 and he within. A poor fellow was with him in this 
 miserable place, who might have been starved if 
 Nelson's friends had not brought food for him also. 
 When they lay down upon their straw, this man 
 asked him, " Pray, sir, are all these your kins- 
 folk, that they love you so well ? I think they are 
 the most loving people that ever I saw in my life." 
 At four in the morning his wife came and spake to 
 him through the hole in the door ; and John, who 
 w r as now well read in his Bible, said that Jeremiah's 
 lot was fallen upon him. The wife had profited 
 well by her husband's lessons. Instead of bewail- 
 ing for him and for herself, (though she was to be 
 left with two children, and big with another,) she 
 said to him, " Fear not ; the cause is God's for 
 which you are here, and he will plead it himself: 
 therefore be not concerned about me and the 
 
1743.] MISCONDUCT OF MAGISTRATES. 39 
 
 children ; for he that feeds the young ravens will 
 be mindful of us. He will give you strength for 
 your day ; and after we have suffered a while, he 
 will perfect that which is lacking in our souls, and 
 then bring us where the wicked cease from troubling, 
 and where the weary are at rest." Early in the 
 morning he was marched, under a guard, to Leeds ; 
 the other pressed men were ordered to the alehouse, 
 but he was sent to prison ; and there he thought of 
 the poor pilgrims who were arrested in their pro- 
 gress ; for the people came in crowds, and looked 
 at him through the iron grate. Some said it was a 
 shame to send a man for a soldier for speaking the 
 truth, when they who followed the Methodists, and 
 till that time had been as wicked as any in the 
 town, were become like new creatures, and never 
 an ill word was heard from their lips. Others 
 wished that all the Methodists were hanged out of 
 the way. " They make people go mad," said they ; 
 " and we cannot get drunk or swear, but every 
 fool must correct us, as if we were to be taught by 
 them. And this is one of the worst of them." 
 Here, how T ever, he met with some kindness. The 
 jailor admitted his friends to see him, and a bed 
 was sent him by some compassionate person, when 
 he must otherwise have slept upon stinking straw. 
 
 On the following day he was marched to York, 
 and taken before some officers. Instead of remon- 
 strating with them upon the illegal manner in which 
 he had been seized, and claiming his discharge, he 
 began to reprove them for swearing ; and when 
 they told him he was not to preach there, for he 
 
 d 4 
 
40 MISCONDUCT OF MAGISTRATES. [174S- 
 
 was delivered to them as a soldier, and must not 
 talk in that manner to his officers, he answered, 
 that there was but one way to prevent him, which 
 was by not swearing in his hearing. John Nelson's 
 reputation was well known in York, and the po- 
 pular prejudice against the Methodists was just at 
 its height. " We were guarded through the city," 
 he says, " but it was as if hell were moved from 
 beneath to meet me at my coming. The streets 
 and windows were tilled with people, who shouted 
 and huzzaed, as if I had been one that had laid 
 waste the nation. But the Lord made my brow 
 like brass, so that I could look on them as grass- 
 hoppers, and pass through the city as if there had 
 been none in it but God and myself." Lots were 
 cast for him at the guard-house ; and when it was 
 thus determined which captain should have him, 
 he was offered money, which he refused to take, 
 and for this they bade the sergeant hand-cuff him, 
 and send him to prison. The hand-cuffs, were not 
 put on : but he was kept three days in prison, 
 where he preached to the poor reprobates among 
 whom he was thrown, and, wretches as they were, 
 ignorant of all that was good, and abandoned to all 
 that was evil, the intrepidity of the man who re- 
 proved them for their blasphemies, and the sound 
 reason which appeared amidst all the enthusiasm of 
 his discourse, was not without effect. Strangers 
 brought him food ; his wife also followed him here, 
 and encouraged him to go on and suffer every thing 
 bravely for conscience sake. On the third day a 
 court-martial was held, and he was guarded to it 
 
1743.] MISCONDUCT OF MAGISTRATES. 41 
 
 by a file of musqueteers, with their bayonets fixed. 
 When the court asked, " What is this man's crime ?" 
 the answer was, " This is the Methodist preacher, 
 and he refuses to take money :" upon which they 
 turned to him, and said, " Sir, you need not find 
 fault with us, for we must obey our orders, which 
 are to make you act as a soldier : you are delivered 
 to us; and if you have not justice done you, we 
 cannot help it." John Nelson plainly told them he 
 would not fight, because it was against his way of 
 thinking : and when he again refused the money, 
 which by their bidding was offered him, they told 
 him, that, if he ran away, he would be just as 
 liable to suffer as if he had taken it. He replied, 
 " If 1 cannot be discharged lawfully, 1 shall not 
 run away. If I do, punish me as you please." 
 He was then sent to his quarters, where his arms 
 and accoutrements were brought him and put on. 
 " Why do you gird me," said he, " with these 
 warlike habiliments ? I am a man averse to war, 
 and shall not fight, but under the Prince of Peace, 
 the Captain of my salvation : the weapons he gives 
 me are not carnal, like these." He must bear 
 those, they told him, till he could get his dis- 
 charge. To this he made answer, that he would 
 bear them then as a cross, and use them as far as 
 he could without defiling his conscience, which he 
 would not do for any man on earth. 
 
 There was a spirit in all this which, when it had 
 ceased to excite ridicule from his comrades, ob- 
 tained respect. He had as good opportunities of 
 exhorting and preaching as he could desire: he 
 
42 MISCONDUCT OF MAGISTRATES. [174*3. 
 
 distributed also the little books which Wesley had 
 printed to explain and vindicate the tenets of the 
 Methodists, and was as actively employed in the 
 cause to which he had devoted himself j as if he had 
 been his own master. At last the ensign of his 
 company sent for him, and accosting him with an 
 execration, swore he would have no preaching nor 
 praying in the regiment. " Then," said John, " Sir, 
 you ought to have no swearing or cursing neither ; 
 for surely I have as much right to pray and preach, 
 as you have to curse and swear." Upon this the 
 brutal ensign swore he should be damnably flogged 
 for what he had done. " Let God look to that," was 
 the resolute man's answer. " The cause is His. But 
 if you do not leave off your cursing and swearing, 
 it will be worse with you than with me." The en- 
 sign then bade the corporal put that fellow into 
 prison directly ; and when the corporal said he 
 must not carry a man to prison unless he gave in 
 his crime with him, he told him it was for disobey- 
 ing orders. To prison, therefore, Nelson was 
 taken, to his heart's content ; and, after eight-and- 
 fbrty hours' confinement, was brought before the 
 major, who asked him what he had been put in 
 confinement for. " For warning people to flee 
 from the wrath to come," he replied ; " and if that 
 be a crime, I shall commit it again, unless you cut 
 my tongue out ; for it is better to die than to dis- 
 obey God." The major told him, if that was all, 
 it was no crime : when he had done his duty, he 
 might preach as much as he liked, but he must 
 make no mobs. And then wishing that all men 
 
1743.] MISCONDUCT OF MAGISTRATES. 43 
 
 were like him, he dismissed him to his quarters. 
 But Nelson was not yet out of the power of the 
 ensign. One Sunday, when they were at Darling- 
 ton, hoping to find an occasion for making him 
 feel it, he asked him why he had not been at 
 church. Nelson replied, " I was, Sir, and if you 
 had been there, you might have seen me ; for I 
 never miss going when I have an opportunity." 
 He then asked him if he had preached since they 
 came there : and being told that he had not pub- 
 licly, wished, with an oath, that he would, that he 
 might punish him severely. John Nelson did not 
 forbear from telling him, that if he did not repent 
 and leave off his habit of swearing, he would suffer 
 a worse punishment than it was in his power to 
 inflict ; and it was not without a great effort of 
 self-restraint, that he subdued his resentment at 
 the insults which this petty tyrant poured upon 
 him, and the threats which he uttered. " It caused 
 a sore temptation to arise in me," he says, " to 
 think that an ignorant wicked man should thus 
 torment me, — and 1 able to tie his head and 
 heels together ! I found an old man's bone in me ; 
 but the Lord lifted up a standard, when anger was 
 coming on like a flood ; else I should have wrung 
 his neck to the ground, and set my foot upon 
 him." The Wesleys, however, meantime, were 
 exerting their influence to obtain his discharge, 
 and succeeded by means of the Countess of Hunt- 
 ingdon. His companion, Thomas Beard, who had 
 been pressed for the same reason, would probably 
 have been discharged also, but the consequence 
 
44* VIOLENCE OF MOBS. [1743. 
 
 of his cruel and illegal impressment had cost him 
 his life. He was seized with a fever, the effect of 
 fatigue and agitation of mind : they let him blood, 
 the arm festered, mortified, and was amputated ; 
 and he died soon after the operation ! 
 
 Resort was had to the same abominable measure 
 for putting a stop to Methodism in various other 
 places. A society had been formed at St. Ives, 
 in Cornwall, by Charles Wesley. There was, how- 
 ever, a strong spirit of opposition in that country ; 
 and when news arrived that Admiral Matthews 
 had beaten the Spaniards, the mob pulled down 
 the preaching-house for joy. " Such," says Wes- 
 ley, " is the Cornish method of thanksgiving ! — 
 I suppose if Admiral Lestock had fought too, they 
 would have knocked all the Methodists on the 
 head !" The vulgar supposed them to be disaf- 
 fected persons, ready to join the Pretender as soon 
 as he should land j and men in a higher rank of life, 
 and of more attainments, thought them " a parcel 
 of crazy-headed fellows," and were so offended and 
 disgusted with their extravagances, as not only to 
 overlook the good which they really wrought among 
 those who were not reclaimable by any other 
 means, but to connive at, and even encourage 
 any excesses which the brutal multitude might 
 choose to commit against them. As the most ex- 
 peditious mode of proceeding, pressing was resorted 
 to j and some of the magistrates issued warrants 
 for apprehending several of these obnoxious people, 
 as being " able-bodied men, who had no lawful 
 calling or sufficient maintenance;" — a pretext ab- 
 
 4 
 
1743.] MISCONDUCT OF MAGISTRATES. 4<5 
 
 solutely groundless. Maxfield was seized by virtue 
 of such a warrant, and offered to the captain of a 
 king's ship then in Mount's Bay ; but the officer 
 refused to receive him, saying, " I have no au- 
 thority to take such men as these, unless you would 
 have me give him so much a^week to preach and 
 pray to my people." He was then thrown into 
 prison at Penzance j and when the mayor in- 
 clined to release him, Dr. Borlase, who, though a 
 man of character and letters, was not ashamed to 
 take an active part in proceedings like these, read 
 the articles of war, and delivered him over as a 
 soldier. A few days afterwards Mr. Ustick, a 
 Cornish gentleman, came up to Wesley himself, 
 as he was preaching in the open air, and said, " Sir, 
 I have warrant from Dr. Borlase, and you must 
 go with me." It had been supposed that this was 
 striking at the root ; and that if John Wesley him- 
 self were laid hold of, Cornwall would be rid of 
 his followers. But, however plausible this may 
 have seemed when the resolution was formed, Mr. 
 Ustick found himself considerably embarrassed 
 when he had taken into his custody one who, in- 
 stead of being a wild hare-brained fanatic, had all 
 the manner and appearance of a respectable clergy- 
 man, and was perfectly courteous and self-pos- 
 sessed. He was more desirous now of getting well 
 out of the business than he had been of engaging in 
 it ; and this he did with great civility, asking him if 
 he was willing to go with him to the Doctor. 
 Wesley said, immediately, if he pleased. Mr. Us- 
 tick replied, " Sir, I must wait upon you to your 
 
46 MISCONDUCT OF MAGISTRATES. [1743. 
 
 inn, and in the morning, if you will be so good as 
 to go with me, I will show you the way." They 
 rode there accordingly in the morning : — the 
 Doctor was not at home, and Mr. Ustick, saying 
 that he had executed his commission, took his 
 leave, and left Wesley at liberty. 
 
 That same evening, as Wesley was preaching at 
 Gwenap, two gentlemen rode fiercely among the 
 people, and cried out, " Seize him ! seize him for 
 His Majesty's service!" Finding that the order was 
 not obeyed, one of them alighted, caught him by 
 the cassock, and said, " I take you to serve His 
 Majesty." Taking him then by the arm, he walked 
 away with him, and talked till he was out of breath 
 of the wickedness of the fellows belonging to the 
 society. Wesley at length took advantage of a 
 break in his discourse to say, " Sir, be they what 
 they will, I apprehend it will not justify you in 
 seizing me in this manner, and violently carrying 
 me away, as you said, to serve His Majesty." 
 Rage by this time had spent itself and was suc- 
 ceeded by an instant apprehension of the conse- 
 quence which might result from acting illegally 
 towards one who appeared likely to understand the 
 laws, and able to avail himself of them. The 
 colloquy ended in his escorting Mr. Wesley back 
 to the place from whence he had taken him. 
 The next day brought with it a more serious 
 adventure. The house in which he was visit- 
 ing an invalid lady at Falmouth, was beset by a 
 mob, who roared out, " Bring out the Canorum 
 — where is the' Canorum /" a nickname which the 
 
1743.] MISCONDUCT OF MAGISTRATES. 4<7 
 
 Cornish-men had given to the Methodists — it is not 
 known wherefore. The crews of some privateers 
 headed the rabble, and presently broke open the 
 outer door, and filled the passage. By this time 
 the persons of the house had all made their escape, 
 except Wesley and a poor servant girl, who, for it 
 was now too late to retire, would have had him 
 conceal himself in the closet. He himself, from the 
 imprecations of the rabble, thought his life in the 
 most imminent danger, but any attempt at con- 
 cealment would have made the case more des- 
 perate ; and it was his maxim always to look a mob 
 in the face. As soon, therefore, as the partition 
 was broken down, he stepped forward into the 
 midst of them : — " Here I am ! which of you has 
 any thing to say to me ? To which of you have I 
 done any wrong ? To you ? or you ? or you ?" 
 Thus he made his way bare-headed into the street, 
 and continued speaking, till the captain swore that 
 not a man should touch him : a clergyman and 
 some of the better inhabitants came up and inter- 
 fered, led him into a house, and sent him safely 
 by water to Penryn. 
 
 Charles was in equal or greater danger at De- 
 vizes. The curate there took the lead against him, 
 rung the bells backwards to call the rabble to- 
 gether ; and two dissenters, of some consequence in 
 the town, set them on, and encouraged them, sup- 
 plying them with as much ale as they would drink, 
 while they played an engine into the house, broke 
 the windows, flooded the rooms, and spoiled the 
 goods. The mayor's wife conveyed a message to 
 
48 VIOLENCE OF MOBS. [1743. 
 
 Charles, beseeching that he would disguise himself 
 in women's clothes, and try to make his escape. 
 Her son, a poor profligate, had been turned from the 
 evil of his ways by the Methodists, just when he 
 was about to run away and go to sea, and this had 
 inclined her heart towards those from whom she 
 had received so great a benefit. This, however, 
 would have been too perilous an expedient. The 
 only magistrate in the town refused to act when he 
 was called upon : and the mob began to untile the 
 house, that they might get in through the roof. 
 
 " I remembered the Roman senators," says 
 Charles Wesley, " sitting in the Forum, when the 
 Gauls broke in upon them, but thought there was a 
 fitter posture for Christians, and told my companion 
 they should take us on our knees." He had, how- 
 ever, resolute and active friends, one of whom 
 succeeded, at last, in making a sort of treaty with 
 a hostile constable ; and the constable undertook 
 to bring him safe out of town, if he would promise 
 never to preach there again. Charles Wesley re- 
 plied, " I shall promise no such thing : setting 
 aside my office, I will not give up my birth-right, 
 as an Englishman, of visiting what place I please 
 in His Majesty's dominions." The point was com- 
 promised, by his declaring that it was not his pre- 
 sent intention ; and he and his companion were 
 escorted out of Devizes by one of the rioters, the 
 whole multitude pursuing them with shouts and 
 execrations. 
 
 Field preaching, indeed, was at this time a ser- 
 vice of great danger j and Wesley dwelt upon this 
 
17^3.] VIOLENCE OF MOBS. 4.0 
 
 with great force, in one of his Appeals to Men of 
 Reason and Religion. " Who is there among 
 you, brethren," he says, "that is willing (examine 
 your own hearts) even to save souls from death at 
 this price? Would not you let a thousand souls 
 perish, rather than you would be the instrument 
 of rescuing them thus? I do not speak now with 
 regard to conscience, but to the inconveniences 
 that must accompany it. Can you sustain them if 
 you would ? Can you bear the summer sun to beat 
 upon your naked head ? Can you suffer the wintry 
 rain or wind from whatever quarter it blows ? Are 
 you able to stand in the open air, without any 
 covering or defence, when God casteth abroad his 
 snow like wool, or scattereth his hoar frost like 
 ashes? And yet these are some of the smallest 
 inconveniences which accompany field-preaching. 
 For, beyond all these, are the contradiction of 
 sinners, the scoffs both of the great vulgar and the 
 small ; contempt and reproach of every kind — 
 often more than verbal affronts — stupid, brutal 
 violence, sometimes to the hazard of health, or 
 limbs, or life. Brethren, do you envy us this 
 honour ? What, I pray you, would buy you to be 
 a field-preacher ? Or what, think you, could induce 
 any man of common sense to continue therein one 
 year, unless he had a full conviction in himself, 
 that it was the will of God concerning him ? Upon 
 this conviction it is (were we to submit to these 
 things on any other motive whatever, it would 
 furnish you with a better proof of our distraction 
 than any that has yet been found) that we now do 
 
 VOL. II. E 
 
50 VIOLENCE OF MOBS. [1743. 
 
 for the good of souls what you cannot, will not, 
 dare not do. And we desire not that you should : 
 but this one thing we may reasonably desire of you 
 — do not increase the difficulties, which are 
 already so great, that, without the mighty power 
 of God, we must sink under them. Do not assist 
 in trampling down a little handful of men, who, 
 for the present, stand in the gap between ten thou- 
 sand poor wretches and destruction, till you find 
 some others to take their places." 
 
 The wholesome prosecution of a few rioters, in 
 different places, put an end to enormities which 
 would never have been committed, if the local 
 magistrates had attempted to prevent them. The 
 offenders were not rigorously pursued ; they ge- 
 nerally submitted before the trial, and it sufficed 
 to make them understand that the peace might 
 not be broken with impunity. " Such a mercy is 
 it," says Wesley, " to execute the penalty of the 
 law on those who will not regard its precepts ! So 
 many inconveniences to the innocent does it pre- 
 vent, and so much sin in the guilty." 
 
51 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 SCENES OF ITINERANCY. 
 
 When Wesley began his course of itinerancy, 
 there were no turnpikes * in England, and no stage- 
 coach which went farther north than York. In 
 many parts of the northern counties neither coach 
 nor chaise had ever been seen. He travelled on 
 horseback, always with one of his preachers in 
 company ; and, that no time might be lost, he 
 generally read as he rode. Some of his journies 
 were exceedingly dangerous, — through the fens 
 of his native country, when the waters were out, 
 and over the fells of Northumberland, when they 
 were covered with snow. Speaking of one, the 
 worst of such expeditions, which had lasted two 
 days in tremendous weather, he says, " Many a 
 
 * Wesley probably paid more for turnpikes than any other man in 
 England, for no other person travelled so much ; and it rarely happened 
 to him to go twice through the same gate in one day. Thus he felt 
 the impost heavily, and, being a horseman, was not equally sensible 
 of the benefit derived from it. This may account for his joining in 
 what was at one time the popular cry. Writing, in 1770, he says, " I 
 was agreeably surprised to find the whole road from Thirsk to Stokes- 
 ley, which used to be extremely bad, better than most turnpikes. The 
 gentlemen had exerted themselves, and raised money enough to mend 
 it effectually. So they have done for several hundred miles in Scot- 
 land, and throughout all Connaught, in Ireland. And so undoubtedly 
 they might do throughout all England, without saddling the poor 
 people with the vile imposition of turnpikes for ever," 
 
 E l 2 
 
52 SCENES GF ITINERANCY. 
 
 rough journey have I had before, but one like this 
 I never had, between wind, and hail, and rain, and 
 ice, and snow, and driving sleet, and piercing 
 cold. But it is past. Those days will return no 
 more, and are therefore as though they had never 
 been. 
 
 Pain, disappointment, sickness, strife, 
 Whate'er molests or troubles life, 
 However grievous in its stay, 
 It shakes the tenement of clay, — 
 When past, as nothing we esteem, 
 And pain, like pleasure, is a dreauu'' 
 
 For such exertions and bodily inconveniences he 
 was overpaid by the stir which his presence every 
 where excited, the power which he exercised, the 
 effect which he produced, the delight with which 
 he was received by his disciples, and, above all, 
 by the approbation of his own heart, the certainty 
 that he was employed in doing good to his fellow- 
 creatures, and the full persuasion that the Spirit of 
 God was with him in his work. 
 
 At the commencement of his errantry, he had 
 sometimes to bear with an indifference and insen- 
 sibility in his friends, which was more likely than 
 any opposition to have abated his ardour. He and 
 John Nelson rode from common to common, in 
 Cornwall, preaching to a people who heard will- 
 ingly, but seldom or never proffered them the 
 slightest act of hospitality. Returning one day in 
 autumn from one of these hungry excursions, Wes- 
 ley stopt his horse at some brambles, to pick the 
 fruit. " Brother Nelson," said he, " we ought 
 
SCENES OF ITINERANCY. 53 
 
 to be thankful that there are plenty of blackberries, 
 for this is the best country I ever saw for getting 
 a stomach, but the worst that ever I saw for get- 
 ting food. * Do the people think we can live by 
 preaching ?" They were detained some time at 
 St. Ivest, because of the illness of one of their com- 
 panions ; and their lodging was little better than 
 their fare. " All that time," says John, " Mr. 
 Wesley and I lay on the floor : he had my great- 
 coat for his pillow, and I had Burkett's Notes on 
 the New Testament for mine. After being here 
 near three weeks, one morning, about three o'clock, 
 Mr. Wesley turned over, and finding me awake, 
 
 * Wesley has himself remarked the inhospitality of his Cornish dis- 
 ciples, upon an after-visit in 1748, but he has left a blank for the name 
 
 of the place. " About four," he says, " I came to ; examined 
 
 the leaders of the classes for two hours : preached to the largest con- 
 gregation I had seen in Cornwall ; met the society, and earnestly 
 charged them to beware of covetous ness. All this time I was not asked 
 to eat or drink. After the Society, some bread and cheese were set 
 
 before me. I think, verily, will not be ruined by entertaining 
 
 me once a-year." A little society in Lincolnshire, at this time, were 
 charitable even to an excess. " I have not seen such another in all 
 England," says Wesley. " In the class paper, which gives an account 
 of the contribution for the poor, I observed one gave eight-pence, 
 often ten-pence a week; another thirteen, fifteen, or eighteen-pence ; 
 another sometimes one, sometimes two shillings. I asked Micah El- 
 moor, the leader, (an Israelite, indeed, who now rests from his labour,) 
 how is this ? are you the richest society in England ? He answered, ' I 
 suppose not ; but all of us, who are single persons, have agreed to- 
 gether to give both ourselves, and all we have, to God ; and we do it 
 gladly ! whereby we are able, from time to time, to. entertain all the 
 strangers that come to Tetney, who often have no food to eat, nor 
 any friend to give them a lodging.' " 
 
 f In his last Journal, Wesley notices the meeting-house of the 
 Methodists at this place being f unlike any other in England, both as to 
 its form and materials. It is exactly round, and composed wholly of 
 brazen slags, which, I suppose, will last as long as the earth." 
 
 E 3 
 
54f SCENES OF ITINERANCY. 
 
 clapped me on the side, saying, « Brother Nelson, 
 let us be of good cheer, I have one whole side yet ; 
 for the skin is off but on one side.' " 
 
 It was also at the beginning of his career that 
 he had to complain of inhospitality and indiffer- 
 ence. As he became notorious to the world, and 
 known among his own people, it was then con- 
 sidered a blessing and an honour to receive so dis- 
 tinguished a guest and so delightful a companion ; 
 a man who, in rank and acquirements, was supe- 
 rior to those by whom he was generally enter- 
 tained ; whose manners were almost irresistibly 
 winning, and whose cheerfulness was like a per- 
 petual sunshine. He had established for himself 
 a dominion in the hearts of his followers, — in that 
 sphere he moved as in a kingdom of his own ; 
 and, wherever he went, received the homage of 
 gratitude, implicit confidence, and reverential af- 
 fection. Few men have ever seen so many affect- 
 ing instances of the immediate good whereof they 
 were the instruments. A man nearly fourscore 
 years of age, and notorious in his neighbourhood 
 for cursing, swearing, and drunkenness, was one 
 day among his chance hearers, and one of the 
 company, perhaps with a feeling like that of the 
 Pharisee in the parable, was offended at his pre- 
 sence. But, when Wesley had concluded his dis- 
 course, the old sinner came up to him, and catching 
 him by the hands, said, " Whether thou art a 
 good or a bad man I know not ; but I know the 
 Words thou speakest are good ! 1 never heard the 
 like in all my life. Oh that God would set them 
 
SCENES OF ITINERANCY. 5$ 
 
 home upon my poor soul I" And then he burst into 
 tears, so that he could speak no more. A Cornish 
 man said to him, " Twelve years ago I was going 
 over Gulvan Downs, and I saw many people to- 
 gether ; and I asked what was the matter ? They 
 told me, a man going to preach. And I said, to 
 be sure it is some 'mazed man ! But when I saw 
 you, I said, nay, this is no 'mazed man. And you 
 preached on God's raising the dry bones; and 
 from that time I could never rest till God was 
 pleased to breathe on me, and raise my dead 
 soul !" A woman, overwhelmed with affliction, 
 went out one night with a determination of throw- 
 ing herself into the New River. As she was pass- 
 ing the Foundery, she heard the people singing : 
 she stopt, and went in ; listened, learnt where to 
 look for consolation and support, and was thereby 
 preserved from suicide. 
 
 Wesley had been disappointed of a room at 
 Grimsby, and when the appointed hour for preach- 
 ing came, the rain prevented him from preaching 
 at the Cross. In the perplexity which this occa- 
 sioned, a convenient place was offered him by a 
 woman, " which was a sinner." Of this, how- 
 ever, he was ignorant at the time, and the woman 
 listened to him without any apparent emotion. 
 But in the evening he preached eloquently, upon 
 the sins and the faith of her who washed our Lord's 
 feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of 
 her head ; and that discourse, by which the whole 
 congregation were affected, touched her to the 
 heart. She followed him to his lodging, crying 
 
 E 4 
 
36 SCENES OF ITINERANCY. 
 
 out, " O, Sir, what must I do to be saved T 9 
 Wesley, who now understood that she had forsaken 
 her husband, and was living in adultery, replied, 
 '« Escape for your life ! Return instantly to your 
 husband!" She said she knew not how to go j 
 she had just heard from him, and he was at New- 
 castle, above an hundred miles off. Wesley made 
 answer, that he was going for Newcastle himself 
 the next morning ; she might go with him, and 
 his companion should take her behind him. It was 
 late in October : she performed the journey under 
 this protection, and in a state of mind which be- 
 seemedjier condition. " During our whole jour- 
 ney," he says, " I scarce observed her to smile ; 
 nor did she ever complain of any thing, or appear 
 moved in the least with those trying circumstances 
 which many times occurred in our way. A steady 
 seriousness, or sadness rather, appeared in her 
 whole behaviour and conversation, as became one 
 that felt the burthen of sin, and was groaning after 
 salvation." — "Glory be to the Friend of sinners !" 
 he exclaims, when he relates the story. " He hath 
 plucked one more brand out of the fire! Thou 
 poor sinner, thou hast received a prophet in the 
 name of a prophet, and thou art found of Him 
 that sent him." The husband did not turn away 
 the penitent ; and her reformation appeared to be 
 sincere and permanent. After some time the hus- 
 band left Newcastle, and wrote to her to follow 
 him. " She set out," says Wesley, " in a ship 
 bound for Hull. A storm met them by the way : 
 the ship sprung a leak ; but though it was near the 
 
SCENES OF ITINERANCY. 57 
 
 shore, on which many persons flocked together, 
 yet the sea ran so exceedingly high, that it was im- 
 possible to make any help. Mrs. S. was seen stand- 
 ing on the deck, as the ship gradually sunk ; and 
 afterwards hanging by her hands on the ropes, till 
 the masts likewise disappeared. Even then, for 
 some moments, they could observe her floating 
 upon the waves, till her clothes, which buoyed her 
 up, being thoroughly wet, she sunk — I trust, into 
 the ocean of God's mercy !" 
 
 Wesley once received an invitation from a cler- 
 gyman in the country, whom he describes as a 
 hoary, reverend, and religious man, whose very 
 sight struck him with an awe. The old man said, 
 that, about nine years ago, his only son had gone 
 to hear Mr. Wesley preach, a youth in the flower 
 of his age, and remarkable for piety, sense, and 
 learning above his years. He came home, ill of the 
 small-pox; but he praised God for the comfort 
 w r hich he derived from the preaching on that day, 
 rejoiced in a full sense of his love, and triumphed 
 in that assurance over sickness, and pain, and 
 death. The old man added, that from that time 
 he had loved Mr. Wesley, and greatly desired to 
 see him ; and he now blessed God that this desire 
 had been fulfilled before he followed his dear son 
 into eternity ! 
 
 One day a post-chaise was sent to carry him 
 from Alnwick to Warkworth, where he had been 
 entreated to preach. " I found in it," says he, 
 " one waiting for me, whom, in the bloom of 
 youth, mere anguish of soul had brought to the 
 
58 SCENES OF ITINERANCY. 
 
 gates of death. She told me the troubles which 
 held her in on every side, from which she saw no 
 way to escape. I told her, * The way lies straight 
 before you : what you want is the love of God. I 
 believe God will give it you shortly. Perhaps it is 
 his good pleasure to make you, a poor bruised reed, 
 the first witness here of that great salvation. Look 
 for it just as you are, unfit, unworthy, unholy, — 
 by simple faith, — every day, every hour.' She 
 did feel the next day something she could not com- 
 prehend, and knew not what to call it. In one of 
 the trials, which used to sink her to the earth, she 
 was all calm, all peace and love ; enjoying so deep 
 a communication with God, as nothing external 
 could interrupt. * Ah, thou child of affliction, of 
 sorrow and pain, hath Jesus found out thee also ? 
 And he is able to find and bring back thy husband 
 — as far as he is wandered out of the way V " 
 
 The profligates whom he reclaimed sometimes 
 returned to their evil ways ; and the innocent, in 
 whom he had excited the fever of enthusiasm, were 
 sometimes, when the pulse fell, left in a feebler 
 state of faith than they were found ; but it was 
 with the afflicted in body or in mind that the good 
 which he produced was deep and permanent. Of 
 this he had repeated instances, but never a more 
 memorable one than when he visited one of his 
 female disciples, who was ill in bed, and after 
 having buried seven of her family in six months, 
 had just heard that the eighth, her husband, whom 
 she dearly loved, had been cast away at sea. c * I 
 asked her," he says, " do you not fret at any of 
 
 7 
 
SCENES OF ITINERANCY. 59 
 
 these things ?" She said, with a lovely smile, 
 " Oh, no : how can I fret at any thing which is the 
 will of God ? Let Him take all beside, He has 
 given me Himself. I love, I praise Him every mo- 
 ment !" — " Let any," says Wesley, " that doubts 
 of Christian perfection, look on such a spectacle as 
 this !" If it had not become a point of honour 
 with him to vindicate how he could, and whenever 
 he could, a doctrine which was as obnoxious as it 
 is exceptionable and dangerous, he would not have 
 spoken of Christian perfection here. He would 
 have known that resignation, in severe sorrow, is 
 an effort of nature as well as of religion, and there- 
 fore not to be estimated too highly as a proof of 
 holiness. But of the healing effects of Christianity, 
 the abiding cheerfulness, under unkindly circum- 
 stances, which it produces, the strength which it 
 imparts in weakness, and the consolation and sup- 
 port in time of need, he had daily and abundant 
 proofs. 
 
 It was said by an old preacher, that they who 
 would go to Heaven must do four sorts of services ; 
 hard service, costly service, derided service, and^r- 
 lorn service. Hard service Wesley performed all 
 his life, with a willing heart ; so willing a one, 
 that no service could appear costly to him. He 
 can hardly be said to have been tried with derision, 
 because, before he became the subject of satire 
 and contumely, he had attained a reputation and 
 notoriety which enabled him to disregard them. 
 These very attacks, indeed, proved only that he 
 was a conspicuous mark, and stood upon high 
 
60 SCENES OF ITINERANCY. 
 
 ground. Neither was he ever called upon forlorn 
 service : perhaps, if he had, his ardour might have 
 failed him. Marks of impatience sometimes ap- 
 pear when he speaks of careless hearers. "I 
 preached at Pocklington," he says, " with an eye 
 to the death of that lovely woman Mrs. Cross. A 
 gay young gentleman, with a young lady, stepped 
 in, staid five minutes, and went out again, with as 
 easy an unconcern as if they had been listening to 
 a ballad singer. I mentioned to the congregation 
 the deep folly and ignorance implied in such be- 
 haviour. These pretty fools never thought that, for 
 this very opportunity, they are to give an account 
 before men and angels." Upon another occasion, 
 when the whole congregation had appeared insen- 
 sible, he says of them, " they hear, but when will 
 they feel! Oh, what can man do toward raising 
 dead bodies or dead souls !" 
 
 But it was seldom that he preached to indifferent 
 auditors, and still more seldom that any withdrew 
 from him with marks of contempt. In general, he 
 was heard with deep attention, for his believers 
 listened with devout reverence ; and they who were 
 not persuaded listened, nevertheless, from curi- 
 osity, and behaved respectfully from the influence 
 of example. " I wonder at those," says he, " who 
 talk of the indecency of field-preaching. The highest 
 indecency is in St. Paul's church, where a consider- 
 able part of the congregation are asleep, or talking, 
 or looking about, not minding a word the preacher 
 says. On the other hand, there is the highest de- 
 cency in a church-yard or field, where the whole 
 
 S 
 
SCENES OF ITINERANCY. 61 
 
 congregation behave and look as if they saw the 
 Judge of all, and heard Him speaking from 
 Heaven." Sometimes when he had finished the 
 discourse, and pronounced the blessing, not a per- 
 son offered to move : — the charm was upon them 
 still ; and every man, woman, and child remained 
 where they were, till he set the example of leaving 
 the ground. One day many of his hearers were 
 seated upon a long wall, built, as is common in 
 the northern counties, of loose stones. In the 
 middle of the sermon it fell with them. " I never 
 saw, heard, nor read of such a thing before," he 
 says. " The whole wall, and the persons sitting 
 upon it, sunk down together, none of them scream- 
 ing out, and very few altering their posture, and not 
 one was hurt at all ; but they appeared sitting at 
 the bottom, just as they sate at the top. Nor was 
 there any interruption either of my speaking or of 
 the attention of the hearers." 
 
 The situations in which he preached sometimes 
 contributed to the impression ; and he himself per- 
 ceived, that natural influences operated upon the 
 multitude, like the pomp and circumstance of 
 Romish worship. Sometimes, in a hot and cloud- 
 less summer day, he and his congregation were 
 under cover of the sycamores, which afford so deep 
 a shade to some of the old farm-houses in West- 
 moreland and Cumberland. In such a scene, near 
 Brough, he observes, that a bird perched on one 
 of the trees, and sung without intermission from 
 the beginning of the service till the end. No in- 
 strumental concert would have accorded with the 
 
62 SCENES OF ITINERANCY. 
 
 place and feeling of the hour so well. Sometimes, 
 when his discourse was not concluded till twilight, 
 he saw that the calmness of the evening agreed 
 with the seriousness of the people, and that " they 
 seemed to drink in the word of God, as a thirsty 
 land the refreshing showers." One of his preaching 
 places in Cornwall was in what had once been the 
 court-yard of a rich and honourable man. But he 
 and all his family were in the dust, and his memory 
 had almost perished. " At Gwenap, in the same 
 county," he says, " I stood on the wall, in the 
 calm still evening, with the setting sun behind me, 
 and almost an innumerable multitude before, be- 
 hind, and on either hand. Many likewise sate on 
 the little hills, at some distance from the bulk of 
 the congregation. But they could all hear dis- 
 tinctly while I read, * The disciple is not above his 
 Master,* and the rest of those comfortable words 
 which are day by day fulfilled in our ears." This 
 amphitheatre was one of his favourite stations. He 
 says of it in his old age, " I think this is one of 
 the most magnificent spectacles which is to be seen 
 on this side heaven, And no music is to be heard 
 upon earth comparable to the sound of many thou- 
 sand voices, when they are all harmoniously joined 
 together, singing praises to God and the Lamb.'* 
 At St. Ives, when a high wind prevented him stand- 
 ing where he had intended, he found a little in- 
 closure near, one end of which was native rock, 
 rising ten or twelve feet perpendicular, from which 
 the ground fell with an easy descent. " A jetting 
 out of the rock, about four feet from the ground, 
 
SCENES OF ITINERANCY. -63 
 
 gave me a very convenient pulpit. Here well 
 nigh the whole town, high and low, rich and poor, 
 assembled together. Nor was there a word to be 
 heard, nor a smile seen, from one end of the con- 
 gregation to the other. It was just the same the 
 three following evenings. Indeed I was afraid, on 
 Saturday, that the roaring of the sea, raised by the 
 north wind, would have prevented their hearing. 
 But God gave me so clear and strong a voice, that 
 I believe scarce one word was lost." On the next 
 day the storm had ceased, and the clear sky, the 
 setting sun, and the smooth still ocean, all agreed 
 with the state of the audience. 
 
 There is a beautiful garden at Exeter, under the 
 ruins of the castle and of the old city wall, in 
 what was formerly the moat: it was made under 
 the direction of Jackson, the musician, a man of 
 rare genius in his own art, and eminently gifted 
 in many ways. Before the ground was thus hap- 
 pily appropriated, Wesley preached there to a large 
 assembly, and felt the impressiveness of the situ- 
 ation. He says, " It was an awful sight ! So vast 
 a congregation in that solemn amphitheatre, and 
 all silent and still, while I explained at large and 
 enforced that glorious truth, ' Happy are they 
 whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are 
 covered.' " In another place he says, " I rode to 
 Blanchland, about twenty miles from Newcastle. 
 The rough mountains round about were still white 
 with snow. In the midst of them is a small wind- 
 ing valley, through which the Darwent runs. On 
 the edge of this the little town stands, which is in- 
 
64 SCENES OF ITINERANCY. 
 
 deed little more than a heap of ruins. There 
 seems to have been a large cathedral church, by 
 the vast walls which still remain. I stood in the 
 church-yard, under one side of the building, upon 
 a large tomb-stone, round which, while I was at 
 prayers, all the congregation kneeled down on 
 the grass. They were gathered out of the lead- 
 mines, from all parts ; many from Allandale, six 
 miles off. A row of children sat under the oppo- 
 site wall, all quiet and still. The whole congre- 
 gation drank in every word, with such earnestness 
 in their looks, that I could not but hope that God 
 will make this wilderness sing for joy." At Gawk- 
 sham he preached " on the side of an enormous 
 mountain. The congregation," he says, " stood 
 and sate, row above row, in the sylvan theatre. I 
 believe nothing in the postdiluvian earth can be 
 more pleasant than the road from hence, between 
 huge steep mountains, clothed with wood to the 
 top, and watered at the bottom by a clear winding 
 stream." Heptenstall Bank, to which he went 
 from hence, was one of his favourite field stations. 
 " The place in which I preached was an oval 
 spot of ground, surrounded with spreading trees, 
 scooped out, as it were, in the side of a hill, which 
 rose round like a theatre." The congregation was 
 as large as he could then collect at Leeds ; but he 
 says, " Such serious and earnest attention ! I lifted 
 up my hands, so that I preached as I scarce ever 
 did in my life." Once he had the ground measured, 
 and found that he was heard distinctly at a distance 
 of seven-score yards. In the seventieth year of his 
 
SCENES OF ITINERANCY. 65 
 
 age, he preached at Gwenap, to the largest assembly 
 that had ever collected to hear him : from the 
 ground which they covered, he computed them to 
 be not fewer than two-and-thirty thousand ; and it 
 was found, upon enquiry, that all could hear, even 
 to the skirts of the congregation. 
 
 This course of life led him into a lower sphere of 
 society than that wherein he would otherwise have 
 moved ; and he thought himself a gainer by the 
 change. Writing to some Earl, who took a lively 
 interest in the revival of religion which, through 
 the impulse given, directly or indirectly, by Me- 
 thodism, was taking place, he says, " To speak 
 rough truth, I do not desire any intercourse with 
 any persons of quality in England. I mean, for 
 my own sake. They do me no good, and, I fear, I 
 can do none to them." To another correspondent 
 he says, " I have found some of the uneducated poor 
 who have exquisite taste and sentiment j and many, 
 very many of the rich, who have scarcely any at 
 all." — "In most genteel religious people there is so 
 strange a mixture, that I have seldom much con- 
 fidence in them. But I love the poor ; in many of 
 them I find pure genuine grace, unmixed with 
 paint, folly, and affectation." And again, " How 
 unspeakable is the advantage in point of common 
 sense, which middling people have over the rich ! 
 There is so much paint and affectation, so many 
 unmeaning words and senseless customs among 
 people of rank, as fully justify the remark made 
 I7OO years ago, Sensus communis in ilia fortund 
 rarus." — " 'Tis well," he says, " a few of the rich 
 
 VOL. II. F 
 
66 SCENES OF ITINERANCY. 
 
 and noble are called. Oh ! that God would in- 
 crease their number. But I should rejoice, were 
 it the will of God, if it were done by the ministry 
 of others. If I might choose, I should still, as I 
 have done hitherto, preach the gospel to the poor.** 
 Preaching in Monk-town church, (one of the three 
 belonging to Pembroke,) a large old ruinous build- 
 ing* he says, " I suppose it has scarce had such a 
 congregation in it during this century. Many of 
 them were gay genteel people ; so I spake on the 
 first elements of the gospel : but I was still out of 
 their depth. Oh, how hard it is to be shallow 
 enough for a polite audience !" Yet Wesley's cor- 
 respondence with the few persons over whom he 
 obtained any influence in higher life, though writ- 
 ten with honest and conscientious freedom, is alto- 
 gether untainted with any of that alloy which too 
 frequently appeared when he was addressing those 
 of a lower rank. Those favourite topics are not 
 brought forward, by which enthusiastic disciples 
 were so easily heated and disordered j and there 
 appears an evident feeling in the writer, that he 
 is addressing himself to persons more judicious 
 than his ordinary disciples. 
 
 But though Wesley preferred the middling and 
 lower classes of society to the rich, the class which 
 he liked least were the farmers. " In the little 
 journies which I have lately taken," he says, " I 
 have thought much of the huge encomiums which 
 have been for many ages bestowed on a country 
 life. How have all the learned world cried out, 
 
 v O fortunati nimium, bona si sua norint, 
 Agricolce ! 
 
SCENES OF ITINERANCY. O/ 
 
 But, after all, what a flat contradiction is this to 
 universal experience ! See the little house, under 
 the wood, by the river side ! There is rural life in 
 perfection. How happy, then, is the farmer that 
 lives there ! — Let us take a detail of his happiness. 
 He rises with, or before the sun, calls his servants, 
 looks to his swine and cows, then to his stable and 
 barns. He sees to the ploughing and sowing his 
 gound in winter or in spring. In summer and 
 autumn he hurries and sweats among his mowers 
 and reapers. And where is his happiness in the 
 mean time ? Which of these employments do we 
 envy ? Or do we envy the delicate repast which 
 succeeds, which the poet so languishes for ? 
 
 O quando faba, Pythagorce cognata, simulque 
 Uncta satis pingui ponentur oluscula lardo! 
 
 Oh the happiness of eating beans well greased with 
 fat bacon ; nay, and cabbage too ! Was Horace in 
 his senses when he talked thus ? or the servile herd 
 of his imitators? Our eyes and ears may convince 
 us there is not a less happy body of men in all 
 England than the country farmers. In general 
 their life is supremely dull ; and it is usually un- 
 happy too ; for, of all people in the kingdom, they 
 are the most discontented, seldom satisfied either 
 with God or man." 
 
 Wesley was likely to judge thus unfavourably of 
 the agricultural part of the people, because they 
 were the least susceptible of Methodism. For 
 Methodism could be kept alive only by associations 
 and frequent meetings ; and it is difficult, or im- 
 
 f 2 
 
68 SCENES OF ITINERANCY. 
 
 pdssible, to arrange these among a scattered popu- 
 lation. Where converts were made, and the dis- 
 cipline could not be introduced among them, and 
 the effect kept up by constant preaching and in- 
 spection, they soon fell off. " From the terrible 
 instances I met with," says Wesley, " in all parts 
 of England, I am more and more convinced that 
 the Devil himself desires nothing more than this, 
 that the people of any place should be half awa- 
 kened, and then left to themselves to fall asleep 
 again. Therefore I determine, by the grace of 
 God, not to strike one stroke in any place where I 
 cannot follow the blow." But this could only be 
 done in populous places. Burnet has * observed, 
 that more religious zeal is to be found in towns than 
 in the country, and that that zeal is more likely to 
 go astray. It is because men are powerfully acted 
 upon by sympathy, whether for evil or for good ; 
 because opinions are as infectious as diseases, and 
 both the one and the other find subjects enough to 
 seize on in large cities, and those subjects in a 
 
 * " As for the men of trade and business, they are, generally speak- 
 ing, the best body in the nation — generous, sober, and charitable: so 
 that, while the people in the country are so immersed in their affairs 
 that the sense of religion cannot reach them, there is a better spirit stir- 
 ring in our cities ; more knowledge, more zeal, and more charity, with 
 a great deal more of devotion. There may be too much of vanity 
 with too pompous an exterior, mixed with these in the capital city • 
 but, upon the whole, they are the best we have. Want of exercise is a 
 great prejudice to their health, and a corrupter of their minds, by rais. 
 ing vapours and melancholy, that fills many with dark thoughts, ren- 
 dering religion, which affords the truest jey, a burthen to them, and 
 making them even a burthen to themselves. This furnishes prejudices 
 against religion to those who are but too much disposed to seek for 
 them." 
 
 Burnet's Conclusion to the History of his Own Times. 
 
SCENES OF ITINERANCY. 69 
 
 state which prepares them to receive the mental or 
 bodily affection. 
 
 But even where Methodism was well established, 
 and, on the whole, flourishing, there were great 
 fluctuations, and Wesley soon found how little he 
 could depend upon the perseverance of his con- 
 verts. Early in his career he took the trouble of 
 enquiring into the motives of seventy-six persons, 
 who, in the course of three months, had with- 
 drawn from one of his societies in the north. — 
 The result was curious. Fourteen of them said 
 they left it because otherwise their ministers would 
 not give them the sacrament : — these, be it ob- 
 served, were chiefly Dissenters. Nine, because 
 their husbands or wives were not willing they 
 should stay in it. Twelve, because their parents 
 were not willing. Five, because their master and 
 mistress would not let them come. Seven, because 
 their acquaintance persuaded them to leave it. 
 Five, because people said such bad things of the 
 Society. Nine, because they would not be laughed 
 at. Three, because they would not lose the poors' 
 allowance. Three more, because they could not 
 spare time to come. Two, because it was too far 
 off. One, because she was afraid of falling into 
 fits : — her reason might have taught Wesley a useful 
 lesson. One, because people were so rude in the 
 street. Two, because Thomas Naisbit was in the 
 Society. One, because he would not turn his back 
 on his baptism. One, because the Methodists were 
 mere Church-of-England-men. And one, because it 
 was time enough to serve God yet. The character of 
 
 f 3 
 
70 SCENES OF ITINERANCY. 
 
 the converts, and the wholesome discipline to which 
 they were subject, is still farther exhibited, by an 
 account of those who, in the same time, had been 
 expelled from the same Society : — * they were, two 
 for cursing and swearing, two for habitual Sabbath- 
 breaking, seventeen for drunkenness, two for re- 
 tailing spirituous liquors, three for quarrelling. and 
 brawling, one for beating his wife, three for ha- 
 bitual wilful lying, four for railing and evil-speak- 
 ing, one for idleness and laziness, and nine-and- 
 twenty for lightness and carelessness. — It would 
 be well for the community if some part of this dis- 
 cipline were in general use. 
 
 When Wesley became accustomed to such fluc- 
 tuations, he perceived that they must be, and 
 reasoned upon them sensibly. In noticing a con- 
 siderable increase which had taken place in one of 
 his societies in a short time, he says, " Which of 
 these will hold fast their profession ? The fowls of 
 the air will devour some, the sun will scorch more, 
 and others will be choked by the thorns springing 
 up. I wonder we should ever expect that half of 
 those who hear the word with joy> will bring forth 
 fruit unto 'perfection." — " How is it," he asks him- 
 self, " that almost in every place, even where there 
 is no lasting fruit, there is so great an impression 
 made at first upon a considerable number of people? 
 The fact is this : every where the work of God 
 rises higher and higher, till it comes to a point. 
 Here it seems, for a short time, to be at a stay, 
 and then it gradually sinks again. All this may 
 easily be accounted for. At first curiosity brings" 
 
SCENES OF ITINERANCY. 7± 
 
 many hearers ; at the same time God draws many, 
 by his preventing grace, to hear his word, and 
 comforts them in hearing: one then tells another; 
 by this means, on the one hand, curiosity spreads 
 and increases; and, on the other, the drawings of 
 God's spirit touch more hearts, and many of them 
 more powerfully than before. He now offers grace 
 to all that hear, most of whom are in some mea- 
 sure affected, and more or less moved with appro- 
 bation of what they hear — desire to please God, 
 and good-will to his messenger. These principles, 
 variously combined and increasing, raise the ge- 
 neral work to its highest point. But it cannot 
 stand here ; for, in the nature of things, curiosity 
 must soon decline. Again, the drawings of God 
 are not followed, and thereby the spirit of God is 
 grieved : the consequence is, He strives with this 
 and this man no more, and so his drawings end. 
 Thus both the natural and supernatural power de- 
 clining, most of the hearers will be less and less 
 affected. Add to this, that in the process of the 
 work, it must be, that offences will come. Some of 
 the hearers, if not preachers also, will act contrary 
 to their profession. Either their follies or faults 
 will be told from one to another, and lose nothing 
 in the telling. Men, once curious to hear, will 
 now draw back : men once drawn, having stifled 
 their good desires, will disapprove what they ap- 
 proved before, and feel dislike, instead of good- 
 will, to the preacher. Others, who were more or 
 less convinced, will be afraid or ashamed to ac- 
 knowledge that conviction ; and all these will catch 
 
 f 4 
 
72 SCENES OF ITINERANCY. 
 
 at ill stories (true or false) in order to justify their 
 change. When, by this means, all who do not 
 savingly believe, have quenched the spirit of God, 
 the little flock goes on from faith to faith ; the rest 
 sleep on, and take their rest. And thus the num- 
 ber of hearers in every place may be expected^ 
 first to increase, and then decrease." 
 
73 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 wesley's lay-coadjutors. 
 
 When Wesley had once admitted the assistance 
 of lay-preachers, volunteers in abundance offered 
 their zealous services. If he had been disposed to 
 be nice in the selection, it was not in his power. 
 He had called up a spirit which he could not lay, 
 but he was still able to controul and direct it. Men 
 were flattered by being admitted to preach with 
 his sanction, and sent to itinerate where he was 
 pleased to appoint, who, if he had not chosen to 
 admit their co-operation, would not have been 
 withheld from exercising the power which they 
 felt in themselves, and indulging the strong desire, 
 which they imputed to the impulse of the Spirit : 
 but had they taken this course, it would have been 
 destructive to the scheme which was now fairly 
 developed before him. 
 
 Wesley had taken no step in his whole progress 
 so reluctantly as this. The measure was forced 
 upon him by circumstances. It had become in- 
 evitable, in the position wherein he had placed 
 himself; still he was too judicious a man, too well 
 acquainted with history and with human nature, 
 not to feel a proper repugnance to the irregularity 
 which he sanctioned, and to apprehend the ill con- 
 
74 wesley's lay-coadjutors. 
 
 sequences which were likely to ensue. He says 
 himself \ that to touch this point was at one time to 
 touch the apple of his eye : and in his writings he 
 carefully stated, that the preachers were permitted 
 by him, but not appointed. One of those clergy- 
 men, who would gladly, in their sphere, have co- 
 operated with the Wesleys, had they not disliked 
 the extravagancies of Methodism, and foreseen the 
 schism to which it was leading, objected to this 
 distinction. " I fear, Sir," said he, " that your 
 saying you do not appoint, but only approve of the 
 lay-preachers, from a persuasion of their call and 
 fitness, savours of disingenuity. Where is the dif- 
 ference ? Under whose sanction do they act? 
 Would they generally think their call a sufficient 
 warrant for commencing preachers, or be received 
 in that capacity by your people, without your ap- 
 probation, tacit or express? And what is their 
 preaching upon this call, but a manifest breach 
 upon the order of the Church, and an inlet to con- 
 fusion, which, in all probability, will follow upon 
 your death ; and, if I mistake not, you are upon 
 the point of knowing by your own experience." 
 
 But Wesley had so often been called upon to 
 defend himself, that he perfectly understood, the 
 strength of his ground. Replying for his brother, 
 and the few other clergymen who acted with him, 
 as well as for himself, he made answer, " We have 
 done nothing rashly, nothing without deep and 
 long consideration, (hearing and weighing all ob- 
 jections,) and much prayer. Nor have we taken 
 one deliberate step, of which we, as yet, see rea- 
 
wesley's lay-coadjutors. 75 
 
 son to repent. It is true, in some things we vaty 
 from the rules of our Church; but no further 
 than, we apprehend, is our bounden duty. It is 
 from a full conviction of this that we preach 
 abroad* use extemporary prayer, form those who 
 appear to be awakened into societies, and permit 
 laymen, whom we believe God has called, to 
 preach. I say permit, because we ourselves have 
 hitherto viewed it in no other light. This we are 
 clearly satisfied that we may do ; that we may do 
 more, we are not satisfied. It is not clear to us 
 that Presbyters, so circumstanced as we are, may 
 appoint, or ordain others j but it is, that, we may 
 direct, as well as suffer them to do, what we con- 
 ceive they are moved to by the Holy Ghost. It is 
 true, that in ordinary cases, both an inward and 
 an outward call are requisite ; but, we apprehend, 
 there is something far from ordinary in the present 
 case ; and, upon the calmest view of things, we 
 think that they who are only called of God, and 
 not of man, have more right to preach than they 
 who are only called of man and not of God. Now, 
 that many of the clergy, though called of man, 
 are not called of God to preach his gospel, is un- 
 deniable : first, because they themselves utterly 
 disclaim, nay, and ridicule the inward call ; se- 
 condly, because they do not know what the gospel 
 is ; of consequence they do not, and cannot preach 
 it. Dear Sir, coolly and impartially consider this, 
 and you will see on which side the difficulty lies. 
 1 do assure you, this at present is my chief em- 
 barrassment. That I have not gone too far yet, I 
 
 5 
 
76 wesley's lay-coadjutors. 
 
 know ; but whether I have gone far enough, I am 
 extremely doubtful. I see those running whom 
 God hath not sent ; destroying their own souls, 
 and those that hear them ; perverting the right 
 ways of the Lord, and blaspheming the truth as it 
 is in Jesus. I see the blind leading the blind, and 
 both falling into the ditch. Unless I warn, in all 
 ways I can, these perishing souls of their danger, 
 am I clear of the blood of these men? Soul- 
 damning clergymen lay me under more difficulties 
 than soul-saving laymen !" 
 
 He justified the measure, by showing how it had 
 arisen : a plain account of the whole proceeding 
 was, he thought, the best defence of it. " And I 
 am bold to affirm," says he, in one of his Appeals 
 to Men of Reason and Religion, " that these un- 
 lettered men have help from God for that great 
 work, the saving souls from death ; seeing he hath 
 enabled, and doth enable them still, to turn many 
 to righteousness. Thus hath he ' destroyed the 
 wisdom of the wise, and brought to nought the 
 understanding of the prudent.' When they ima- 
 gined they had effectually shut the door, and locked 
 up every passage, whereby any help could come 
 to two or three preachers, weak in body as well as 
 soul, who they might reasonably believe would, 
 humanly speaking, wear themselves out in a short 
 time, — when they had gained their point, by se- 
 curing (as they supposed) all the men of learning 
 in the nation, He that sitteth in heaven laughed 
 them to scorn, and came upon them by a way they 
 thought not of. Out of the [stones he raised up 
 
wesley's lay-coadjutors, 77 
 
 those who should beget children to Abraham. We 
 had no more foresight of this than you. Nay, we 
 had the deepest prejudices against it, until we 
 could not but own that God gave wisdom from 
 above to these unlearned and ignorant men, so^that 
 the work of the Lord prospered in their hands, and 
 sinners were daily converted to God." 
 
 Zeal wasJthe only qualification which he required. 
 If the aspirant possessed no other requisite for his 
 work, and failed to produce an effect upon his 
 hearers, his ardour was soon cooled, and he with- 
 drew quietly from the field ; but such cases were 
 not very frequent. The gift of voluble utterance 
 is the commonest of all gifts j and when the au- 
 dience are in sympathy with the speaker, they are 
 easily affected * : the understanding makes no de- 
 mand, provided the passions find their food. But, 
 on the other hand, when enthusiasm was united 
 with strength of talents and of character, Wesley 
 was a skilful preceptor, who knew how to disci- 
 pline the untutored mind, and to imbue it 
 thoroughly with his system. He strongly im- 
 pressed upon his preachers the necessity of reading 
 to improve themselves. In reproving and advising 
 one who had neglected this necessary discipline, 
 he points out to him the ill consequences of that 
 
 * Sewel relates, with all simplicity and ^sincerity, in his History of 
 the Quakers, that his mother, a Dutch woman, preached in her native 
 language to a congregation of English Friends, and that though they did 
 not understand a single word, they were nevertheless edified by the dis- 
 course. — A man returned from attending one of Whitefield's sermons, 
 and said it was good for him to be there : the place, indeed, was so 
 crowded, that he had not been able to get near enough to hear him ; 
 " but then," he said, " I saw hia blessed wig !" 
 
78 wesley's lay-coadjutors. 
 
 neglect. " Hence," he says, *i your talent in 
 preaching does not increase : it is just the same as 
 it was seven years ago. It is lively, but not deep : 
 there is little variety ; there is no compass of 
 thought. Reading only can supply this, with daily 
 meditation and daily prayer. You wrong yourself 
 greatly by omitting this : you can never be a deep 
 preacher without it, any more than a thorough 
 Christian. Oh begin ! Fix some part of every day 
 for private exercises. You may acquire the taste 
 which you have not : what is tedious at first, will 
 afterwards be pleasant. Whether you like it or 
 not, read and pray daily. It is for your life ! there 
 is no other way ; else you will be a trifler all your 
 days, and a pretty superficial preacher. Do justice 
 to your own soul : give it time and means to grow : 
 do not starve yourself any longer." 
 
 But when the disciple was of a thoughtful and 
 enquiring mind, then Wesley's care was to direct 
 his studies, well knowing how important it was 
 that he should retain the whole and exclusive di- 
 rection. Thus, in a letter to Mr. Benson, then one 
 of the most hopeful, and since one of the most dis- 
 tinguished of his followers, he says, " When I re- 
 commend to any one a method or scheme of study, 
 I do not barely consider this or that book sepa- 
 rately, but in conjunction with the rest. And 
 what I recommend, I know; I know both the style 
 and sentiments of each author, and how he will 
 confirm or illustrate what goes before, and prepare 
 for what comes after. Therefore I must insist 
 upon it, the interposing other books between these 
 

 wesley's lay-coadjutors. 79 
 
 is not good husbandry : it is not making your time 
 and pains go as far as they might go. If you want 
 more books, let me recommend more, who best 
 understand my own scheme. And do not ramble, 
 however learned the persons may be that advise you 
 so to do." 
 
 To this disciple Wesley had occasion to say, 
 " Beware you be not swallowed up in books ! An 
 ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge." 
 This kind of caution was not often wanted. Nor, 
 although many of his early preachers applied them- 
 selves diligently to the study of the languages, did 
 he particularly encourage them in their desire of 
 becoming learned men ; for he perceived that, pro- 
 vided the preacher were thoroughly master of his 
 system, and had the language of Scripture at com- 
 mand, the more, in other points of intellectual 
 culture, he was upon a level with the persons 
 among whom he was called to labour, the better 
 would they comprehend him, and the more likely 
 would he be to produce the desired effect. " Clear- 
 ness," he says to one of his lay-assistants, " is ne- 
 cessary for you and me, because we are to instruct 
 people of the lowest understanding; therefore we, 
 above all, if we think with the wise, must yet speak 
 with the vulgar. We should constantly use the 
 most common, little, easy words (so they are pure 
 and proper) which our language affords. When 
 first I talked at Oxford to plain people in the 
 castle or the town, I observed they gaped and 
 stared. This quickly obliged me to alter my style 
 and adopt the language of those I spoke to ; and 
 
80 wesley's lay-coadjutors. 
 
 yet there is a dignity in their simplicity, which is 
 not disagreeable to those of the highest rank." 
 Many of his ablest and most successful assistants 
 perceived the good sense of this reasoning, and 
 acted upon it. " 1 am but a brown-bread preacher," 
 says Thomas Hanson, "that seek to help all I can 
 to Heaven, in the best manner I can." Alexander 
 Mather had received a good Scotch education in 
 his boyhood, and was sometimes tempted to recover 
 his lost Latin, and learn Greek and Hebrew 
 also, when he observed the progress made by others 
 who had not the same advantage to begin with. 
 But this desire was set at rest, when he considered 
 that these persons were not more instrumental than 
 before, " either in awakening, converting, or build- 
 ing up souls," which he regarded as the ff only 
 business, and the peculiar glory of a Methodist 
 preacher. In all these respects they had been 
 useful," he said, " but not more useful than when 
 they were without their learning ; and he doubted 
 whether they had been so useful as they might have 
 been, if they had employed the same time, the same 
 diligence, and the same intenseness of thought in 
 the several branches of that work for which they 
 willingly gave up all." 
 
 But although Wesley was not desirous that his 
 preachers should labour to obtain a reputation for 
 learning, he repelled the charge of ignorance. " In 
 the one thing," he says, " which they profess to 
 know, they are not ignorant men. I trust there is 
 not one of them who is not able to go through 
 such an examination in substantial, practical, ex- 
 
wesley's lay-coadjutors. 81 
 
 perimental divinity, as few of our candidates for 
 holy orders, even in the University (I speak it with 
 sorrow and shame, and in tender love,) are able 
 to do. But oh ! what manner of examination do most 
 of those candidates go through? and what proof 
 are the testimonials commonly brought (as solemn 
 as the form is wherein they run) either of their piety 
 or knowledge, to whom are entrusted those sheep 
 which God hath purchased with his own blood ?" 
 
 No founder of a monastic order ever more en- 
 tirely possessed the respect, as well as the love and 
 the admiration of his disciples ; nor better under- 
 stood their individual characters, and how to deal 
 with each according to the measure of his ca- 
 pacity. Where strength of mind and steadiness 
 were united with warmth of heart, he made the 
 preacher his counsellor as well as his friend : when 
 only simple zeal was to be found, he used it for his 
 instrument as long as it lasted. An itinerant, who 
 was troubled with doubts respecting his call, wrote 
 to him in a fit of low spirits, requesting that he 
 would send a preacher to supersede him in his cir- 
 cuit, because he believed he was out of his place. 
 Wesley replied in one short sentence, " Dear 
 brother, you are indeed out of your place ; for 
 you are reasoning, when you ought to be pray- 
 ing." And this was all. Thus tempering his au- 
 thority, sometimes with playfulness, and always 
 with kindness, he obtained from his early followers 
 an unhesitating, a cheerful, and a devoted obedi- 
 ence. One of them, whom he had summoned 
 from Bristol to meet him at Holyhead, and accom- 
 
 VOL. II. G 
 
82 wesley's lay-coadjutors. 
 
 pany him to Ireland, set out on foot, with only 
 three shillings in his pocket* It is a proof how 
 confidently such a man might calculate upon the 
 kindliness of human nature, that, during six nights 
 out of seven, this innocent adventurer was hospi- 
 tably entertained by utter strangers, and when he 
 arrived he had one penny left. John Jane (such 
 was his name) did not long survive this expedition ; 
 he brought on a fever by walking in exceeding hot 
 weather; and Wesley, recording his death in his 
 journal, concludes in this remarkable manner : ^~- 
 " All his clothes, linen and woollen, stockings, 
 hat, and wig, are not thought sufficient to answer 
 his funeral expences, which amount to 11. 17s. 3d. 
 All the money he had was Is. 4d. — Enough for any 
 unmarried preacher of the gospel to leave to his 
 executors !" St. Francis himself might have been 
 satisfied with such a disciple. 
 
 Men were not deterred from entering upon this 
 course of life by a knowledge of the fatigue, the 
 privations, and the poverty to which they devoted 
 themselves $ still less by the serious danger they 
 incurred, before the people were made to under- 
 stand that the Methodists were under the protec- 
 tion of the law. There is a stage of enthusiasm 
 in which these things operate as incitements ; but 
 this effect ceases as the spirit sinks to its natural 
 level. Many of the first preachers withdrew from 
 the career when their ardour was abated ; not be- 
 cause they were desirous of returning to the ways 
 of the world, and emancipating themselves from 
 the restraints of their new profession, but because 
 
wesley's lay-coadjutors. 83 
 
 the labour was too great. Some received regular 
 orders, and became useful ministers of the Estab- 
 lishment; others obtained congregations among 
 the Dissenters ; others resumed the trades which 
 they had forsaken, and settling where the Me- 
 thodists were numerous, officiated occasionally 
 among them. The great extent of ground over 
 which they were called to itinerate, while the num- 
 ber of preachers was comparatively small, occa- 
 sioned them, if they were married men, or had 
 any regard for their worldly welfare, thus to with- 
 draw themselves $ for the circuits were at that time 
 so wide, that the itinerant could only command 
 two or three days in as many months for enjoying 
 the society of his family, and looking after his own 
 concerns. Yet more persons than might have been 
 expected persevered in their course, and generally 
 had reason, even in a worldly point of view, to con* 
 gratulate themselves upon the part which they had 
 taken. From humble, or from low life, they were 
 raised to a conspicuous station : they enjoyed re- 
 spect and influence in their own sphere, which Was 
 the world to them ; and, as moral and intellectual 
 creatures, they may indeed be said to have been 
 new-born, so great was the change which they had 
 undergone. 
 
 Conversions have sometimes been produced by 
 circumstances almost as dreadful as the miracle by 
 which Saul the persecutor was smitten down. Such 
 were the cases of S. Norbert, (omitting all wilder 
 legends,) of S. Francisco de Borja, of the Abbe de 
 
 g 2 
 
84 wesley's lay-coadjutors. 
 
 Ranee, and, in our own days, of Vanderkemp. 
 Sometimes the slightest causes have sufficed, and 
 a chance-word has determined the future character 
 of the hearer's life. The cases in Methodism have 
 generally been of the latter kind. A preacher 
 happened to say in a sermon, " there are two wit- 
 nesses, dead and buried in the dust, who will rise 
 up in judgement against you !" And holding up the 
 Bible, he continued, " these are the two witnesses 
 that have been dead and buried in the dust upon 
 your shelf j the Old Testament and the New I" 
 One man was present who felt what was said, 
 as if his own guilt had been recorded against him, 
 and was thus mysteriously revealed. " I felt," 
 says he, " what was spoken. I remembered that 
 my Bible was covered with dust, and that I had 
 written my name with the point of my finger upon 
 the binding. I thought I had signed my own dam- 
 nation on the back of the witnesses." This 
 brought on a fearful state of mind. He went home 
 in great terror ; and seeing a dead toad in his path, 
 he wished, he says, that he had been a toad also, 
 for then he should have had no soul to lose. In 
 the middle of the night, while labouring under 
 such feelings, he sat up in bed, and said, " Lord, 
 how will it be with me in hell ?" Just then a dog 
 began to howl under his window, and reminded 
 him of the weeping and gnashing of teeth. After 
 a perilous struggle between Methodism and mad- 
 ness, the case came to a favourable termination, 
 and John Furz spent the remainder of his days as a 
 preacher. 
 
wesley's lay-coadjutors. 85 
 
 A party of men were amusing themselves one 
 day at an alehouse in Rotherham, by mimicking 
 the Methodists. It was disputed who succeeded 
 best, and this led to a wager. There were four 
 performers, and the rest of the company was to 
 decide, after a fair specimen from each. A Bible 
 was produced, and three of the rivals, each in turn 
 mounted the table, and held forth, in a style of 
 irreverent buffoonery, wherein the Scriptures were 
 not spared. John Thorp, who was the last ex- 
 hibitor, got upon the table in high spirits, exclaim- 
 ing, I shall beat you all! He opened the book 
 for a text, and his eyes rested upon these words, 
 " Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish /" 
 These words, at such a moment, and in such a 
 place, struck him to the heart. He became seri- 
 ous, he preached in earnest, and he affirmed after- 
 wards, that his own hair stood erect at the feelings 
 which then came upon him, and the awful denun- 
 ciations which he uttered. His companions heard 
 him with the deepest silence. When he came 
 down, not a word was said concerning the wager ; 
 he left the room immediately, without speaking to 
 any one, went home in a state of great agitation, 
 and resigned himself to the impulse which had thus 
 strangely been produced. In consequence, he 
 joined the Methodists, and became an itinerant 
 preacher : but he would often say, when he related 
 this story, that if ever he preached by the assist- 
 ance of the Spirit of God, it was at that time. 
 
 Many of Wesley's early coadjutors have left 
 memoirs of themselves, under the favourite title of 
 
 g 3 
 
86 WESLEY'S LAY-COADJUTORS. 
 
 their " Experience." A few sketches from these 
 authentic materials will illustrate the progress and 
 nature of Methodism ; and while they exhibit the 
 eccentricities of the human mind, will lay open 
 also some of its recesses. 
 
87 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 JOHN OLIVER. — JOHN PAWSON. ALEXANDER 
 
 MATHER. THOMAS OLIVERS. 
 
 John Oliver, the son of a tradesman at Stock- 
 port, in Cheshire, received the rudiments of a li- 
 beral education at the grammar school in that town ; 
 but at the age of thirteen, in consequence of re- 
 duced circumstances, was taken into his father's 
 shop. When he was about fifteen, the Methodists 
 came to Stockport: he partook the general preju- 
 dice against them, and calling upon one with 
 whom he chanced to be acquainted, took upon him- 
 self to convince him that he was of a bad religion, 
 which was hostile to the church. The Methodist, 
 in reply, easily convinced him that he had no re- 
 ligion at all. His pride was mortified at this de- 
 feat, and he went near his acquaintance no more ; 
 but the boy was touched at heart also : he left off 
 his idle and criminal diversions, (of which cock- 
 fighting was one,) read, prayed, fasted, regularly 
 attended church, and repeated the prayers and 
 collects every day. This continued some months, 
 without any apparent evil ; but having, at his fa- 
 ther's instance, spent a Sabbath evening at an inn, 
 with some young comrades from Manchester, and 
 forgotten all his good resolutions while he was in 
 
 g 4 
 
88 JOHN OLIVER. 
 
 their company, he came home at night in an agony 
 of mind. He did not dare to pray : his conscience 
 stared him in the face ; and he became melancholy. 
 The cause of this distemper was more obvious than 
 the cure ; and when he was invited one evening to 
 attend a meeting, the father declared he would 
 knock his brains out if he went, though he should 
 be hanged for it. John Oliver knew how little 
 was meant by this threat, and stole away to the 
 sermon. He " drank it in with all his heart ;" and 
 having afterwards been informed, by a female dis- 
 ciple, of the manner of her conversion, he was 
 " all in a flame to know these things for himself." 
 So he hastened home, fell to prayer, fancied twice 
 that he heard a voice distinctly saying his sins were 
 forgiven him, and felt, in that instant, that all his 
 load was gone, and that an inexpressible change 
 had been wrought. " I loved God," he says : " I 
 loved all mankind. I could not tell whether I was 
 in the body or out of it. Prayer was turned into 
 wonder, love, and praise." In this state of exalt- 
 ation he joined the society. 
 
 Mr. Oliver was a man of violent temper : he loved 
 his son dearly j and thinking that a boy of sixteen 
 was not emancipated from the obligation of filial 
 obedience, his anger at the course which John per- 
 sisted in pursuing was strong in proportion to the 
 strength of his affection. He sent to all the Me- 
 thodists in the town, threatening what he would 
 do if any of them dared receive him into their 
 houses. He tried severity, by the advice of stupid 
 men ; and broke not only sticks but chairs upon 
 
 3 
 
JOHN OLIVER. 89 
 
 him, in his passion. Perceiving that these brutal 
 means were ineffectual, and perhaps inwardly 
 ashamed of them, he reproached his undutiful 
 child with breaking his father's heart, and bring- 
 ing down his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. 
 The distress of the father, and the stubborn reso- 
 lution of the son, were now matter of public talk 
 in Stockport. Several clergymen endeavoured to 
 convince the lad of his misconduct. One of them, 
 who had been his schoolmaster, called him his 
 child, prayed for him, wept over him, and con- 
 jured him, as he loved his own soul, not to go near 
 those people any more. The father, in presence of 
 this clergyman, told his son, that he might attend 
 the church-prayers every day, and should have 
 every indulgence which he could ask, provided he 
 would come no more near those " damned villains," 
 as he called the objects of his violent but not un- 
 reasonable prejudice. John's reply was, that he 
 would do every thing in his power to satisfy him as 
 a child to a parent, but that this was a matter of 
 conscience which he could not give up. 
 
 Mr. Oliver had good cause for apprehending the 
 worst consequences from that spirit of fanaticism 
 with which the boy was so thoroughly possessed. 
 The disease was advancing rapidly toward a crisis. 
 At this time, his heart was " kept in peace and 
 love all the day long •/' and when his band-fellows 
 spoke of the wickedness wich they felt in them- 
 selves, he wondered at them, and could discover 
 none in himself. It was not long before he made 
 the discovery. " Having," he says, " given way 
 
90 JOHN OUVEU. 
 
 to temptation, and grieved the Holy Spirit of God," 
 all his comforts were withdrawn in a moment : " my 
 soul was all over darkness : I could no longer see 
 him that is invisible : I could not feel his influence 
 on my heart : I sought him, but could not find 
 him. I endeavoured to pray, but the heavens 
 seemed like brass : at the same time such a weight 
 came upon me, as if I was instantly to be pressed to 
 death. I sunk into black despair : I found no 
 gleam of light, no trace of hope, no token of any 
 kind for good. The Devil improved this hour of 
 darkness, telling me I was sure to be damned, for 
 I was forsaken of God. Sleep departed from me, 
 and I scarce eat any thing, till I was reduced to a 
 mere skeleton." One morning, being no longer 
 able to endure this misery, and resolving to put an 
 end to his wretched life, he rose very early, and 
 threw himself into the river, in deep water. How 
 he was taken out, and conveyed to the house of a 
 Methodist, he says, is what he never could tell; "un- 
 less God sent one of his ministering spirits to help 
 in the time of need." A humbler Christian would 
 have been satisfied with gratefully acknowledging 
 the providence of God : he, however, flattered him- 
 self with the supposition of a miracle ; and Wesley, 
 many years afterwards, published the account with- 
 out reprehension or comment. That evening, there 
 was preaching and praying in the house ; but, in the 
 morning, " Satan came upon him like thunder," 
 telling him he was a self-murderer j and he at- 
 tempted to strangle himself with a handkerchief. 
 It was now thought proper to send for Mr. Oliver, 
 
JOHN OLIVER. 91 
 
 who had been almost distracted all this while, fear- 
 ing what might so probably have happened to the 
 poor bewildered boy. He took him home, pro- 
 mising to use no severity ; for John was afraid to 
 go. A physician was called in, whom Oliver calls 
 an utter stranger to all religion. He bled him 
 largely, physicked him well, and blistered him on 
 the head, back, and feet. It is very possible that 
 the bodily disease required some active treatment : 
 the leaven of the mind was not thus to be worked 
 off. The first time that he was permitted to go 
 out, one of his Methodist friends advised him to 
 elope, seeing that he would not be permitted to 
 serve God at home. He went to Manchester : his 
 mother followed him, and found means to bring 
 him back by force : the father than gave up the 
 contest in despair, and John pursued his own 
 course without further opposition. Now it was, 
 he says, that his strength came again : his light, 
 his life, his God. He began to exhort : soon af- 
 terward he fancied himself called to some more 
 public work j and, having passed through the pre- 
 vious stages, was accepted by Wesley upon trial 
 as a travelling preacher. At the year's end he 
 would have gone home, from humility, not from 
 any weariness of his vocation. Wesley's reply was, 
 " You have set your hand to the gospel-plough, 
 therefore never look back ! I would have you come 
 up to London this winter. Here is every thing to 
 make the man of God perfect." He accepted the 
 invitation ; and had been thirty years an active and 
 successful preacher, when his life and portrait were 
 exhibited in the Arminian Magazine. 
 
92 JOHN PAWSON. 
 
 Oliver describes himself as having always been 
 of a fearful temper — a temper which is often con- 
 nected with rashness. During part of his life, he 
 was afflicted with what he calls a scrophulous dis- 
 order. A practitioner in Essex, to whom he ap- 
 plied for reliefj and who began his practice by 
 prayer, told him his whole mass of blood was cor- 
 rupted, and advised him to a milk diet : he took 
 daily a quart of milk, with white bread, and two 
 table-spoonfuls of honey. In six months his whole 
 habit of body was changed, and no symptom of 
 the disorder ever appeared afterwards. 
 
 JohnPawson was the son of a respectable farmer, 
 who cultivated his own estate, at Thorner, in 
 Yorkshire. His parents were of the Church of 
 England, and gave him a good education according 
 to their means ; and though, he says, they were 
 strangers to the life and power of religion, brought 
 him up in the fear of God. The father followed also 
 the trade of a builder, and -this son was bred to the 
 same business. The youth knowing the Methodists 
 only by common report, supposed them to be a 
 foolish and wicked people ; till happening to hear a 
 person give an_ account of his wife, who was a Me- 
 thodist, he conceived a better opinion of them, 
 and felt a wish to hear them. Accordingly he went 
 one evening to their place of meeting ; but, when 
 he came to the door, he was ashamed to go in, and 
 so walked round the house, and returned home. 
 This was in his 18th year. He was now employed 
 at Hare wood, and fell into profligate company, 
 
JOHN PAWSON. 93 
 
 who, though they did not succeed in corrupt- 
 ing him, made him dislike Methodism more than 
 ever. 
 
 Two sermons, which had been preached at the 
 parish church in Leeds by a methodistical clergy- 
 man, were lent to his father when Pawson was 
 about twenty. These fell into his hands, and con- 
 vinced him that justification by faith was necessary 
 to salvation. He went now to Otley to hear a 
 Methodist preach ; and from that hour his course 
 of life was determined. The serious devout be- 
 haviour of the people, he says, struck him with a 
 kind of religious awe : the singing greatly delighted 
 him ; and the sermon was, to use his own phrase- 
 ology, " much blest to his soul." He was per- 
 mitted to stay, and be present at the Society Meet- 
 ing, and " had cause to bless God for it." 
 
 There was nothing wavering in this man's cha- 
 racter ; he had been morally and religiously brought 
 up ; his disposition, from the beginning, was good, 
 and his devotional feelings strong. But his rela- 
 tions were exceedingly offended when he declared 
 himself a Methodist. An uncle, who had pro- 
 mised to be his friend, resolved that he would 
 leave him nothing in his will, and kept the reso- 
 lution. His parents, and his brother and sisters, 
 supposed him to be totally ruined. Sometimes his 
 father threatened to turn him out of doors, and 
 utterly disown him ; but John was his eldest son : 
 he dearly loved him j and this fault, bitterly as he 
 regretted and resented it, was not of a nature to 
 destroy his natural affection. He tried persuasion, 
 
94 JOHN PAWSON. 
 
 as well as threats j beseeching him not to run wil- 
 fully after his own ruin ; and his mother frequently 
 wept much on his account. The threat of disin- 
 heriting him gave him no trouble ; but the danger 
 which he believed their souls Were in distressed 
 him sorely. " I did not regard what I suffered," 
 says he, " so my parents might be brought out of 
 their Egyptian darkness." He bought books, and 
 laid them in his father's way* and it was a hopeful 
 symptom that the father read them, although it 
 seemed to no good purpose. The seed, however, had 
 struck root in the family : his brother and some Of 
 his sisters were " awakened." The father became 
 more severe with John, as the prime cause of all 
 this mischief : then again he tried mild means, and 
 told him to buy what books he pleased, but be- 
 sought him not to go to the preachings : he might 
 learn more by reading Mr. Wesley's writings, than 
 by hearing the lay-preachers ; and the Methodists, 
 he said, were so universally hated, that it would 
 ruin his character to go among them. It was 
 " hard work" to withstand the entreaties of a good 
 father ; and it was not less hard to refrain from 
 what he verily believed essential to his salvation. 
 There was preaching one Sunday near the house, 
 and, in obedience, hejcept away; but when it was 
 over, and he saw the people returning home, full 
 of the consolation which they had received, his 
 grief became too strong for him : he went into the 
 garden, and wept bitterly ; and, as his emotions 
 became more powerful, retired into a solitary 
 place, and there, he says, bemoaned himself be- 
 
JOHN PAWSON. 95 
 
 fore thg Lord* in such anguish, that he was 
 scarcely able to look up. In this situation his father 
 found him, and took him into the fields to see the 
 grass and corn ; but the cheerful images of nature 
 produced no effect upon a mind thus agitated ; and 
 the father was grievously troubled, believing verily 
 that his son would run distracted. They returned 
 home in time to attend the Church service ; and, 
 in the evening, as was their custom, John read 
 aloud from some religious book, choosing one to 
 his purpose. Seeing that his father approved of 
 what he read, he ventured to speak to him in de- 
 fence of his principles. The father grew angry, 
 and spoke with bitterness. " I find," said the old 
 man, " thou art now entirely ruined. I have used 
 every means I can think of, but all to no purpose. 
 I rejoiced at thy birth, and I once thought thou 
 wast as hopeful a young man as any in this town ; 
 but now I shall have no more comfort in thee so 
 long as I live. Thy mother and I are grown old, 
 and thou makest our lives quite miserable : thou 
 wilt bring down our grey hairs with sorrow to the 
 grave. Thou intendest to make my house, a preach- 
 ing house, When once my head is laid ; but it shall 
 never be thine : no, I will leave all I have to the 
 poor of the parish, before the Methodists shall 
 have any thing to do with it." Pawson was ex- 
 ceedingly affected ; and the father seeing this, de- 
 sired him to promise that he would hear their 
 preaching no more. He replied, when he could 
 speak for weeping, that if he could see a sufficient 
 reason he would make that promise j but not till 
 
96 JOHN PAWSON. 
 
 then. " Well," replied the old man, " I see thou 
 art quite stupid — I may as well say nothing: the 
 Methodists are the most bewitching people that 
 ever lived ; for, when once a person hears them, it 
 is impossible to persuade him to return back 
 again." 
 
 Pawson retired from this conversation in great 
 trouble, and was tempted to think that he was 
 guilty of disobeying his parents ; but he satisfied 
 himself that he must obey God rather than man. 
 It was a great comfort to him that his brother sym- 
 pathised with him entirely : they both strove to 
 oblige their parents as much as possible, and took 
 especially care that no business should be neglected 
 for the preaching. This conduct had its effect. 
 They used to pray together in their chamber. The 
 mother, after often listening on the stairs, desired 
 at last to join them ; and the father became, in 
 like manner, a listener at first, and afterwards a 
 partaker in these devotions. The minister of the 
 parish now began to apprehend that he should lose 
 the whole family : the way by which he attempted 
 to retain them was neither wise nor charitable ; it 
 was by reviling and calumniating the Methodists, 
 and in this manner inflaming the father's wrath 
 against the son. This was Pawson's last trial : per- 
 ceiving the effect which was thus produced, he 
 wrote a letter to his father, in which, after stating 
 his feelings concerning his own soul, he came to 
 plain arguments, which could not but have their 
 due weight. " What worse am I, in any respect, 
 since I heard the Methodists ? Am I disobedient 
 
JOHN PAWSON. 97 
 
 to you or my mother in any other thing ? Do I 
 neglect any part of business ?" He asked him also 
 why he condemned the preachers, whom he had 
 never heard. " If you will hear them only three 
 times," said he, " and then prove from the Scrip- 
 ture that they preach contrary thereunto, I will 
 hear them no more." The old man accepted this 
 proposal. The first sermon he liked tolerably well, 
 the second not at all, and the third so much, that 
 he went to hear a fourth, which pleased him better 
 than all the rest. His own mind was now wholly 
 unsettled : he retired one morning into the stable, 
 where nobody might hear or see him, that he might 
 pray without interruption to the Lord ; and here 
 such a paroxysm came on, " that he roared for the 
 very disquietness of his soul." — " This," says 
 Pawson, " was a day of glad tidings to me. I now 
 had liberty to cast in my lot with the people of 
 God. My father invited the preachers to his 
 house, and prevented my turning it into a preach- 
 ing house, (as he had formerly said,) by doing it 
 himself. From this time we had preachings in our 
 own house, and all the family joined the Society." 
 It might have been thought that the proselyte 
 had now obtained his soul's desire; but he had not 
 attained to the new birth : his prayer was, that the 
 Lord would take away his heart of stone, and give 
 him a heart of flesh ; and, ere long, as he was 
 *' hearing the word" in a neighbouring village, the 
 crisis which he solicited came on. " In the begin- 
 ning of the service," says he, " the power of God 
 came mightily upon me and many others. All on a 
 
 VOL. II. H 
 
98 JOHN PAWSON. 
 
 sudden my heart was like melting wax : I cried aloud 
 with an exceeding bitter cry. The arrows of the 
 Almighty stuck fast in my flesh, and the poison of 
 them drank up my spirits ; yet, in the height of my 
 distress, I could bless the Lord that he had granted 
 me that which I had so long sought for." It was 
 well that his father had been converted before he 
 reached this stage, or he might with some reason 
 have believed that Methodism had made his son 
 insane. He could take no delight in any thing ; 
 his business became a burthen to him ; he was 
 quite confused; so that any one, he says, who 
 looked on him, might see in his countenance the 
 distress of his mind, for he was on the very brink 
 of despair. One day he was utterly confounded 
 by hearing that one of his acquaintance had re- 
 ceived an assurance of salvation, when he had only 
 heard three sermons ; whereas he, who had long 
 waited, was still without comfort. Public thanks 
 were given for this new birth ; and Pawson went 
 home from the meeting to give vent to his own 
 grief. As he could not do this in his chamber 
 without disturbing the family, he retired into the 
 barn, where he might perform freely, and there 
 began to pray, and weep, and roar aloud, for his 
 distress was greater than he could well bear. Pre- 
 sently he found that his brother was in another 
 part of the barn, in as much distress as himself. 
 Their cries brought in the father and mother, the 
 elder sister and her husband, and all being in the 
 same condition, they all lamented together. " 1 
 suppose," says Pawson, " if some of the good 
 
JOHN PAWSON. 99 
 
 Christians of the age had seen or heard us, they 
 would have concluded we were all quite beside 
 ourselves." However, " though the children were 
 brought to the birth, there was not strength to bring- 
 forth. " One Saturday evening, when " there was 
 a mighty shaking among the dry bones" at the 
 meeting, his father received the assurance, and the 
 preacher gave thanks on his account ; but Pawson 
 was so far from being able to rejoice with him, 
 that, he says, " his soul sunk as into the belly of 
 hell." On the day following the preacher met the 
 Society, " in order to wrestle with God in behalf 
 of those who were in distress." Pawson went full 
 of sorrow, " panting after the Lord as the hart 
 after the water-brooks." When the prayer for 
 those in distress was made, he placed himself 
 upon his knees in the middle of the room, if pos- 
 sible, in greater anguish of spirit than ever before. 
 Presently a person, whom he knew, " cried for 
 mercy, as if he would rend the very heaven." — 
 " Quickly after, in the twinkling of an eye," says 
 Pawson, " all my trouble was gone, my guilt and 
 condemnation were removed, and I was filled with 
 joy unspeakable. I was brought out of darkness 
 into marvellous light ; out of miserable bondage, 
 into glorious liberty ; out of the most bitter dis- 
 tress, into unspeakable happiness. I had not the 
 least doubt of my acceptance with God, but was 
 fully assured that he was reconciled to me through 
 the merits of his Son. I was fully satisfied that I 
 was born of God : my justification was so clear to 
 me, that I could neither doubt nor fear." 
 
 h 2 
 
100 ALEXANDER MATHER. 
 
 The lot of the young man was now cast. He 
 was shortly afterwards desired to meet a class : it 
 was a sore trial to him ; but obedience was a duty, 
 and he was " obliged to take up the cross." 
 " From the first or second time I met it," he con- 
 tinues, " I continually walked in the light of God's 
 countenance : I served him with an undivided 
 heart. I had no distressing temptations, but had 
 constant power over all sin, so that I lived as upon 
 the borders of heaven." Henceforward his pro- 
 gress was regular. From reading the homilies, 
 and explaining them as he went on, he began to 
 expound the Bible, in his poor manner. The 
 people thrust him into the pulpit. First he be- 
 came a local preacher, then an itinerant, and, 
 finally a leading personage of the conference, in 
 which he continued a steady and useful member 
 till his death. 
 
 Alexander Mather was a man of cooler tem- 
 perament and better disciplined mind than most of 
 Wesley's coadjutors. He was the son of a baker, 
 at Brechin, in Scotland : his parents were reputable 
 and religious people : they kept him carefully from 
 evil company, and brought him up in the fear of 
 God : but the father was a rigid and severe man j 
 and probably for this reason, while he was yet a 
 mere boy, (according to his own account not 
 thirteen,) he joined the rebels in 1745. Having 
 escaped from Culloden and the pursuit, he found 
 that his father's doors were closed against him on 
 his return. By his mother's help, however, he 
 
ALEXANDER MATHER. 101 
 
 .was secreted among their relations for several 
 months, till he thought the danger was over, and 
 ventured a second time to present himself at home. 
 The father, more, perhaps, from cunning, than ac- 
 tual want of feeling, not only again refused him 
 admittance, but went himself and gave information 
 against him to the commanding officer, and the 
 boy would have been sent to prison, if a gentleman 
 of the town had not interfered, and obtained leave 
 for him to lodge in his father's house. The next 
 morning he passed through the form of an examin- 
 ation, and was discharged. From this time he 
 worked at his father's business, till, in the nine- 
 teenth year of his age, he thought it advisable to 
 see the world, and therefore travelled southward. 
 The next year he reached London, and there en- 
 gaged himself as a journeyman baker. Because 
 he was, as he says, a foreigner, his first master was 
 summoned to Guildhall, and compelled to dismiss 
 him. This unjust law was not afterwards enforced 
 against him, and he seems to have had no difficulty 
 in obtaining employment. Before he had been 
 many months in London, a young woman, who 
 had been bred up with him in his father's house* 
 sought him out : they had not met for many years, 
 and this renewal of an old intimacy, in a strange 
 land, soon ended in marriage. 
 
 Mather had made a resolution that he would live 
 wholly to God whenever he should marry. For a 
 while he was too happy to remember this resolu- 
 tion : he remembered it when his wife was afflicted 
 with illness : it then lay heavy on his mind that he 
 
 h S 
 
102 ALEXANDER MATHER. 
 
 had not performed his vow of praying with her, 
 and yet some kind of false feeling prevented him 
 from opening his heart to her. Day after day the 
 sense of this secret sin increased upon him, till, 
 after loss of appetite and of sleep, and tears by day 
 and night, he " broke through," as he expresses 
 it, and began the practice of praying with her, 
 which from that time was never interrupted. Her 
 education had been a religious one like his, and 
 they did not depart from the way in which they 
 were trained up. 
 
 Though Mather had no domestic obstacles to 
 overcome, and never passed through those struggles 
 of mind which, in many of his colleagues, bordered 
 so closely upon madness, he was by no means in a 
 sane state of devotion at this time. It was not suf- 
 ficient for him to pray by himself every morning 
 and every afternoon with his wife ; he sometimes 
 knelt when he was going to bed, and continued in 
 that position till two o'clock, when he was called 
 to his work. The master whom he now served was 
 an attendant at the Foundry, but, like all others 
 of the same trade, he was in the practice of what 
 was called " baking of pans" on a Sunday. Mather 
 regarded this as a breach of the Sabbath : it 
 troubled him so that he could find no peace ; and 
 his flesh, he says, consumed away, till the bones 
 were ready to start through his skin. At length, 
 unable to endure this state of mind, he gave his 
 master warning. The master, finding by what 
 motives he was influenced, and that he had not 
 provided himself with another place, was struck 
 
ALEXANDER MATHER. 103 
 
 by his conscientious conduct : he went round to all 
 the trade in the neighbourhood, and proposed that 
 they should enter into an agreement not to bake 
 on Sundays. The majority agreed. He advertised 
 for a meeting of master bakers upon the subject ; 
 but nothing could be concluded. After all this, 
 which Mather acknowledges was more than he 
 could reasonably expect, he said to him, " I have 
 done all I can, and now 1 hope you will be con- 
 tent." Mather sincerely thanked him for what he 
 had done, but declared his intention of quitting 
 him, as soon as his master could suit himself with 
 another man. But the master, it seems, took ad- 
 vice at the Foundry, and on the following Sunday 
 staid at home, to tell all his customers that he 
 could bake no more on the Sabbath day. From 
 this time both he and his wife were particularly 
 kind to Mather. They introduced him to the 
 Foundry, and he soon became a regular member 
 of the Society. 
 
 It was not long before he had strong impressions 
 upon his mind that he was called to preach. After 
 fasting and praying upon this point, he communi- 
 cated it to his band, and they set apart some days 
 for the same exercises. This mode of proceeding 
 was not likely to abate his desire ; and the band 
 then advised him to speak to Mr. Wesley. Wesley 
 replied, " This is a common temptation among 
 young men. Several have mentioned it to me ; but 
 the next thing I hear of them is, that they are mar- 
 ried, or upon the point of it." — " Sir," said Mather, 
 " I am married already." Wesley then bade him 
 
 h 4 
 
104 ALEXANDER MATHER. 
 
 not care for the temptation, but seek God by fast- 
 ing and prayer. lie made answer that he had 
 done this ; and Wesley recommended patience and 
 perseverance in this course ; adding, that he doubted 
 not but God would soon make the way plain before 
 him. Mather could not but understand this as an 
 encouragement : he was the more encouraged, 
 when Wesley shortly afterwards appointed him 
 first to be the leader of a band, and in a little time 
 of a class. In both situations he acquitted himself 
 to the satisfaction of others : his confidence in 
 himself was, of course, increased, and he went 
 once more to Mr. Wesley to represent his ardent 
 aspirations. " To be a Methodist preacher," said 
 Wesley, " is not the way to ease, honour, pleasure, 
 or profit. It is a life of much labour and reproach. 
 They often fare hard — often are in want. They 
 are liable to be stoned, beaten and abused in va- 
 rious manners. Consider this before you engage 
 in so uncomfortable a way of life." The other side 
 of the picture would have been sufficiently tempt- 
 ing, if Mather had been influenced by worldly 
 considerations : the danger was just enough to sti- 
 mulate enthusiasm : the reproach of strangers 
 would only heighten the estimation in which he 
 would be held by believers : no way of life could 
 be more uncomfortable than his own ; and what a 
 preferment in the world for a journeyman baker ! 
 The conversation ended, by allowing him to make 
 a trial on the following: morning:. After a second 
 essay, he received information nearly at ten at 
 night, that he was to preach the next morning at 
 
ALEXANDER MATHER. 105 
 
 five o'clock at the Foundry. This was the critical 
 trial. .All the time he was making his dough he 
 was engaged in meditation and prayer for assist- 
 ance. The family were all in bed, and when he had 
 done, he continued praying and reading the Bible 
 to find a text till two o'clock. It was then time to 
 call his fellow servant, and they went to work to- 
 gether as usual till near four, preparing the bread 
 for the oven. His comrade then retired to bed, 
 and he to his prayers, till a quarter before five, 
 when he went, in fear and trembling, to the meet- 
 ing, still unprepared even with a text. He took 
 up the hymn-book, and gave out the hymn, in a 
 voice so faint, because of his timidity, that it could 
 not be understood. The people, not hearing the 
 verse, knew not what to sing : he was no singer 
 himself, otherwise he might have recovered this 
 mishap by leading them, — so they were at a stand, 
 and this increased his agitation so much, that his 
 joints shook. However, he recovered himself, and 
 took the text upon which he opened. The matter 
 after this was left to Mr. Wesley, to employ him 
 as his business would permit, just when and where 
 he pleased. When first he began to preach, there 
 was a considerable natural defect in his delivery ; 
 and he spoke with such extreme quickness, that 
 very few could understand him : but he entirely 
 overcame this. 
 
 The account of the exertions in which this zeal- 
 ous labourer was now engaged, may best be re- 
 lated in his own words. He says, "In a little 
 time I was more employed than my strength would 
 
106 ALEXANDER MATHER. 
 
 well allow. I had no time for preaching but what 
 I took from my sleep ; so that I frequently had not 
 eight hours sleep in a week. This, with hard la- 
 bour, constant abstemiousness, and frequent fast- 
 ing, brought me so low, that, in a little more than 
 two years, I was hardly able to follow my business. 
 My master was often afraid I should kill myself: 
 and perhaps his fear was not groundless. I have 
 frequently put off my shirts as wet with sweat as if 
 they had been dipt in water. After hastening to 
 finish my business abroad, I have come home all 
 in a sweat in the evening, changed my clothes, and 
 ran to preach at one or another chapel ; then 
 walked or ran back, changed my clothes, and gone 
 to work at ten, wrought hard all night, and preached 
 at five the next morning. I ran back to draw the 
 bread at a quarter, or half an hour past six ; 
 wrought hard in the bake-house till eight ; then 
 hurried about with bread till the afternoon, and 
 perhaps at night set off again. " 
 
 Had this mode of life continued long, Mather 
 must have fallen a victim to his zeal. He was 
 probably saved by being appointed a travelling 
 preacher ; yet, at the very commencement of his 
 itinerancy, his course had been nearly cut short. 
 A mob attacked him at Boston ; and when, with 
 great difficulty and danger, he reached his inn, 
 bruised, bleeding, and covered with blood, the 
 rabble beset the house, and the landlord attempted 
 to turn him out, for fear they should pull it down. 
 Mather, however, knew the laws, and was not 
 wanting to himself. " Sir," he said, " I am in 
 
ALEXANDER MATHER. 107 
 
 your house ; but, while I use it as an inn, it is 
 mine — turn me out at your peril." And he com- 
 pelled him to apply to a magistrate for protection. 
 It was more than twelve months before he recovered 
 from the brutal treatment which he received on 
 this occasion. The mob at Wolverhampton pulled 
 down a preaching house : an attorney had led them 
 on, and made the first breach himself. Mather 
 gave him his choice of rebuilding it at his own ex- 
 pence, or being tried for his life : of course the 
 house was rebuilt, and there were no further riots 
 at Wolverhampton. He was of a hardy constitu- 
 tion and strong mind, cool and courageous, zeal- 
 ous and disinterested, most tender-hearted and 
 charitable, but possessing withal a large share of 
 prudence, which enabled him to conduct the tem- 
 poral affairs of the Connection with great ability. 
 The account which, in his matured and sober mind, 
 he gives of his experience, touching what Wesley 
 calls the great salvation, bears with it fewer marks 
 of enthusiasm, and more of meditation, than is 
 usually found in such cases. " What I experi- 
 enced in my own soul," he says, " was an instant- 
 aneous deliverance from all those wrong tempers 
 and affections which I had long and sensibly 
 groaned under ; an entire disengagement from 
 every creature, with an entire devotedness to God; 
 and from that moment I found an unspeakable 
 pleasure in doing the will of God in all things. I 
 had also a power to do it, and the constant appro- 
 bation both of my own conscience and of God. I 
 had simplicity of heart, and a single eye to God at 
 
108 THOMAS OLIVERS* 
 
 all times and in all places, with such a fervent zeal 
 for the glory of God and the good of souls, as 
 swallowed up every other care and consideration. 
 Above all, I had uninterrupted communion with 
 God, whether sleeping or waking." It is scarcely 
 compatible with human weakness, that a state like 
 this should be permanent ; and Mather, in describ- 
 ing it, after an interval of more than twenty years, 
 exclaims, " Oh that it were with me as when the 
 candle of the Lord thus shone upon my head !" 
 Yet he had not failed in his course ; and, after 
 much reflection, and the surer aid of prayer, had 
 calmly satisfied his clear judgment, " that deliver- 
 ance from sin does not imply deliverance from hu- 
 man infirmities ; and that it is not inconsistent with 
 temptations of various kinds." 
 
 Thomas Olivers was born at Tregonan, a vil- 
 lage in Montgomeryshire, in the year 1725. Being 
 left an orphan in childhood, with some little pro- 
 perty, he was placed under the care of the husband 
 of his father's first cousin ; which remote relation- 
 ship comes under the comprehensive term of a 
 Welsh uncle. Mr. Tudor, as this person was 
 called, was an eminent farmer, and did his duty 
 by the boy ; giving him not merely the common 
 school education, but bestowing more than common 
 pains in imparting religious acquirements. He 
 was taught to sing psalms, as well as repeat his 
 catechism and his prayers, and to attend church 
 twice on the Sabbath day. But the parish hap- 
 pened to be in a state of shocking immorality : — 
 
THOMAS OLIVERS. 109 
 
 \ 
 
 there was one man, in particular, who studied the 
 art of cursing, and w r ould exemplify the richness 
 of the Welsh language, by compounding twenty 
 or thirtv words into one long and horrid bias- 
 phemy. As this was greatly admired among his 
 profligate companions, Olivers imitated it, and in 
 time rivalled what he calls his infernal instructor. 
 The other parts of his conduct were in the same 
 spirit ; and he obtained the character of being the 
 worst boy who had been known in that country for 
 the last thirty years. When he was about three or 
 four and twenty he left the country, not having 
 half learned the business to which he had been ap- 
 prenticed. The cause of his departure was the 
 outcry raised against him for his conduct toward a 
 farmer's daughter : he was the means, he says, of 
 driving her almost to an untimely end. It was the 
 sin which lay heaviest on his mind, both before 
 and after his conversion ; and which, as long as 
 he lived, he remembered with peculiar shame and 
 sorrow. 
 
 He removed to Shrewsbury, and there, or in its 
 neighbourhood, continued a profligate course of 
 life, till poverty, as well as conscience, stared him 
 in the face. He said within himself, that he was 
 living a most wretched life, and that the end must 
 be damnation, unless he repented and forsook his 
 sins. But how should he acquire strength for this ? 
 For he had always gone to church, and he had 
 often prayed and resolved against his evil prac- 
 tices, and yet his resolutions were weak as water. 
 So he thought of " trying what the sacrament would 
 
110 THOMAS OLIVERS. 
 
 do ;" and borrowing, accordingly, the book called 
 A Week's Preparation, he went regularly through 
 it, and read daily upon his knees the meditations 
 and prayers for the day. On the Sunday he went 
 to the Lord's table, and spent the following week in 
 going over the second part of the book, as devoutly 
 as he had done the first. During this fortnight he 
 " kept tolerably clear of sin ;" but when the course 
 of regimen was over, the effect ceased : he returned 
 the book with many thanks, and fell again into his 
 vicious courses. Ere long he was seized with a 
 violent fever ; and when his life was despaired of j 
 was restored, as he believed, by the skill of a jour- 
 neyman apothecary, who, being a Methodist, at- 
 tended him for charity. His recovery brought 
 with it a keen but transitory repentance. This was 
 at Wrexham. Here he and one of his companions 
 committed an act of arch-villainy, and decamped 
 in consequence ; Olivers leaving several debts be- 
 hind him, and the other running away from his 
 apprenticeship. They travelled as far as Bristol ; 
 and there Olivers, learning that Mr. Whitefield was 
 to preach, resolved to go and hear what he had to 
 say ; because he had often heard of Whitefield, and 
 had sung songs about him. He went, and was too 
 late. Determined to be soon enough on the fol- 
 lowing evening, he went three hours before the 
 time. When the sermon began, he did little but 
 look about him ; but seeing tears trickle down the 
 cheeks of some who stood near, he became more 
 attentive. The text was, * Is not this a brand 
 plucked out qfthejire?" 
 
THOMAS OLIVERS. Ill 
 
 " When the sermon began," says this fiery- 
 minded Welshman, " I was certainly a dreadful 
 enemy to God, and to all that is good : and one of 
 the most profligate and abandoned young men 
 living." Before it was ended, he became a new 
 creature : a clear view of redemption was set be- 
 fore him, and his own conscience gave him clear 
 conviction of its necessity. The heart, he says, 
 was broken ; nor could he express the strong de- 
 sires which he felt for righteousness. They led him 
 to effectual resolutions : he broke off all his evil 
 practices, forsook all his wicked companions, and 
 gave himself up with all his heart to God. He was 
 now almost incessantly in tears : he was constant 
 in attending worship, wherever it was going on ; 
 and describes his feelings during a Te Deum at the 
 cathedral, as if he had done with earth, and was 
 praising God before his throne. He bought the 
 Week's Preparation, and read it upon his knees 
 day and night ; and so constant was he in prayer, 
 and in this position, that his knees became stiff" 
 and he was actually, for a time, lame in conse- 
 quence. " So earnest was ly" he says, " that I 
 used, by the hour together, to wrestle with all the 
 might of my body and soul, till I almost expected 
 to die on the spot. What with bitter cries, (un- 
 heard by any but God and myself,) together with 
 torrents of tears, which were almost continually 
 trickling down my cheeks, my throat was often 
 dried up, as David says, and my eyes literally failed, 
 while I waited for God!" He used to follow 
 Whitefield in the streets, with such veneration, that 
 
 12 
 
US THOMAS OLIVERS. 
 
 he could " scarce refrain from kissing the very 
 prints of his feet." 
 
 Here he would fain have become a member of 
 the Society ; but when, with much timidity, he 
 made his wishes known to one of Mr. Whitefield's 
 ministers, the preacher, for some unexplained rea- 
 son, thought proper to discourage him. After a 
 few months, Olivers removed to Bradford, and 
 there, for a long time, attended the preaching of 
 the Methodists ; and when the public service was 
 over, and he, with the uninitiated, was shut out, he 
 would go into the field at the back of the preach- 
 ing house, and listen while they were singing, and 
 weep bitterly at the thought that, while God's 
 people were thus praising his name, he, a poor 
 wretched fugitive, was not permitted to be among 
 them. And, though he compared himself to one 
 of the foolish virgins, when they came out the would 
 walk behind them for the sake of catching a word 
 of their religious conversation. This conduct, and 
 his regular attendance, at last attracted notice : he 
 was asked if it was his wish to join the Society, 
 and receive a note of admission from the preacher. 
 His rebuff at Bristol had discouraged him from ap- 
 plying for what might so easily have been obtained; 
 and the longing for the admission had produced a 
 state of mind little different from insanity. Re- 
 turning home, now that he possessed it, and ex- 
 hilarated, or even intoxicated with joy, he says, 
 that as he came to the bottom of the hill, at the 
 entrance of the town, a ray of light, resembling 
 the shining of a star, descended through a small 
 
THOMAS OLIVERS. 113 
 
 opening in the heaven, and instantaneously shone 
 upon him. In that instant his burden fell off, and 
 he was so elevated, that he felt as if he could li- 
 terally fly away to heaven. A shooting star might 
 easily produce this effect upon a man so agitated : 
 for trifles, light as air, will act as strongly upon 
 enthusiasm as upon jealousy ; and never was any 
 man in a state of higher enthusiasm than Olivers 
 at this time. He says, that in every thought, inten- 
 tion, or desire, his constant enquiry was, whether 
 it was to the glory of God ; and that, if he could 
 not answer in the affirmative, he dared not indulge 
 it: that he received his daily food nearly in the 
 same manner as he did the sacrament: that he 
 used mental prayer daily and hourly ; and for a 
 while his rule was in this manner, to employ five 
 minutes out of every quarter of an hour. " Upon 
 the whole," he pursues, " I truly lived by faith; 
 I saw God in every thing : the heavens, the earth, 
 and all therein, showed me something of him ; yea, 
 even from a drop of water, a blade of grass, or a 
 grain of sand, I often received instruction." 
 
 He soon became desirous of " telling the world 
 what God had done for him •/' and having com- 
 municated this desire to his band-fellows, they kept 
 a day of solemn fasting on the occasion, and then 
 advised him to make a trial. Many approved of 
 his gifts : others were of opinion that he ought to 
 be more established, and was too earnest to hold it 
 long. When he began to preach, his custom was, 
 to get all his wordly business done, clean himself, 
 
 vol. ir. i 
 
114 THOMAS OLIVERS. 
 
 and put out his Sunday's apparel on Saturday 
 night, which sometimes was not accomplished be- 
 fore midnight : afterwards he sat up reading, pray- 
 ing, and examining himself, till one or two in the 
 morning : he rose at four, or never later than five, 
 and went two miles into the country, through all 
 weather, to meet a few poor people, from six till 
 seven. By eight he returned to Bradford, to hear 
 the preaching ; then went seven miles on foot to 
 preach at one ; three or four farther to hold forth 
 at five ; and, after all, had some five or six more 
 to walk on his return. And as the preaching was 
 more exhausting than the exercise, he was often so 
 wearied, that he could scarcely get over a stile, or 
 go up into his chamber when he got home. 
 
 When he had been a local preacher about twelve 
 months, the small-pox broke out at Bradford, and 
 spread like a pestilence : scarce a single person 
 escaped ; and six or seven died daily. Olivers was 
 seized with it the first week in October : heating 
 things were given him by an ignorant old woman ; 
 and when some charitable person sent an experi- 
 enced physician to visit him, the physician de- 
 clared that, in the course of fifty years' practice, 
 he had never seen so severe a case. He was blind 
 for five weeks. The room in which he lay was so 
 offensive, that those who went out of it infected 
 the streets as they past. He was not able to rise 
 that his bed might be made till New-year's day ; 
 yet, during the whole time, he never uttered a 
 groan or a single complaint : " thus evincing," as 
 
THOMAS OLIVERS. 115 
 
 he says, " that no suffering is too great for the 
 grace of God to enable us to bear with resignation 
 and quietness." 
 
 This long illness increased the number of his 
 debts, which were numerous enough before his 
 conversion. As soon, therefore, as he had gained 
 sufficient strength for the journey, he set off for 
 Montgomeryshire, to receive his little property, 
 which had hitherto remained in Mr. Tudor's hands. 
 The thorough change which had been effected in 
 so notorious a reprobate, astonished all who knew 
 him : when they saw him riding far and near, in 
 search of all persons to whom he was indebted, and 
 faithfully making payment of what the creditors 
 never expected to recover, they could not doubt 
 the sincerity of his reformation, and they ascribed 
 it to the grace of God. Tudor explained the 
 matter in a way more satisfactory to himself be- 
 cause he could comprehend it better: he said to 
 Olivers, " Thou hast been so wicked that thou 
 hast seen the Devil." Having paid his debts in his 
 own country, he returned by way of Bristol to 
 Bradford, discharged, in like manner, his accounts 
 in both these places, and being now clear of the 
 world, and thereby delivered from a burden which 
 had cost him, as he says, many prayers and tears, he 
 set up business with the small remains of his money, 
 and with a little credit ; but, before he was half 
 settled, Wesley exhorted him to free himself from 
 all such engagements, and make the work of the 
 gospel his sole pursuit. The advice of the master 
 was a law to the obedient disciple. Olivers dis- 
 
 i c l 
 
11G THOMAS OLIVERS. 
 
 posed of his effects, wound up his affairs, and pre- 
 pared to itinerate in the West of England. " But 
 I was not able," he says, " to buy another horse : 
 and therefore, with my boots on my legs, my 
 great coat on my back, and my saddle-bags, with 
 my books and linen, across my shoulder, I set out 
 in October 1753." 
 
 Wesley, when he was not the dupe of his own 
 imagination, could read the characters of men 
 with a discriminating eye. He was not deceived 
 in Olivers : the daring disposition, the fiery tem- 
 per, and the stubbornness of this Welshman, were 
 now subdued and disciplined into an intrepidity, 
 an ardour, and a perseverance, which were the best 
 requisites for his vocation. It was not long before 
 one of his congregation at Tiverton, presented him 
 with the price of a horse, as well suited to him as 
 Bucephalus to Alexander ; for he was as tough and 
 as indefatigable as his master. Indeed the beast, 
 as if from sympathy, made the first advances, by 
 coming up to him in a field where he was walking 
 with the owner, and laying his nose upon his 
 shoulder. Pleased with this familiarity, Olivers 
 stroked the colt, which was then about two years 
 and a half old ; and finding that the farmer would 
 sell him for five pounds, struck the bargain. " I 
 have kept him," he says in his memoirs, " to this 
 day, which is about twenty-five years, and on him 
 I have travelled comfortably not less than an hun- 
 dred thousand miles." On one occasion both he 
 and his horse were exposed to a service of some 
 danger at Yarmouth. The mob of that town had 
 
THOMAS OLIVERS. * 117 
 
 sworn, that if any Methodist came there, he should 
 never return alive. Olivers, however, being then 
 stationed at Norwich, was resolved to try the ex- 
 periment, and accordingly set out with a com- 
 panion, who was in no encouraging state of mind, 
 but every now and then exclaimed upon the road, 
 " I shall be murdered, and go to hell this day ; for 
 I know not the Lord." With this unhappy volun- 
 teer for martyrdom, Olivers entered Yarmouth ; 
 and having first attended service in the church, 
 went into the market-place and gave out a hymn. 
 The people collected, and listened with tolerable 
 quietness while he sung and prayed ; but, as soon 
 as he had taken, his text, they began so rude a 
 comment upon the sermon, that one of his friends 
 prudently pulled him down from his perilous stand, 
 and retreated with him into a house, in one of 
 those remarkable streets which are peculiar to Yar- 
 mouth, and are called Rows ; and which are so nar- 
 row, that two long-armed persons may almost shake 
 hands across from the windows. Though Olivers 
 had rashly thrust himself into this adventure, he 
 was prudent enough now to withdraw from it, and 
 accordingly he sent for his horse. The mob re- 
 cognized the animal, followed him, and rilled the 
 row. To wait till they dispersed might have been 
 inconvenient; and perhaps they might have at- 
 tacked the house ; so he came forth, mounted reso- 
 lutely, and making use of his faithful roadster as 
 a charger on this emergence, forced the rabble 
 before him through the row ; but the women, on 
 either side, stood in the door-ways, some with 
 
 i 3 
 
118 THOMAS OLIVERS. 
 
 bowls of water, others with both hands full of dirt, 
 to salute him as he passed. Having rode the 
 gauntlet here, and got into the open street, a tre- 
 mendous battery of stones, sticks, apples, turnips, 
 potatoes, and other such varieties of mob ammu- 
 nition, was opened upon him and his poor com- 
 rade: the latter clapped spurs to his horse, and 
 galloped out of town : Olivers proceeded more 
 calmly, and watching the sticks and stones which 
 came near, so as to ward them ofrj and evade the 
 blow, preserved, as he says, a regular retreat. 
 
 Olivers was more likely led into this danger by 
 a point of honour, than by any natural rashness ; 
 for, that he had acquired a considerable share of 
 sound worldly prudence, appears from the curious 
 account which he has given of his deliberation 
 concerning marriage. Setting out, he says, with 
 a conviction that in this important concern " young 
 people did not consult reason and the will of God, 
 so much as their own foolish inclinations," he en- 
 quired of himself, in the first place, whether he was 
 called to marry at that time ; and having settled 
 that question in the affirmative, the next enquiry 
 was, what sort of a person ought he to marry ? 
 The remainder is too extraordinary and too charac- 
 teristic to be given in any words but his own : — 
 " To this I answered in general, such a one as 
 Christ would choose for me, suppose he was on 
 earth, and was to undertake that business. I then 
 asked, but what sort of a person have I reason to 
 believe he would choose for me ? Here I fixed on 
 the following properties, and ranged them in the 
 
THOMAS OLIVERS. 119 
 
 following order : The first was grace : I was 
 quite certain that no preacher of God's word 
 ought, on any consideration, to marry one who 
 is not eminently gracious. Secondly, she ought 
 to have tolerable good common sense : a Me- 
 thodist preacher, in particular, who travels into 
 all parts, and sees such a variety of company, 
 ought not to take a fool with him. Thirdly, as I 
 knew the natural warmth of my own temper, I 
 concluded that a wise and gracious God would not 
 choose a companion for me who would throw oil, 
 but rather water upon the fire. Fourthly, I judged 
 that, as I was connected with a poor people, the 
 will of God was, that whoever I married should 
 have a small competency, to prevent her being 
 chargeable to any." He then proceeds to say, 
 that, upon the next step in the enquiry, who is the 
 person in whom these properties are found? he 
 immediately turned his eyes on Miss Green, " a 
 person of a good family, and noted for her extra- 
 ordinary piety." He opened his mind to her, con- 
 sulted Mr. Wesley, married her ; and having, " in 
 this affair, consulted reason and the will of God 
 so impartially, had abundant reason to be thankful 
 ever afterwards." 
 
 The small-pox had shaken his constitution : for 
 eight years after that dreadful illness his health 
 continually declined ; and he was thought to be 
 far advanced in consumption when he was ap- 
 pointed to the York circuit, where he had to take 
 care of sixty societies, and ride about three hun- 
 
 ii 
 
120 THOMAS OLIVERS. 
 
 dred miles every six weeks. Few persons thought 
 it possible that he could perform the journey once ; 
 but, he said, I am determined to go as far as I 
 can, and when I can go, no farther, I will turn 
 back. By the time he had got half round, the ex- 
 ercise, and perhaps the frequent change of air, 
 restored, in some degree, his appetite, and im- 
 proved his sleep ; and, before he reached the end, 
 he had begun to recover flesh : but it was twelve 
 years before he felt himself a hale man. The few 
 fits of dejection with which he was troubled, seem 
 to have originated more in bodily weakness than in 
 the temper of his mind. One instance is curious, 
 for the way in which it affected others. While he 
 was dining one day about noon, a thought came 
 over him, that he was not called to preach ; the 
 food, therefore, with which he was then served, 
 did not belong to him, and he was a thief and a 
 robber in eating it. He burst into tears, and could 
 eat no more ; and having to officiate at one o'clock, 
 went to the preaching house, weeping all the way 
 He went weeping into the pulpit, and wept sorely 
 while he gave out the hymn, and while he prayed, 
 and while he preached. A sympathetic emotion 
 spread through the congregation, which made them 
 receive the impression like melted wax : many of 
 them " cried aloud for the disquietness of their 
 souls ;" and Olivers, who, looking as usual for su- 
 pernatural agency in every thing, had supposed the 
 doubt of his own qualifications to be produced by 
 the tempter, believed now that the Lord had 
 brought much good out of that temptation. 
 
 3 
 
THOMAS OLIVERS. 1*21 
 
 After serving many years as a travelling preacher, 
 he was fixed in London as the manager of Mr. Wes- 
 ley's printing j an occupation which did not inter- 
 fere with his preaching,, but made him stationary. 
 He never laboured harder in his life, he says ; and 
 finding it good both for body and soul, he hoped 
 to be fully employed as long as he lived. Well 
 might this man, upon reviewing his own eventful 
 history, bless God for the manifold mercies which 
 he had experienced, and look upon the Methodists 
 as the instruments of his deliverance from sin and 
 death. 
 
lt<2 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 JOHN HAIME. SAMPSON STANIFORTH. GEORGE 
 
 STORY. 
 
 Among the memoirs of his more eminent preachers, 
 which Wesley published in his magazine, as written 
 by themselves for general edification, is " A short 
 Account of God's Dealings with Mr. John Haime." 
 Satan has so much to do in the narrative, that this 
 is certainly a misnomer. It is accompanied by his 
 portrait, taken when he was seventy years of age. 
 What organs a craniologist might have detected 
 under his brown wig it is impossible to say, but 
 Lavater himself would never have discovered in 
 those mean and common features, the turbulent 
 mind, and passionate fancy, which belonged to 
 them. Small inexpressive eyes, scanty eye-brows, 
 and a short, broad, vulgar nose, in a face of ordi- 
 nary proportions, seem to mark out a subject who 
 would have been content to travel a jog-trot along 
 the high-road of mortality, and Have looked for no 
 greater delight than that of smoking and boozing 
 in the chimney-corner. And yet John Haime 
 passed his whole life in a continued spiritual ague. 
 He was born at Shaftesbury in 1710, and bred 
 up to his father's employment of gardening. Not 
 liking this, he tried button-makings but no occu- 
 ' 6 
 
JOHN HAIME. 123 
 
 pation pleased him : and indeed he appears, by his 
 own account, to have been in a state little differing 
 from insanity ; or differing from it in this only, that 
 he had sufficient command of himself not to com- 
 municate the miserable imaginations by which he 
 was tormented. He describes himself as undutifut 
 to his parents, addicted to cursing, swearing, lying, 
 and Sabbath-breaking ; tempted with blasphemous 
 thoughts, and perpetually in fear of the Devil, so 
 that he could find no comfort in working, eating, 
 drinking, or even in sleeping. " The Devil," he 
 says, " broke in upon me with reasonings concern- 
 ing the being of a God, till my senses were almost 
 gone. He then so strongly tempted me to blas- 
 pheme, that I could not withstand. He then told 
 me, ' Thou art inevitably damned ;' and I readily 
 believed him. This made me sink into despair, as 
 a stone into the mighty water. I now began to 
 wander about by the river side, and through woods 
 and solitary places; many times looking up to 
 heaven with a heart ready to break, thinking I had 
 no part there. I thought every one happy but 
 myself, the Devil continually telling me there was 
 no mercy for me. I cried for help, but found no 
 relief; so I said there is no hope, and gave the 
 reins to my evil desires, not caring which end went 
 foremost, but giving up myself to wicked company 
 and all their evil ways. And I was hastening on, 
 when the great tremendous God met me as a 
 lion in the way, and his holy Spirit, whom I had 
 been so long grieving, returned with greater force 
 than ever. I had no rest day or night. I was 
 
124) JOHN HAIME. 
 
 afraid to go to bed, lest the Devil should fetch me 
 away before morning. I was afraid to shut my 
 eyes, lest I should awake in hell. I was terrified 
 when asleep ; sometimes dreaming that many devils 
 were in the room ready to take me away ; some- 
 times that the world was at an end. At other times 
 I thought I saw the world on fire, and the wicked 
 left to burn therein, with myself amongst them ; 
 and when I awoke, my senses were almost gone. 
 I was often on the point of destroying myself, and 
 was stopped, I know not how. Then did I weep 
 bitterly: I moaned like a dove, I chattered like 
 a swallow." 
 
 He relates yet more violent paroxysms than 
 these 5 how, having risen from his knees, upon a 
 sudden impulse that he would not pray, nor be 
 beholden to God for mercy, he passed the whole 
 night as if his very body had been in a fire, and 
 hell within him ; thoroughly persuaded that the 
 Devil was in the room, and fully expecting every 
 moment that he would be let loose upon him. He 
 says, that in an excess of blasphemous frenzy, 
 having a stick in his hand, he threw it towards 
 heaven against God with the utmost enmity ; and, 
 he says, that this act was followed by what he sup- 
 posed to be a supernatural appearance : that imme- 
 diately he saw, in the clear sky, a creature like a 
 swan, but much larger, part black, part brown, 
 which flew at him, went just over his head, and 
 lighting on the ground, at about forty yards' dis- 
 tance, stood staring upon him. The reader must 
 not suppose this to be mere fiction j what he saw 
 was certainly a bustard, whose nest was near j but 
 
JOHN HAIME. 125 
 
 Wesley publishes the story as Haime wrote it, 
 without any qualifying word or observation, and 
 doubtless believed it as it was written. Had this 
 poor man been a Romanist, he would have found 
 beads and holy water effectual amulets in such 
 cases : anodynes would have been the best palli- 
 atives in such a disease ; and he might have been 
 cured through the imagination, when no remedy 
 could be applied to the understanding. 
 
 In this extraordinary state of mind he forsook 
 his wife and children, and enlisted in the Queen's 
 regiment of dragoons. The life which John Bun- 
 yan wrote of himself, under the title of " Grace 
 abounding to the Chief of Sinners," now fell into 
 his hands. He read it with the deepest attention, 
 finding that the case nearly resembled his own : he 
 thought it the best book he had ever seen ; and it 
 gave him some hope of mercy. " In every town 
 where we staid," says he, " I went to church ; but 
 I did not hear what I wanted : Behold the Lamb 
 of God, who taketh away the sins of the world ! 
 Being come T to Alnwick, Satan desired to have me, 
 that he might sift me as wheat. And the hand of 
 the Lord came upon me with such weight, as made 
 me roar for very anguish of spirit. Many times I 
 stopt in the street, afraid to go one step farther, 
 lest I should step into hell. I now read and fasted, 
 and went to church, and prayed seven times a day. 
 One day, as I walked by the Tweed side, I cried 
 out aloud, being all athirst for God, Oh that thou 
 wouldst hear my prayer, and let my cry come up 
 before thee ! The Lord heard : he sent a gracious 
 
126 JOHN HAIME. 
 
 answer : lie lifted me up out of the dungeon ; he 
 took away all my sorrow and fear, and filled my soul 
 with peace and joy. The stream glided sweetly 
 along, and all nature seemed to rejoice with me." 
 But left as he was, wholly to his own diseased ima- 
 gination, the hot and cold fits succeeded each other 
 with little interval of rest. Being sent to London 
 with the camp-equipage, he went to hear one of 
 Whitefield's preachers, and ventured, as he was 
 coming back from the meeting, to tell him the 
 distress of his soul. The preacher, whose charity 
 seems to have been upon a par with his wisdom, 
 made answer, " The work of the Devil is upon 
 you," and rode away. " It was of the tender 
 mercies of God," says poor Haime, " that I did 
 not put an end to my life." 
 
 " Yet," he says, " I thought if I must be 
 damned myself, I will do what I can that others 
 may be saved ; so I began to reprove open sin 
 wherever I saw or heard it, and to warn the un- 
 godly that, if they did not repent, they would 
 surely perish : but, if I found any that were weary 
 and heavy laden, I told them to wait upon the 
 Lord, and he would renew their strength ; yet 1 
 found no strength myself." He was, however, 
 lucky enough to hear Charles Wesley, at Col- 
 chester, and to consult him when the service was 
 over. Wiser than the Calvinistic preacher, Charles 
 Wesley encouraged him, and bade him go on with- 
 out fear, and not be dismayed at any temptation. 
 These words sank deep, and were felt as a blessing 
 to him for many years. His regiment was now 
 
JOHN hXime. 1S7 
 
 ordered to Flanders ; and writing from thence to 
 Wesley for comfort and counsel, he was exhorted 
 to persevere in his calling. " It is but a little 
 thing," said Wesley, " that man should be against 
 you, while you know God is on your side. If he 
 give you any companion in the narrow way, it is 
 well ; and it is well if he does not : but by all 
 means miss no opportunity — speak and spare not : 
 declare what God has done for your soul : regard 
 not worldly prudence. Be not ashamed of Christ, 
 or of his word, or of his work, or of his servants. 
 Speak the truth in love, even in the midst of a 
 crooked generation." — "ldid speak," he says, "and 
 not spare." He was in the battle of Dettingen, and 
 being then in a state of hope, he describes himself 
 as in the most exalted and enviable state of mind, 
 while, during seven hours, he stood the fire of the 
 enemy. He was in a new world, and his heart was 
 filled with love, peace, and joy more than tongue 
 could express. His faith, as well as his courage, 
 was put to the trial, and both were found proof. 
 
 Returning into Flanders to take up their winter 
 quarters, as they marched beside the Maine, they 
 ** saw the dead men lie in the river, and on the 
 banks, as dung for the earth : for many of the 
 French, attempting to pass the river after the 
 bridge had been broken, had been drowned, and 
 cast ashore where there was none to bury them." 
 During the winter, he found two soldiers who 
 agreed to take a room with him, and meet every 
 night to pray and read the Scriptures : others soon 
 joined them; a society was formed ; and Methodism 
 
128 JOHN HAIME. 
 
 was organized in the army with great success. 
 There were three hundred in the society, and six 
 preachers beside Haime. As soon as they were 
 settled in a camp, they built a tabernacle. He 
 had generally a thousand hearers, officers as well 
 as common soldiers ; and he found means of hiring 
 others to do his duty, that he might have more 
 leisure for carrying on the spiritual war. He fre- 
 quently walked between twenty and thirty miles 
 a-day, and preached five times a-day for a week 
 together. " I had three armies against me," he 
 says : " the French army, the wicked English 
 army, and an army of Devils ; but I feared them 
 not." It was not, indeed, likely that he should 
 go on without some difficulties, his notions of duty 
 not being always perfectly in accordance with the 
 established rules of military discipline. An of- 
 ficer one day asked him what he preached ; and as 
 Haime mentioned certain sins which he more par- 
 ticularly denounced, and which perhaps touched 
 the enquirer a little too closely, the officer swore 
 at him, and said, that, if it were in his pow T er, he 
 would have him flogged to death. " Sir," re- 
 plied Haime, " you have a commission over men ; 
 but I have a commission from God to tell you, you 
 must either repent of your sins, or perish everlast- 
 ingly." His commanding officer asked him how he 
 came to preach; and being answered, that the Spirit 
 of God constrained him to call his fellow-sinners 
 to repentance, told him, that then he must restrain 
 that spirit. Haime replied, he would die first. It 
 is to the honour of his officers that they manifested 
 
JOHN HAIME. 129 
 
 no serious displeasure at language like this. His con- 
 duct toward one of his comrades might have drawn 
 upon him much more unpleasant consequences. 
 This was a reprobate fellow, who finding a piece 
 of money, after some search, which he thought he 
 had lost, threw it on the table, and exclaimed, 
 " There is my ducat ; but no thanks to God, any 
 more than to the Devil." Haime wrote down the 
 words, and brought him to a court-martial. Being 
 then asked what he had to say against him, he pro- 
 duced the speech in writing ; and the officer having 
 read it, demanded if he was not ashamed to take 
 account of such matters. " No, Sir," replied the 
 enthusiast ; " if I had heard such words spoken 
 against His Majesty King George, would not you 
 have counted me a villain if I had concealed them ?" 
 The only corporal pain to which officers were 
 subjected by our martial law, was for this offence. 
 Till the reign of Queen Anne, they were liable to 
 have their tongues bored with a hot iron ; and, mi- 
 tigated as the law now was, it might still have ex- 
 posed the culprit to serious punishment, if the 
 officer had not sought to end the matter as easily 
 as he could ; and therefore, after telling the soldier 
 that he was worthy of death, by the laws of God 
 and man, asked the prosecutor what he wished to 
 have done ; giving him thus an opportunity of 
 atoning, by a little discretion, for the excess of 
 his zeal. Haime answered, that he only desired to 
 be parted from him j and thus it terminated. It 
 was well for him that this man was not of a mali- 
 cious temper, or he might easily have made the 
 
 VOL. II. K 
 
130 JOHN HAIME. 
 
 zealot be regarded by all his fellows in the odious 
 light of a persecutor and an informer. 
 
 While he was quartered at Bruges, General Pon- 
 sonby granted him the use of the English church, 
 and by help of some good singing, they brought 
 together a large congregation. In the ensuing 
 spring the battle of Fontenoy was fought. The 
 Methodist soldiers were at this time wrought up to 
 a high pitch of fanatacism. One of them being 
 fully prepossessed with a belief that he should fall 
 in the action, danced for joy before he went into 
 it ; exclaiming, that he was going to rest in the 
 bosom of Jesus. Others, when mortally wounded, 
 broke out into rapturous expressions of hope and 
 assured triumph, at the near prospect of dissolu- 
 tion. Haime himself was under the not less com- 
 fortable persuasion that the French had no ball 
 made which would kill him that day. His horse 
 was killed under him. " Where is your God 
 now, Haime?" said an officer, seeing him fall. 
 " Sir, he is here with me," replied the soldier, 
 " and he will bring me out of the battle." Before 
 Haime could extricate himself from the horse, 
 which was lying upon him, a cannon ball took off 
 the officer's head. Three of his fellow-preachers 
 were killed in this battle, a fourth went to the 
 hospital, having both arms broken ; the other two 
 began to preach the pleasant doctrine of Anti- 
 nomianism, and professed that they were always 
 happy ; in which one of them, at least, was sincere, 
 being frequently drunk twice a day. Many months 
 had not passed before Haime himself relapsed 
 
JOHN HAIME. 131 
 
 into his old miserable state. " I was off my watch," 
 he says, " and fell by a grievous temptation. It 
 came as quick as lightning. I knew not if I was 
 in my senses ; but I fell, and the Spirit of God 
 departed from me. Satan was let loose, and fol- 
 lowed me by day and by night. The agony of my 
 mind weighed down my body, and threw me into 
 a bloody flux. I was carried to an hospital, just 
 dropping into hell : but the Lord upheld me, with 
 an unseen hand, quivering over the great gulf. 
 Before my fall, my sight was so strong, that I could 
 look stedfastly on the sun at noon-day ; but, after 
 it, I could not look a man in the face, nor bear to 
 be in any company. The roads, the hedges, the 
 trees, every thing seemed cursed of God. Nature 
 appeared void of God, and in the possession of the 
 Devil. The fowls of the air, and the beasts of the 
 field, all appeared in a league against me. I was 
 one day drawn out into the woods, lamenting my 
 forlorn state, and on a sudden I began to weep 
 bitterly : from weeping I fell to howling, like a 
 wild beast, so that the woods resounded ; yet could 
 I say, notwithstanding my bitter cry, my stroke is 
 heavier than my groaning ; nevertheless, I could 
 not say, * Lord have mercy upon me !' if I might 
 have purchased heaven thereby. Very frequently 
 Judas was represented to me as hanging just before 
 me. So great was the displeasure of God against 
 me, that he, in great measure, took away the 
 sight of my eyes : I could not see the sun for more 
 than eight months: even in the clearest summer 
 day, it always appeared to me like a mass of blood. 
 
 K 2 
 
•132 JOHN HAIME. 
 
 At the same time I lost the use of my knees. I 
 could truly say, « Thou hast sent fire into my bones.' 
 I was often as hot as if I was burning to death : 
 many times I looked to see if my clothes were not 
 On fire. I have gone into a river to cool myself; 
 but it was all the same ; for what could quench 
 the wrath of his indignation that was let loose upon 
 me? At other times, in the midst of summer, I 
 have been so cold, that I knew not how to bear it : 
 all the clothes I could put on had no effect ; but 
 my flesh shivered, and my very bones quaked." 
 
 As a mere physical case, this would be very cu- 
 rious ; but, as a psychological one, it is of the 
 highest interest. For seven years he continued in 
 this miserable state, without one comfortable hope, 
 " angry at God, angry at himself, angry at the 
 Devil," and fancying himself possessed with more 
 devils than Mary Magdalene. Only while he was 
 preaching, to others (for he still continued to 
 preach) his distress was a little abated. " Some 
 may enquire," says he, " what could move me to 
 preach while I was in such a forlorn condition? 
 They must ask of God, for I cannot tell. After 
 •some years I attempted again to pray. With this 
 Satan was not well pleased ; for one day, as 1 was 
 walking alone, and faintly crying for mercy, sud- 
 denly such a hot blast of brimstone flashed in my 
 face, as almost took away my breath ; and presently 
 after an invisible power struck up my heels, and 
 threw me violently upon my face. One Sunday I 
 went to church in Holland, when the Lord's Sup- 
 per was to be administered. I had a great desire 
 
JOHN HAIME. 133 
 
 to partake of it ; but the enemy came in like a 
 flood to hinder me, pouring in temptations of every 
 kind. I resisted him with my might, till, through 
 the agony of my mind, the blood gushed out at my 
 mouth and nose. However, I was enabled to con- 
 quer, and to partake of the blessed elements. I 
 was much distressed with dreams and visions of 
 the night. I dreamt one night that I was in hell ; 
 another, that I was on Mount Etna; that, on a 
 sudden, . it shook and trembled exceedingly ; and 
 that, at last, it split asunder in several places, and 
 sunk into the burning lake, all but that little spot 
 on which I stood. Oh, how thankful was I for my 
 preservation ! — I thought that I was worse than 
 Cain. In rough weather it was often suggested to 
 me * this is on your account ! See, the earth is 
 cursed for your sake ; and it will be no better till 
 you are in hell !' Often did I wish that I had never 
 been converted : often, that I had never been 
 born. Yet I preached every day, and endeavoured 
 to appear open and free to my brethren. I en- 
 couraged them that were tempted. I thundered 
 out the terrors of the law against the ungodly. I 
 was often violently tempted to curse and swear be- 
 fore and after, and even while I was preaching. 
 Sometimes, when I was in the midst of the con- 
 gregation, I could hardly refrain from laughing 
 aloud ; yea, from uttering all kind of ribaldry and 
 filthy conversation. Frequently, as I was going to 
 preach, the Devil has set upon me as a lion, telling 
 me he would have me just then, so that it has 
 thrown me into a cold sweat. In this agony I have 
 
 k 3 
 
134t JOHN HAIME. 
 
 caught hold of the Bible, and read, ' If any man 
 sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus 
 Christ the righteous !' I have said to the enemy, 
 ' This is the word of God, and thou canst not deny 
 it !' Thereat he would be like a man that shrunk 
 back from the thrust of a sword. But he would be 
 at me again. I again met him in the same way ; 
 till at last, blessed be God ! he fled from me. And 
 even in the midst of his sharpest assaults, God 
 gave me just strength enough to bear them. When 
 he has strongly suggested, just as I was going to 
 preach, * I will have thee at last,' I have answered, 
 (sometimes with too much anger,) « I will have 
 another out of thy hand first !' And many, while 
 I was myself in the deep, were truly convinced 
 and converted to God." 
 
 Having returned to England, and obtained his 
 discharge from the army, he was admitted by 
 Mr. Wesley as a travelling preacher. This, how- 
 ever, did not deliver him from his miserable dis- 
 ease of mind : he could neither be satisfied with 
 preaching nor without it : wherever he went he 
 was not able to remain, but was continually wan- 
 dering to and fro, seeking rest, but finding none. 
 U I thought," he says, " if David or Peter had 
 been living, they would have pitied me." Wesley, 
 after a while, took him as a companion in one of 
 his rounds, knowing his state of mind, and know- 
 ing how to bear with it, and to manage it. " It 
 was good for him," he said, " to be in the fiery 
 furnace : he should be purified therein, but not 
 consumed." Year after year he continued in this 
 
JOHN HAIME. 135 
 
 extraordinary state, till, in the year 1766, he was 
 persuaded by Mr. Wesley to go and dwell with a 
 person at St. Ives, in Cornwall, who wanted a 
 worn-out preacher to live with him, take care of 
 his family, and pray with him morning and even- 
 ing. Here he was, if possible, ten times worse 
 than before j and it seemed to him, that, unless he 
 got some relief, he must die in despair. " One 
 day," he says, " I retired into the hall, fell on my 
 face, and cried for mercy ; but got no answer. I 
 got up, and walked Up and down the room, wring- 
 ing my hands, and crying like to break my heart ; 
 begging of God, for Christ's sake, if there was any 
 mercy for me, to help me ; and, blessed be his 
 name, all on a sudden, I found such a change 
 through my soul and body, as is past description. 
 I was afraid I should alarm the whole house with 
 the expressions of my joy. I had a full witness 
 from the Spirit of God that I should not find that 
 bondage any more. Glory be to God for all his 
 mercy." Twenty years the disease had continued 
 upon him ; and it now left him, by his own ac- 
 count, as instantaneously as it came : and his ac- 
 count is credible; for he acknowledges that he 
 had not the same faith as in his former state : the 
 age of rapture was over, and the fierceness of his 
 disposition was spent, though its restlessness was 
 unabated. Though his chaplainship with Mr. 
 Hoskins had every thing which could render such 
 a situation comfortable, he could not be at ease till 
 he was again in motion, and had resumed his iti- 
 nerant labours. He lived till the great age of 
 
 K 4f 
 
136 JOHN HAIME. 
 
 seventy-eight, and died of a fever, which was more 
 than twelve months consuming him, and which 
 wore him to the bone before he went to rest. But 
 though his latter days were pain, they were not 
 sorrow. " He preached as long as he was able to 
 speak, and longer than he could stand without sup- 
 port." Some of his last words were, " O Lord, 
 in thee have I trusted, and have not been con- 
 founded ;" and he expired in full confidence that 
 a convoy of angels were ready to conduct his soul 
 to the paradise of God. 
 
 Whatever may be thought of John Haime's qua- 
 lifications for preaching the gospel, there was one 
 man at least who had reason to bless him as his 
 greatest earthly benefactor : this was Sampson 
 Staniforth, who served at the same time as a pri- 
 vate in the army. He was the son of a cutler at 
 Sheffield, and grew up without any moral or reli- 
 gious instruction, so that he had " no fear of God 
 before his eyes, no thought of his providence, of 
 his saving mercy, nor indeed of his having any 
 thing to do with the world." Why he was born 
 into the world, what was his business in it, or 
 where he was to go when this life was over, were 
 considerations, he says, which never entered into 
 his mind ; and he grew up in a course of brutal 
 vices, being as utterly without God in the world 
 as the beasts that perish. He describes himself as 
 not only fierce and passionate, but also sullen and 
 malicious, without any feeling of humanity ; and 
 disposed, instead of weeping with those who wept, 
 to rejoice in their sufferings. This hopeful subject 
 
SAMPSON STANIFORTH. 187 
 
 enlisted as a soldier at the age of nineteen, in spite 
 of the tears and entreaties of his mother ; and, 
 after some hair-breadth escapes from situations into 
 which he was led by his own rashness and profli- 
 gacy, he joined the army in Germany a few days 
 after the battle of Dettingen. While they were 
 encamped at Worms, orders were read at the head 
 of every regiment, that no soldier should go above 
 a mile from the camp on pain of death, which was 
 to be executed immediately, without the forms of 
 a court-martial. This did not deter Staniforth 
 from straggling ; and he was drinking with some 
 of his comrades in a small town to the left of the 
 camp, when a captain, with a guard of horse, came 
 to take them up, being appointed to seize all he 
 could find out of the lines, and hang up the first man, 
 without delay. The guard entered the town and shut 
 the gates. H.e saw them in time, ran to a wicket 
 in the great gate, which was only upon the latch, 
 and before the gate itself could be opened to let 
 the horsemen follow him, got into the vineyards, 
 and there concealed himself by lying down. He 
 had a still narrower escape not long afterwards : — 
 many complaints had been made of the marauders 
 in the English army ; and it was proclaimed that 
 the guard would be out every night, to hang up 
 the first offenders who were taken. This fellow 
 listened to the proclamation, and set out, as soon 
 as the officer who read it had turned away, upon a 
 plundering party, with two of his companions^ 
 They stole four bullocks, and were met by an offi- 
 cer driving them to the camp. Staniforth said they 
 
138 SAMPSON STANIFORTH. 
 
 had bought them, and the excuse passed. On the 
 next day the owners came to the camp to make their 
 complaint ; and three of the beasts, which had been 
 sold, but not slaughtered, were identified. Orders 
 were of course given to arrest the thieves. That 
 very morning Staniforth had been sent to some dis- 
 tance on an out-party, and thus Providence again 
 preserved him from a shameful death. 
 
 There was in the same company with him a na- 
 tive of Barnard-Castle, by name Mark Bond, a 
 man of a melancholy but religious disposition, who 
 had enlisted in the hope of being killed. " His 
 ways," says Staniforth, " were not like those of 
 other men : out of his "little pay he saved money to 
 send to his friends. We could never get him to 
 drink with us ; but he was always full of sorrow : 
 he read much, and was much in private prayer." 
 The state of his mind arose from having uttered blas- 
 phemy when he was a little boy, and the thought of 
 this kept him in a constant state of wretchedness 
 and despair. A Romanist might here observe, that 
 a distressing case like this could not have occurred . 
 in one of his persuasion ; and one who knows that 
 the practice of confession brings with it evils ten- 
 fold greater than those which it palliates, may be 
 allowed to regret that, in our church, there should 
 be so little intercourse between the pastor and the 
 people. This poor man might have continued his 
 whole life in misery, if John Haime had not taken 
 to preaching in the army : he went to hear him, 
 and found what he wanted ; his peace of mind was 
 restored j and wishing that others should partake 
 
SAMPSON STANIFORTH. 13Q 
 
 in the happiness which he experienced, he could 
 think of no one who stood more in need of the same 
 spiritual medicine than his comrade Staniforth. 
 He, as might be expected, first wondered at his 
 conversation, and afterwards mocked at it. Bond 
 however, was not thus to be discouraged : he met 
 him one day when he was in distress, having 
 neither food, money, nor credit, and asked him to 
 go and hear the preaching. Staniforth made an- 
 swer, " You had better give me something to eat 
 and drink, for 1 am both hungry and dry." Bond, 
 did as he was requested ; took him to a sutler's, 
 and treated him, and persuaded him afterwards, 
 reluctant as he was, to accompany him to the 
 preaching. Incoherent and rhapsodical as such 
 preaching would be, it was better suited to such 
 auditors than any thing more temperate would have 
 been : it was level to their capacities ; and the pas- 
 sionate sincerity with which it was delivered found 
 the readiest way to their feelings. Staniforth, who 
 went with great unwillingness, and who was appa- 
 rently in no ways prepared for such an effect, was, 
 by that one sermon, suddenly and effectually re- 
 claimed from a state of habitual brutality and vice. 
 He returned to his tent full of sorrow, thoroughly 
 convinced of his miserable state, and " seeing all 
 his sins stand in battle-array against him." The 
 next day he went early to the place of meeting : 
 some soldiers were reading there, some singing 
 hymns, and others were at prayer. One came up 
 to him, and after enquiring how long he had at- 
 tended the preachers, said to him, " Let us go to 
 5 
 
140 SAMPSON STANIFORTH. 
 
 prayer;" and Staniforth was obliged to confess 
 that he could not pray, for he had never prayed in 
 his life, neither had he ever read in any devo- 
 tional book. Bond had a piece of an old Bible, and 
 gave it him, saying, " I can do better without it 
 than you." This was a true friend. He found 
 that Staniforth was in debt ; and telling him that 
 it became Christians to Jbe first just, and then cha- 
 ritable, said, " We will put both our pays together, 
 and live as hard as we can, and what we spare will 
 pay the debt." Such practice must have come 
 strongly in aid of the preaching. 
 
 From that time Staniforth shook off all his evil 
 courses : though till then an habitual swearer, he 
 never afterwards swore an oath : though addicted 
 to drinking, he never was intoxicated again : 
 though a gambler from his youth up, he left off 
 gaming ; and having so often risked his neck for 
 the sake of plunder, he would not now gather an 
 apple or a bunch of grapes. Methodism had 
 wrought in him a great and salutary work ; but it 
 taught him to expect another change not less pal- 
 pable to himself: he was in bitter distress under the 
 weight of his sins, and he was taught to look for a 
 full and entire sense of deliverance from the burden. 
 His own efforts were not wanting to bring on this 
 spiritual crisis, and, after some months, he was 
 successful. The account which he gives must be 
 explained by supposing that strong passion made 
 the impression, of what was either a sleeping or a 
 waking dream, strong as reality ; — a far more pro- 
 bable solution than would be afforded by ascribing 
 
SAMPSON STANIFORTH. 144 
 
 it to any wilful exaggeration or deliberate false- 
 hood. " From twelve at night till two," he says, 
 " it was my turn to stand centinel at a dangerous 
 post. I had a fellow-centinel, but I desired him 
 to go away, which he willingly did. As soon as I 
 was alone, I knelt down, and determined not to 
 rise, but to continue crying and wrestling with 
 God, till he had mercy on me. How long I was in 
 that agony I cannot tell ; but, as I looked up to 
 Heaven, I saw the clouds open exceeding bright, 
 and I saw Jesus hanging on the cross. At the same 
 moment these words were applied to my heart, 
 ' Thy sins are forgiven thee.' All guilt was gone, 
 and my soul was filled with unutterable peace : the 
 fear of death and hell was vanished away. I was 
 filled with wonder and astonishment. I closed my 
 eyes, but the impression was still the same ; and, 
 for about ten weeks, while I was awake, let me be 
 where I would, the same appearance was still be- 
 fore my eyes, and the same impression upon my 
 heart, ' Thy sins are forgiven thee.' " It may be 
 believed that Staniforth felt what he describes, and 
 imagined what he appeared to see ; but to publish 
 such an account as Wesley did, without one quali- 
 fying remark, is obviously to encourage wild and 
 dangerous enthusiasm. 
 
 Staniforth's mother had bought him off once 
 when he enlisted, and sent him from time to time 
 money, and such things as he wanted and she could 
 provide for him. He now wrote her a long letter, 
 asking pardon of her and his father for all his dis- 
 obedience j telling them that God, for Christ's 
 
142 SAMPSON STANIFORTH. 
 
 sake, had forgiven him his sins, and desiring her 
 not to send him any more supplies, which he knew 
 must straiten her, and which he no longer wanted, 
 for he had learned to be contented with his pay. 
 This letter they could not very well understand ; 
 it was handed about till it got into the hands of a 
 dissenting minister, and of one of the leading Me- 
 thodists at Sheffield : the latter sent Staniforth a 
 " comfortable letter" and a hymn book ; the former 
 a letter also, and a Bible, which was more precious 
 to him than gold ; as was a prayer-book also, which 
 his mother sent him. He, as well as Haime, came 
 safe out of the battle of Fontenoy, where Bond was 
 twice preserved in an extraordinary manner, one 
 musket-ball having struck some money in one of 
 his pockets, and another having been repelled by 
 a knife. Soon afterwards he was drafted into the 
 artillery, and ordered back to England on account 
 of the rebellion in 1745. He was now quartered at 
 Deptfbrd, and from thence was able twice-a-week, 
 to attend upon Wesley's preaching at the Foundry, 
 or at West-Street Chapel. At Deptfbrd also there 
 was a meeting, and there he found a woman who, 
 being of the same society, was willing to take him 
 for a husband if he were out of the army. On his 
 part, the match appears to have been a good one 
 as to worldly matters : she was persuaded to marry 
 him before his discharge was obtained ; and, on 
 his wedding-day, he was ordered to embark imme- 
 diately for Holland. 
 
 The army which he joined in Holland was under 
 the command of Prince Charles of Lorrain ; and 
 
- 
 
 SAMPSON STANIFORTH. 143 
 
 as they soon came within sight of the enemy, Stani- 
 fbrth had too much spirit to apply for his discharge, 
 " lest he should seem afraid to fight, and so bring 
 a disgrace upon the gospel." Near Maestricht, 
 two English regiments, of which his was one, with 
 some Hanoverians and Dutch, in all about 12,000 
 men, being advanced in front of the army, had a 
 sharp action. The Prince, according to this ac- 
 count, forgot to send them orders to retreat, " be- 
 ing busy with his cups and his ladies ;" and it ap- 
 pears, indeed, as he says, that many brave lives 
 were vilely thrown away that day by his gross mis- 
 conduct. Among them was poor Bond : a ball 
 went through his leg, and he fell at Stanifbrth's 
 feet. " I and another," says he, " took him in 
 our arms, and carried him out of the ranks, while 
 he was exhorting me to stand fast in the Lord. We 
 laid him down, took our leave of him, and fell into 
 our ranks again." In their farther retreat, Stani- 
 forth again met with him, when he had received 
 another ball through his thigh, and the French 
 pressed upon them at that time so closely, that he 
 was compelled to leave him thus mortally wounded, 
 " but with his heart full of love, and his eyes full 
 of Heaven." — " There," says he, " fell a great 
 Christian, a good soldier, and a faithful friend." 
 
 When the army went into winter-quarters, Stani- 
 forth obtained his discharge for fifteen guineas, 
 which his wife remitted him. He now settled at 
 Deptford, became a leading man among the Me- 
 thodists there, and finally a preacher in his own 
 neighbourhood, and in and about London. And 
 
144 SAMPSON STANIFORTH. 
 
 however little it was to be expected from the early 
 part of his life, and the school in which he was 
 trained, his life was honourable to himself and be- 
 neficial, to others. "I made it a rule," he says, 
 " from the beginning, to bear my own expences : 
 this cost me ten or twelve pounds a year ; and I 
 bless God I can bear it. Beside visiting the class 
 and band, and visiting the sick, I preach five or 
 six times in the week. And the Lord gives me to 
 rejoice in that I can still say, these hands have 
 ministered to my necessities." His preaching was 
 so well liked, that he was more than once invited 
 to leave the Connection, and take care of a se- 
 parate congregation, with a salary of forty or fifty 
 pounds a-year : but he was attached to Methodism ; 
 he saw that it was much injured by such separ- 
 ations ; he was not weary of his labour ; and as 
 to pecuniary considerations, they had no weight 
 with him. The course of his life, and the happy 
 state of his mind, are thus described by himself: 
 " I pray with my wife before I go out in the morn- 
 ing, and at breakfast-time with my family and all 
 who are in the house. The former part of the day 
 I spend in my business ; my spare hours in reading 
 and private exercise. Most evenings I preach, so 
 that I am seldom at home before nine o'clock ; but, 
 though I am so much out at nights, and generally 
 alone, God keeps me both from evil men and evil 
 spirits : and many times I am as fresh when I come 
 in at night, as I was when I went out in the morn- 
 ing. I conclude the day in reading the Scriptures, 
 and in praying with my family. I am now in the 
 
GEORGE STORY. 14.5 
 
 sixty-third year of my age, and glory be to God, 
 I am not weary of well-doing. I find my desires 
 after God stronger than ever ; my understanding is 
 more clear in the things of God ; and my heart is 
 united more than ever both to God and his people. 
 I know their religion and mine is the gift of God 
 through Christ, and the work of God by his Spirit : 
 it is revealed in Scripture, and is received and re- 
 tained by faith, in the use of all gospel ordinances. 
 It consists in an entire deadness to the world and 
 to our own will ; and an entire devotedness of our 
 souls, bodies, time, and substance to God, through 
 Christ Jesus. In other words, it is the loving the 
 Lord our God with all our hearts, and all mankind 
 for God's sake. This arises from a knowledge of 
 his love to us : We love him, because we know he 
 Jirst loved us ; a sense of which is shed abroad in our 
 hearts by the Holy Ghost that is given to us. From 
 the little hereof that I have experienced, I know, 
 he that experiences this religion is a happy man." 
 
 No man found his way into the Methodist con- 
 nection in a quieter manner, nor brought with him 
 a finer and more reasonable mind, than George 
 Story, a native of Harthill, in the West Riding of 
 Yorkshire. The circumstances of his boyhood 
 were favourable to his disposition : his parents 
 taught him early the fear of the Lord ; and though 
 their instructions, he says, were tedious and irk- 
 some, yet the impression which they made was 
 never lost, and often recurred when he was alone, 
 -or in places of temptation. The minister of the 
 
 VOL. II. L 
 
146 GEORGE STORY. 
 
 parish also was a pious and venerable man : the so- 
 lemnity with which he performed his duty impressed 
 the boy with an awful sense of the Divine presence ; 
 and, when he listened to the burial-service, he had 
 a distant prospect of judgement and eternity. 
 Thunder and lightning filled him with a solemn 
 delight, as a manifestation of the majesty and 
 power of the Almighty. His heart, as well as his 
 imagination, was open to all wholesome influences ; 
 and having one day killed a young bird by throw- 
 ing a stone at it, grief and remorse for the pain 
 which he had inflicted, kept him waking during 
 several nights ; and tears and prayers to God for 
 pardon were the only means wherein he could find 
 relief. After a decent school education, he was 
 placed with a country bookseller. Here, being 
 surrounded with books, he read with insatiable and 
 indiscriminate avidity : histories, novels, plays, and 
 romances, were perused by dozens. He studied 
 short-hand, and improved the knowledge which he 
 had learned at school of geometry and trigono- 
 metry ; picked up something of geography, astro- 
 nomy, botany, anatomy, and other branches of 
 physical science ; and tired himself with the Sta- 
 tutes at Large. The lives of the heathen philo- 
 sophers delighted him so much, that at one time he 
 resolved to take them for his models ; and Thomas 
 Taylor or John Fransham would then have found 
 him in a fit state to have received the mysteries 
 of Paganism. He frequently read till eleven at 
 night, and began again at four or five in the 
 morning ; and he always had a book before him 
 while he was at his meals. 
 
GEORGE STORY. 147 
 
 From the shop he entered the printing-office, 
 and, applying himself sedulously to the business, 
 learned to dispatch it with much regularity, so that 
 he had plenty of time both for study and recreation. 
 One summer he was an angler, the next he was a 
 florist, and cultivated auriculas and polyanthuses. 
 These pursuits soon became insipid. He tried 
 cards, and found them only implements for unpro- 
 fitably consuming time ; and, when led into drink- 
 ing, in the midst of that folly he saw its madness, 
 and turned from it with abhorrence. He hoped 
 that horse-racing might be found a more manly 
 and rational amusement ; so he attended the races 
 at Doncaster, with the most flattering expectations 
 of the happiness he should find that week. " The 
 first day," says he, " vanished away without any 
 satisfaction : the second was still worse. As I 
 passed through the company dejected and disap- 
 pointed, it occurred to my mind, What is all this 
 immense multitude assembled here for? to see a 
 few horses gallop two or three times round the 
 course, as if the devil were both in them and 
 their riders ! Certainly, we are all mad, we are fit 
 for Bedlam, if we imagine that the Almighty made 
 us for no other purpose but to seek happiness in 
 such senseless amusements. I was ashamed and 
 confounded, and determined never to be seen there 
 any more." 
 
 At this time he had risen to the management of 
 the printing-office : he had to publish a weekly 
 newspaper, select the paragraphs from other papers, 
 prepare the advertisements, correct the press, and 
 
 l 2 
 
148 GEORGE STORY. 
 
 superintend the journeymen and apprentices ; an 
 employment, he says, which flattered his vanity, 
 increased his native pride, and consequently led 
 him farther from God. For now, in the course of 
 his desultory reading, he fell in with some of those 
 pernicious writers who have employed themselves 
 in sapping the foundations of human happiness. 
 " I read and reasoned," says he, "till the Bible 
 grew not only dull, but, I thought, full of contra- 
 dictions. I staggered first at the divinity of Christ, 
 and at length gave up the Bible altogether, and 
 sunk into Fatalism and Deism." In this state Of 
 mind, and at the age of twenty, he went to Lon- 
 don, in full hope of there finding the happiness of 
 which he was in search. But new things soon 
 became old : they palled upon him ; and, instead of 
 happiness, an unaccountable anguish of spirit fol- 
 lowed whenever his mind sunk back upon itself. 
 He would gladly have gone abroad, for the sake 
 of continual change, but it was a time of war. He 
 resolved to try if religion would afford him relief, 
 and went to several places of worship ; " but even 
 this," says he, " was in vain ; there was something 
 dull and disagreeable wherever I turned my eyes, 
 and I knew not that the malady was in myself. At 
 length I found Mr. Whitefield's chapel, in Totten- 
 ham-Court-Road, and was agreeably entertained 
 with his manner of preaching : his discourses were 
 so engaging, that, when I retired to my lodgings, 
 I wrote down the substance of them in my journal, 
 and frequently read them over with pleasure ; but 
 still nothing reached my case, nor had I any light 
 
GEORGE STORY. 149 
 
 into the state of my soul. Meantime, on the week 
 nights, I went to the theatres, nor could I discern 
 any difference between Mr. Whitefield's preaching, 
 and seeing a good tragedy." 
 
 Weary of every thing, and all places being alike 
 to him, he yielded to the persuasion of his friends, 
 returned into the country, and thinking himself too 
 young and inexperienced to enter into business for 
 himself, as they would fain have had him do, un- 
 dertook, once more, the management of a printing- 
 office. He wanted for nothing, he had more money 
 than he knew what to do with, yet, in his own 
 words, he was as wretched as he could live, without 
 knowing either the cause of this misery, or any way 
 to escape from it. For some years he had attempted 
 to regulate his conduct according to reason ; but 
 even at that bar he stood condemned. His temper 
 was passionate ; he struggled against this, having 
 thus far profited by the lessons of the Stoics ; and 
 greatly was he pleased when he obtained a victory 
 over his own anger ; but, upon sudden temptation, 
 all his resolutions were " as a thread of flax before 
 the fire." He mixed with jovial company, and 
 endeavoured to catch their spirit ; but, in the midst 
 of levity, there was a weight and hollowness within 
 him : experience taught him that this laughter was 
 madness ; and when he returned to sober thoughts, 
 he found into how deep a melancholy a simul- 
 ated mirth subsides. He wandered to different 
 places of worship, and found matter of disquiet at 
 all ; at length he forfook them all, and shut himself 
 up on Sundays, or went into the solitude of a neigh- 
 
 l 3 
 
150 GEOKGE STORY. 
 
 bouring wood. " Here," says he, " I considered, 
 with the closest attention I was able, the argu- 
 ments for and against Deism. I would gladly have 
 given credit to the Christian revelation, but could 
 not. My reason leaned on the wrong side, and 
 involved me in endless perplexities. I likewise en- 
 deavoured to fortify myself with stronger arguments 
 and firmer resolutions against my evil tempers; 
 for, since I could not be a Christian, I wished, 
 however, to be a good moral Heathen. Internal 
 anguish frequently compelled me to supplicate the 
 Divine Being for mercy and truth. I seldom gave 
 over till my heart was melted, and I felt something 
 of God's presence ; but I retained those gracious 
 impressions only for a short time." 
 
 It so happened that he was employed to abridge 
 and print the life of Eugene Aram, a remarkable 
 man, who was executed for a case of murder, in a 
 strange manner brought to light long after the com- 
 mission of the crime. The account of this person's 
 extraordinary attainments kindled Story with emu- 
 lation, and he had determined to take as much pains 
 himself in the acquirement of knowledge, when 
 some thoughts fastened upon his mind, and broke 
 in pieces all his schemes. " The wisdom* of this 
 world," said he to himself, " is foolishness with 
 God. What did this man's wisdom profit him ? It 
 did not save him from being a thief and a murderer j 
 — no, nor from attempting his own life. True 
 wisdom is foolishness with men. He that will be 
 wise, must first become a fool that he may be wise. 
 1 was like a man awakened out of sleep," he con- 
 
 2 
 
GEORGE STORY. 151 
 
 tin ties : " I was astonished ; I felt myself wrong ; 
 I was conscious I had been pursuing a vain shadow, 
 and that God only could direct me into the right 
 path. I, therefore, applied to him with earnest im- 
 portunity, entreating him to show me the true way 
 to happiness, which I was determined to follow, 
 however difficult or dangerous/' Just at this time 
 Methodism began to flourish in his native village : 
 his mother joined the Society, and sent him a mes- 
 sage, entreating him to converse with persons of 
 this description. To gratify her, being an obe- 
 dient son, he called accordingly at a Methodist's 
 house, and the persons who were assembled there 
 went to prayer with him, and for him, a consider- 
 able time. The result was, as might be expected, 
 — he looked upon them as well-meaning ignorant 
 people, and thought no more about the matter. 
 After a few days they desired he would come 
 again ; and he, considering that it was his mother's 
 request, went without hesitation, though perhaps 
 not very desirous of being prayed for a second 
 time. On this occasion, however, argument was 
 tried ; and he disputed with them for some hours, 
 till they were fairly wearied, without having pro- 
 duced the slightest impression upon him. To at- 
 tack him on the side of his reason, was not indeed 
 the way by which such reasoners were likely to 
 prevail ; such a proceeding would serve only to 
 stimulate his vanity and provoke his pride ; and, 
 accordingly, he was about to withdraw, not a little 
 elevated with the triumph which he had obtained, 
 when a woman of the company desired to ask him 
 
 l 4 
 
152 GEORGE STORY. 
 
 a few questions. The first was, " Are you happy ?" 
 His countenance instantly fell, and he honestly 
 answered, " No." — " Are you not desirous of 
 finding happiness?" she pursued. He replied, 
 that he was desirous of obtaining it on any terms, 
 and had long sought for it in every way, but in 
 vain. She then told him, that if he sought the 
 Lord with all his heart, he would certainly find in 
 him that peace and pleasure which the world could 
 not bestow. The right string had now been 
 touched : every word sunk deep into his mind ; 
 and he says, that from that moment he never lost 
 his resolution of being truly devoted to God. 
 
 The books which had misled him he cast into 
 the fire ; and willing as he now was to be led 
 astray in a different direction by his new associates, 
 his happy disposition preserved him. Not having 
 the horrible fears, and terrors, and agonies which 
 others declared they had experienced in the new- 
 birth, and of which exhibitions w T ere frequent- 
 ly occurring, he endeavoured to bring himself 
 into the same state, but never could succeed in in- 
 ducing these throes of spiritual labour. Yet thinking 
 it a necessary part of the process of regeneration, 
 and not feeling that consciousness of sanctification 
 which his fellows professed, doubts came upon him 
 thick and thronging. Sometimes he fell back to- 
 wards his old scepticism : sometimes inclined to the 
 miserable notion of predestination ; plunging, as 
 he himself expresses it, into the blackness of dark- 
 ness. He found at length the folly of reasoning 
 himself into despair, and the unreasonableness of 
 
GEORGE STORY. 153 
 
 expecting a miraculous manifestation in his own 
 bodily feelings ; and he learned, in the true path 
 of Christian humility, to turn from all presump- 
 tuous reasonings, and staying his mind upon God, 
 to repose and trust in him with a child-like entire- 
 ness of belief and love. This was at first mortifying 
 to his proud reason and vain imagination j but it 
 brought with it at length " an ever-permanent 
 peace, which kept his heart in the knowledge and 
 love of God ;" not the overflowing joys which he 
 expected, and had been taught to expect, by en- 
 thusiastic men ; but that peace which God himself 
 hath assured to all who seek him in humility and 
 truth, and which passeth all understanding. There 
 is not, in the whole hagiography of Methodism a 
 more interesting or more remarkable case than this : 
 — living among the most enthusiastic Methodists, 
 enrolled among them, and acting and preaching 
 with them for more than fifty years, George Story 
 never became an enthusiast : his nature seems not 
 to have been susceptible of the contagion. 
 
154 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 PROVISION FOR THE LAY-PREACHERS AND THEIR 
 FAMILIES. K1NGSWOOD SCHOOL. THE CON- 
 FERENCE. 
 
 At first there was no provision made for the lay- 
 preachers. The enthusiasts who offered themselves 
 to the work literally took no thought for the mor- 
 row what they should eat, nor what they should 
 drink, nor yet for the body what they should put 
 on. They trusted in Him who feedeth the fowls 
 of the air, and who sent his ravens to Elijah in the 
 wilderness. " He who had a staff," says one of 
 these first itinerants, " might take one ; he who 
 had none might go without." They were lodged 
 and fed by some of the Society wherever they 
 went ; and when they wanted clothes, if they 
 were not supplied by individual friends, they re- 
 presented their necessity to the stewards. St. Fran- 
 cis and his followers did not commit themselves 
 with more confidence to the care of Providence, 
 nor with a more entire disregard oi' all human 
 means. But the Friars Minorite were marked by 
 their habit for privileged, as well as peculiar per- 
 sons ; and as they professed poverty, the poorer and 
 the more miserable their appearance, the greater 
 was the respect which they obtained from the 
 people. In England rags were no recommend- 
 
PROVISION FOR THE LAY-PREACHERS, &C. 155 
 
 ation ; and it was found a great inconvenience that 
 the popular itinerants should be clothed in the best 
 apparel, while the usefulness of their fellows, who 
 were equally devoted to the cause, was lessened by 
 the shabbiness of their appearance. To remedy 
 this evil it was at length agreed, that every circuit 
 should allow its preacher three pounds per quarter 
 to provide himself with clothing and books. Not 
 long after this arrangement had been made, 
 Mr. Wesley proposed that Mather should go with 
 him into Ireland on one of his preaching expedi- 
 tions, and promised that his wife should be sup- 
 ported during his absence. Mather cheerfully 
 consented; but when he came to talk with his 
 friends upon the subject, they cautioned him to 
 beware how he relied for his wife's support upon a 
 mere promise of this kind : for, when Mr. Wesley 
 was gone, the matter would rest with the stewards. 
 Upon this Mather thought it necessary to talk with 
 the stewards himself: they asked him how much 
 would be sufficient for his wife ; and when he said 
 lour shillings a week, they thought it more than 
 could be afforded, and Mather, therefore, refused to 
 undertake the journey. However, in the course 
 of the ensuing year, the necessity of making 
 some provision for the wives of the itinerants was 
 clearly perceived, and the reasonableness of 
 Mather's demand was acknowledged. He was 
 called upon to travel accordingly, and from that 
 time the stated allowance was continued for very 
 many years at the sum which he had fixed. A 
 farther allowance was made of twenty shillings a 
 
156 PROVISION FOR THE LAY-PREACHERS, &C, 
 
 quarter for every child; and when a preacher was 
 at home, the wife was entitled to eighteen-pence 
 a day for his board ; the computation being four- 
 pence for breakfast, sixpence for dinner, and four- 
 pence each for tea and supper ; with the condition, 
 that whenever he was invited out, a deduction was 
 to be made for the meal. 
 
 But farther relief was still necessary for those 
 married preachers who gave themselves up wholly 
 to the service of Methodism. Their boys, when 
 they grew too big to be under the mother's direc- 
 tion, were in a worse state than other children, 
 and were exposed to a thousand temptations, hav- 
 ing no father to control and instruct them, " Was 
 it fit," said Wesley, " that the children of those 
 who leave wife, home, and all that is dear, to save 
 souls from death, should want what is needful either 
 for soul or body ? Ought not the Society to suppljr 
 what the parent could not, because of his labours 
 in the Gospel? The preacher, eased of this weight, 
 would go on the more cheerfully, and perhaps 
 many of these children might, in time, fill up the 
 place of those who should have rested from their 
 labours." The obvious remedy was to found a 
 school for the sons of the preachers ; and think- 
 ing that the wealthier members of the Society 
 would rejoice if an opportunity were given them to 
 separate their children from the contagion of the 
 world, he seems to have hoped that the expences^ 
 of the eleemosynary part of the institution might? 
 in great measure be defrayed by their means. 
 
KINGSWOOD SCHOOL. 157 
 
 Some tracts upon education had led him to con- 
 sider the defects of English schools ; the mode of" 
 teaching, defective as that is, he did not regard ; 
 it was the moral discipline which fixed his atten- 
 tion ; and in founding a seminary for his own 
 people, whose steady increase he now contem- 
 plated as no longer doubtful, he resolved to pro- 
 vide, as far as possible, against all the evils of the 
 existing institutions. The first point was to find 
 a situation not too far from a great town, which 
 would be very inconvenient for so large a household 
 as he was about to establish, nor yet too near, 
 and much less in it. For in towns the boys, when- 
 ever they j went abroad, would have too many 
 things to engage their thoughts, which ought, he 
 said, to be diverted as little as possible from the 
 objects of their learning ; and they would have too 
 many other children round about them, some of 
 whom they were liable to meet every day, whose 
 example would neither forward them in learning 
 nor in religion. He chose a spot, three miles 
 from Bristol, in the middle of Kingswood, on the 
 side of a small hill, sloping to the west, sheltered 
 from the east and north, and affording room for 
 large gardens. At that time it was quite private 
 and remote from all highways : now the turnpike 
 road passes close beside it, and it is surrounded 
 by a filthy population. He built the house of a 
 size to contain fifty children, besides masters and 
 servants, reserving one room and a little study for 
 his own use. 
 
 In looking for masters he had the advantage of 
 7 
 
158 KINGSWOOD SCHOOL. 
 
 being acquainted with every part of the nation : 
 and yet he found it no easy thing to procure such 
 as he desired, — men of competent acquirements, 
 «* who were truly devoted to God, who sought no- 
 thing on earth, neither pleasure, nor ease, nor 
 profit, nor the praise of men." The first rule re- 
 specting scholars was, that no child should be ad- 
 mitted after he was twelve years old ; before that 
 age, it was thought he could not well be rooted 
 either in bad habits or ill principles : he resolved 
 also not to receive any that came to hand, but, if 
 possible, " only such as had some thoughts of God, 
 and some desire of saving their souls ; and such 
 whose parents desired they should not be almost, 
 but altogether Christians." The proposed object 
 was, c « to answer the design of Christian educa- 
 tion, by framing their minds, through the help of 
 God, to wisdom and holiness, by instilling the 
 principles of true religion, speculative and prac- 
 tical, and training them up in the ancient way, 
 that they might be rational, scriptural Christians." 
 Accordingly he proclaimed, that the children of 
 tender parents had no business there, and that no 
 child should be received, unless his parents would 
 agree that he should observe all the rules of the 
 house, and that they would not take him from 
 school, no, not for a day, till they took him for 
 good and all. " The reasonableness of this un- 
 common "We," says Wesley, " is shown by con- 
 stant experience : for children may unlearn as 
 much in one week, as they have learned in several j 
 nay, and contract a prejudice to exact discipline 
 
KINGSWOOD SCHOOL. 1.59 
 
 which never can be removed." Had Wesley been 
 a father, he would have perceived that such a rule 
 is unreasonable, and felt that it is abominable :— 
 uncommon, unhappily, it is not, for it makes a 
 part of the Jesuit establishments, and was adopted 
 also by Buonaparte as part of his plan for training 
 up an army of Mamelukes in Europe : — no rule 
 could better forward the purpose of those who de- 
 sire to enslave mankind. 
 
 The children were to rise at four, winter and 
 summer : this, Wesley said, he knew by constant 
 observation, and by long experience, to be of ad- 
 mirable use either for preserving a good, or im- 
 proving a bad constitution ; and he affirmed, that 
 it was of peculiar service in almost all nervous 
 complaints, both in preventing and in removing 
 them. They were to spend the time till five in 
 private, partly in reading, partly in singing, partly 
 in prayer, and in self-examination and meditation, 
 those that were capable of it. Poor boys ! they 
 had better have spent it in sleep. From five till 
 seven they breakfasted and walked, or worked, the 
 master being with them ; for the master was con- 
 stantly to be present ; and there were no holidays, 
 and no play on any day. Wesley had learnt a sour 
 German proverb, saying, cc he that plays when he 
 is a child, will play when he is a man ;" and he had 
 forgotten an English one, proceeding from good 
 nature and good sense, which tells us by what kind 
 of discipline Jack may be made a dull boy : 
 " Why," he asks, " should he learn now what he 
 must unlearn by and by ?" Why ? — for the same 
 
160 KINGSWOOD SCHOOL* 
 
 Reason that he is fed with milk when a suckling, 
 because it is the food convenient for him. They 
 were to work in fair weather, according to their 
 strength, in the garden : on rainy days in the house, 
 always in presence of a master ; for they were 
 never, day or night, to be alone. This part of his 
 system Wesley adopted from the great school at 
 Jena, in Saxony : it is the practice of Catholic 
 schools, and may, perhaps, upon a comparison of 
 evils, be better than the opposite extreme, which 
 leaves the boys, during the greater part of their 
 time, wholly without superintendence. At a great 
 expence of instinct and enjoyment, and of that 
 freedom of character, without which the best cha- 
 racter can only obtain from us a cold esteem, it 
 gets rid of much vice, much cruelty, and much 
 unhappiness. The school-hours were from seven 
 to eleven, and from one to five : eight was the 
 hour for going to bed ; they slept in one dormi- 
 tory, each in a separate bed ; a master lay in the 
 same room, and a lamp was kept burning there. 
 Their food was as simple as possible, and two days 
 in the week no meat was allowed. 
 
 The things to be taught there make a formidable 
 catalogue in the founder's plan ; reading, writing, 
 arithmetic ; English, French, Latin, Greek, He- 
 brew ; history, geography, chronology, rhetoric, 
 logic, ethics ; geometry, algebra ; natural philo- 
 sophy, and metaphysics. No Roman author was 
 to be read who had lived later than the Augustan 
 age, except certain selections from Juvenal, Per- 
 sius, and Martial. This was carrying classical pu- 
 
KINGS WOOD SCHOOL. 161 
 
 ritanism to an extreme ; and it indicates no very 
 sound judgement that Wesley should have pre- 
 ferred a few of the modern Latin writers to supply 
 the place of those whom he rejected. The classics 
 which were retained were to be carefully expur- 
 gated : there had been a time when he was for in- 
 terdicting them altogether, as improper to be used 
 in the education of Christian youth, but this folly 
 he had long outgrown. 
 
 He was enabled to establish the school by the 
 bounty of Lady Maxwell, one of his few converts 
 in high life. She was of the family of the Bris- 
 banes, in Ayrshire ; was married to Sir Walter 
 Maxwell at the age of 17 ; at 19 was left a widow ; 
 and, six weeks after the death of her husband, lost 
 her son and only child. From that hour she was 
 never known to mention either. Weaned from the 
 world by these severe dispensations, she looked for 
 comfort to Him who giveth and who taketh away ; 
 and what little of her diary has appeared, shows 
 more of high enthusiastic devotion, unmingled and 
 undebased, than is to be found in any other com- 
 position of the kind. She used to say, that, had 
 it not been for the Methodists, she should never 
 have had those enjoyments in religion to which she 
 had attained ; because it is seldom or never that 
 we go farther than our instructors teach us. It 
 was, however, many years before she formally 
 joined them, and she never forsook the church of 
 Scotland. She lived to be the oldest member of the 
 Society. The school was founded long before she 
 became a member j but Wesley had no sooner men- 
 
 VOL. II. M 
 
162 KINGSWOOD SCHOOL^ 
 
 tioned his design to her, than she presented him 
 with bank notes to the amount of 500/. and told 
 him to begin immediately. After some time she 
 asked how the building was going on, and whether 
 he stood in need of farther assistance ; and hearing 
 that a debt of 300/. had been incurred, though he 
 desired that she would not consider herself under 
 any obligation in the business, she immediately 
 gave him the whole sum. 
 
 The school was opened in 1748 : in two or three 
 months there were twenty-eight scholars, notwith- 
 standing the strictness of the discipline ; and so little 
 was economy in education understood in those days, 
 that there was an establishment of six masters for 
 them. " From the very beginning,*' says Wesley, 
 " I met with all sorts of discouragements. Cavil- 
 lers, and prophets of evil, were on every side. An 
 hundred objections Were made, both to the whole 
 design, and every particular branch of it, espe- 
 cially by those from whom I had reason to expect 
 better things. Notwithstanding which, through 
 God's help, I went on ; wrote an English, a Latin, 
 a Greek, a Hebrew, and a French grammar ; and 
 printed Prcelectiones Pueriles, with many other 
 books, for the use of the school." In making 
 his grammars, Wesley rejected much of the rubbish 
 with which such books are encumbered: they 
 might have been simplified still farther ; but it was 
 reserved for Dr. Bell, the friend of children, to 
 establish the principle in education, that every 
 lesson should be made perfectly intelligible to the 
 child. 
 
KINGSWOOD SCHOOL. 163 
 
 Upon visiting the school a year after its estab- 
 lishment, he found that several rules had been 
 habitually neglected ; and he judged it necessary to 
 send away some of the children, and suffer none to 
 remain who were not clearly satisfied with them, 
 and determined to observe them all. By the second 
 year the scholars had been reduced from twenty- 
 eight to eighteen : it is marvellous indeed that any 
 but the sons of the preachers should have remained ; 
 that any parents should have suffered their children 
 to be bred up in a manner which would inevitably, 
 in ninety-nine cases out of an hundred, either dis- 
 gust them with religion, or make them hypocrites. 
 " I wonder," says he, " how I am withheld from 
 dropping the whole design, so many difficulties 
 have continually attended it ; yet if this counsel is 
 of God it shall stand, and all hindrances shall 
 turn into blessings." The house was in a state of 
 complete anarchy. One of the masters was so 
 rough and disobliging, that the children were little 
 profited by him :,a second, though honest and di- 
 ligent, was rendered contemptible by his person 
 and manner : the third had been useful, till the 
 fourth set the boys against him ; and the two others 
 were weighed down by the rest, who neither ob- 
 served the rules in the school nor out of it. To 
 crown all, the housekeeper neglected her duty, 
 being taken up with thoughts of another kind 5 
 and the four maids were divided into two parties. 
 This pitiful case he published for the information 
 of the Society, and cut down the establishment to 
 two masters, a housekeeper, and a maid. Two of 
 
 m 2 
 
184 THE CONFERENCE. 
 
 the elder boys were dismissed as incorrigible, out 
 of four or five who were " very uncommonly 
 wicked," (a very uncommon proportion of wicked 
 boys out of eighteen,) and five more soon went 
 away. Still it went on badly : four years afterwards 
 he speaks of endeavouring once more to bring it 
 into order. " Surely," he says, " the importance 
 of this design is apparent, even from the difficulties 
 that attend it. I spent more money, and time, and 
 care on this than almost any design I ever had; 
 and still it exercises all the patience I have. But 
 it is worth all the labour." 
 
 Provision had thus been made for the mainte- 
 nance of the preachers' families, and the education 
 of their sons. A Conference, to which Wesley, 
 in the year 1744, invited his brother Charles, 
 four other clergymen, who co-operated with him, 
 and four of his lay preachers, was from that time 
 held annually, and became the general assembly, 
 in which the affairs of the Society were examined 
 and determined. They began their first meeting 
 by recording their desire, " that all things might 
 be considered as in the immediate presence of 
 God; that they might meet with a single eye, 
 and as little children who had every thing to 
 learn; that every point which was proposed might 
 be examined to the foundation ; that every person 
 might speak freely whatever was in his heart ; and 
 that every question which might arise should be 
 thoroughly debated and settled." There was no 
 reason, they said, to be afraid of doing this, lest 
 they should overturn their first principles : for if 
 
THE CONFERENCE. 165 
 
 they were false, the sooner they were overturned 
 the better ; if they were true, they would bear the 
 strictest examination. They determined, in the 
 intermediate hours of this Conference, to visit 
 none but the sick, and to spend all the time that 
 remained in retirement ; giving themselves to 
 prayer for one another, and for a blessing upon 
 this their labour. With regard to the judgement 
 of the majority, they agreed that, in speculative 
 things, each could only submit, so far as his judge- 
 ment should be convinced ; and that, in every 
 practical point, each would submit, so far as he 
 could, without wounding his conscience. Farther 
 than this, they maintained, a Christian could not 
 submit to any man or number of men upon earth ; 
 either to council, bishop, or convocation. And 
 this was that grand principle of private judgement 
 on which all the reformers proceeded. " Every 
 man must judge for himself; because every man 
 must give an account for himself to God." But 
 this principle, if followed to its full extent, is as 
 unsafe and as untenable as the opposite extreme 
 of the Romanists. The design of this meeting was 
 to consider what to teach, how to teach, and what 
 to do ; in other words, how to regulate their doc- 
 trines discipline, and practice. Here, therefore, 
 it will be convenient to present a connected ac- 
 count of each. 
 
 M 
 
166 
 
 CHAPTER XIX, 
 wesley's doctrines and opinions. 
 
 Wesley never departed willingly or knowingly 
 from the doctrines of the -Church of England, in ■ 
 which he had been trained up, and with which he 
 was conscientiously satisfied after full and tree en- 
 quiry. Upon points which have not been revealed, 
 but are within the scope of reason, he formed opi- 
 nions for himself, which were generally clear, con- 
 sistent with the Christian system, and creditable, 
 for the most part, both to his feelings and his 
 judgement. But he laid no stress upon them, and 
 never proposed them for more than they w'ere 
 worth. In the following connected view of his 
 scheme, care has been taken to preserve his own 
 words, as far as possible, for the sake of fidelity. 
 
 The moral, or, as he sometimes calls it, the 
 Adamic law, he traced beyond the foundation of 
 the world, to that period, unknown indeed to men, 
 but doubtless enrolled in the annals of eternity, 
 when the morning stars first sang together, being 
 newly called into existence. It pleased the Cre- 
 ator to make these His first-born sons intelligent 
 beings, that they might know Him who created 
 them. For this end he endued them with under- 
 standing to discern truth from falsehood, good 
 
wesley's doctrines and opinions. I67 
 
 from evil ; and, as a necessary result of this, with 
 liberty, — a capacity of choosing the one and re- 
 fusing the other. By this they were likewise en- 
 abled to offer Him a free and willing service ; a 
 service rewardable in itself, as well as most ac- 
 ceptable to their gracious Master. The law which 
 He gave them was a complete model of all truth, 
 so far as was intelligible to a finite being j and of 
 all good, so far as angelic natures were capable of 
 embracing it. And it was His design herein to 
 make way for a continued increase of their happi- 
 ness, seeing every instance of obedience to that 
 law would both add to the perfection of their na- 
 ture, and. entitle them to a higher reward, which 
 the righteous Judge would give in its season. In 
 like manner when God, in His appointed time, had 
 created a new order of intelligent beings, when He 
 had raised man from the dust of the earth, breathed 
 into him the breath of life, and caused him to be- 
 come a living soul, He gave to this free intelligent 
 creature the same law as to his first-born children ; 
 not written, indeed, upon tables of stone, or any 
 corruptible substance, but engraven on his heart 
 by the finger of God, written in the inmost spirit 
 both of men and angels, to the intent it might 
 never be afar off, never hard to be understood, but 
 always at hand, and always shining with clear light, 
 even as the sun in the midst of heaven. Such was 
 the original of the law of God. With regard to 
 man, it was coeval with his nature; but with re- 
 gard to the elder sons of God, it shone in its full 
 splendour, " or ever the mountains were brought 
 
 M 4f 
 
168 wesley's doctrines and opinions. 
 
 forth, or the earth and the round world were 
 made." 
 
 Man was made holy, as He that created him is 
 holy : perfect as his Father in Heaven is perfect. 
 As God is love, so man, dwelling in love, dwelt in 
 God, and God in him. God made him to be an 
 image of his own eternity. To man thus perfect, 
 God gave a perfect law, to which He required full 
 and perfect obedience. He required full obedi- 
 ence in every point. No allowance was made for 
 any falling short : there was no need of any, man, 
 being altogether equal to the task assigned him. 
 Man disobeyed this law, and from that moment he 
 died. God had told him, "in the day that thou 
 eatest of that fruit thou shalt surely die." Accord- 
 ingly on that day he did die : he died to God, the 
 most dreadful of all deaths. He lost the life of 
 God : he was separated from Him in union with 
 whom his spiritual life consisted. His soul died. 
 The body dies when it is separated from the soul ; 
 the soul when it is separated from God : but this 
 separation Adam sustained in the day — the hour 
 when he ate of the forbidden fruit. The threat 
 cannot be understood of temporal death, without 
 impeaching the veracity of God. It must there- 
 fore be understood of spiritual death, the loss of 
 the life and image of God. His body likewise be- 
 came corruptible and mortal ; and being already 
 dead in the spirit, dead to God, dead in sin, he 
 hastened on to death everlasting, to the destruc- 
 tion both of body and soul, in the fire never to be 
 quenched. 
 
wesley's doctrines and opinions. 169 
 
 Why was this ? Why are there sin and misery in 
 the world ? Because man was created in the image 
 of God : because he is not mere matter, a clod of 
 earth, a lump of clay, without sense or under- 
 standing, but a spirit like his Creator ; a being 
 endued not only with sense and understanding, 
 but also with a will. Because, to^crown the rest, 
 he was endued with liberty, a power of directing 
 his own affections and actions, a capacity of deter- 
 mining for himself, or of choosing good or evil. 
 Had not man been endued with this, all the rest 
 would have been of no use. Had he not been a 
 free, as well, as an intelligent being, his under- 
 standing would have been as incapable of holiness, 
 or any kind of virtue, as a tree or a block of 
 marble. And having this power of choosing good 
 or evil, he chose evil. But in Adam all died, and 
 this was the natural consequence of his fall. He 
 was more than the representative or federal head 
 of the human race, — the seed and souls of all 
 mankind were contained in him, and therefore 
 partook of the corruption of his nature. From 
 that time every man who is born into the world 
 bears the image of the Devil, in pride and self- 
 will, — the image of the beast, in sensual appetites 
 and desires. All his posterity were, by his act and 
 deed, entitled to error, guilt, sorrow, fear, pain, 
 disease, and death, and these they have inherited 
 for their portion. The cause has been revealed to 
 us, and the effects are seen over the whole world, 
 and felt in the heart of every individual. But this 
 
170 wesley's doctrines and opinions. 
 
 is no ways inconsistent with the justice and good- 
 ness of God, because all may recover through the 
 Second Adam, whatever they lost through the first. 
 Not one child of man finally loses thereby, unless 
 by his own choice. A remedy has been provided 
 which is adequate to the disease. Yea, more than 
 this, mankind have gained by the fall a capacity, 
 first, of being more holy and happy on earth ; and, 
 secondly, of being more happy in heaven than 
 otherwise they could have been. For if man had 
 not fallen, there must have been a blank in our 
 faith and in our love. There could have been no 
 such thing as faith in God " so loving the world, 
 that he gave his only Son for us men and for our 
 salvation ;" no faith in the Son of God, as loving 
 us and giving himself for us ; no faith in the Spirit 
 of God, as renewing the image of God in our 
 hearts, or raising us from the death of sin unto the 
 life of righteousness. And the same blank must 
 likewise have been in our love. We could not 
 have loved the Father under the nearest and 
 dearest relation, as delivering up his Son for us : 
 w T e could not have loved the Son, as bearing our 
 sins in his own body on the tree, and by that one 
 oblation, of himself once offered making a full ob- 
 lation, sacrifice, and satisfaction for the sins of the 
 whole world : we could not have loved the Holy 
 Ghost, as revealing to us the Father and the Son, 
 as opening the eyes of our understandings, bring- 
 ing us out of darkness into his marvellous fight, 
 renewing the image of God in our soul, and seal- 
 
 4 
 
wesley's doctrines and opinions. 171 
 
 t ng us unto the day of' redemption. So that what 
 is now in the sight of God pure religion and unde- 
 nted, would then have had no being. 
 
 The fall of man is the very foundation of re- 
 vealed religion. If this be taken away, the Chris- 
 tian system is subverted, nor will it deserve so 
 honourable an appellation as that of a cunningly 
 devised fable. It is a scriptural doctrine : many 
 plain texts directly teach it. It is a rational doc- 
 trine, thoroughly consistent with sound reason, 
 though there may be some circumstances relating 
 to it which human reason cannot fathom. It is a 
 practical doctrine, having the closest connection 
 with the life, power, and practice of religion. It 
 leads man to the foundation of all Christian prac- 
 tice, the knowledge of himself, and thereby to the 
 knowledge of God, and of Christ crucified. It is 
 an experimental doctrine. The sincere Christian 
 carries the proof of it in his own bosom. Thus 
 Wesley reasoned ; and, from the corruption of 
 man's nature, or in his own view of the doctrine, 
 from the death of the soul, he inferred the neces- 
 sity of a New Birth. He had made that expres- 
 sion obnoxious in the season of his enthusiasm, and 
 it was one of those things which embarrassed him 
 in his sober and maturer years : but he had com- 
 mitted himself too far to retract, and, therefore, 
 when he saw, and in his own cool judgement dis- 
 approved, the extravagances to which the abuse of 
 the term had led, he still continued to use it, and 
 even pursued the metaphor through all its bearings, 
 with a wantonness of ill-directed fancy, of which 
 
172 wesley's doctrines and opinions. 
 
 this is the only instance in all his writings. And 
 in attempting to reconcile the opinion which he 
 held with the doctrine of the Church, he entangled 
 himself in contradictions, like a man catching at 
 all arguments when defending a cause which he 
 knows to be weak and untenable. 
 
 Connected with his doctrine of the New Birth 
 was that of Justification, which he affirmed to be 
 inseparable from it, yet easily to be distinguished, 
 as being not the same, but of a widely different 
 nature. In order of time, neither of these is be- 
 fore the other ; in the moment we are justified by 
 the grace of God, through the redemption that is 
 in Jesus, we are also born of the Spirit ; but, in 
 order of thinking, as it is termed, Justification pre- 
 cedes the New Birth. We first conceive his wrath 
 to be turned away, and then his Spirit to work in 
 our hearts. Justification implies only a relative, 
 the New Birth a real change. God, in justifying 
 us, does something for us ; in begetting us. again, 
 He does the work in us. The former changes our 
 outward relation to God, so that of enemies we 
 become children. By the latter our inmost souls 
 are changed, so that of sinners we become saints. 
 The one restores us to the favour, the other to the 
 image of God. Justification is another word for 
 pardon. It is the forgiveness of all our sins, and, 
 what is necessarily implied therein, our acceptance 
 with God. The immediate effects are the peace 
 of God ; a peace that passeth all understanding, 
 and a " rejoicing in hope of the glory of God, with 
 joy unspeakable and full of glory,'' And at the 
 
wesley's doctrines and opinions. 173 
 
 same time that we are justified, yea, in that very- 
 moment, sanctification begins. In that instant we 
 are born again ; and when we are born again, then 
 our sanctification begins, and thenceforward we 
 are gradually to " grow up in him who is our 
 head." This expression, says Wesley, points out 
 the exact analogy there is between natural and 
 spiritual things. A child is born of a woman in a 
 moment, or, at least, in a very short time. Af- 
 terwards he gradually and slowly grows, till he 
 attains to the stature of a man. In like manner a 
 person is born of God in a short time, if not in a 
 moment ; but it is by slow degrees that he after- 
 wards grows up to the measure of the full stature 
 of Christ. The same relation, therefore, which 
 there is between our natural birth and our growth, 
 there is also between our New Birth and our Sanc- 
 tification. And sanctification, though in some 
 degree the immediate fruit of justification, is a 
 distinct gift of God, and of a totally different na- 
 ture. The one implies what God does for us 
 through his Son ; the other what he works in us 
 by his Spirit. Men are no more able of themselves 
 to think one good thought, to speak one good 
 word, or do one good work, after justification, 
 than before they were justified. When the Lord 
 speaks to our hearts the second time, " be clean" 
 then only the evil root, the carnal mind is de- 
 stroyed, and sin subsists no more. A deep con- 
 viction that there is yet in us a carnal mind, shows, 
 beyond all possibility of doubt, the absolute neces- 
 sity of a farther change. If there be no such se- 
 
174 WESLEY'S DOCTRINES AND OPINIONS. 
 
 cond change, if there be no instantaneous deliverance 
 after justification, if there be none but a gradual 
 work of God, then we must be content, as well as 
 we can, to remain full of sin till death ; and if so, 
 we must remain guilty till death, continually de- 
 serving punishment. Thus Wesley explains a doc- 
 trine which, in his old age, he admitted that he 
 did not find a profitable subject for an unawakened 
 congregation. 
 
 This deliverance, he acknowledged, might be 
 gradually wrought in some. I mean, he says, in 
 this sense, they do not advert to the particular 
 moment wherein sin ceases to be. But it is in- 
 finitely desirable were it the will of God, that it 
 should be done instantaneously; that the Lord 
 should destroy sin in a moment, in the twinkling of 
 an eye. And so he generally does. This, Wesley 
 insisted was a plain fact, of which there was evi- 
 dence enough to satisfy any unprejudiced person. 
 And why might it not be instantaneous? he ar- 
 gued. A moment is to Him the same as a thousand 
 years. He cannot want more time to accomplish 
 whatever is his will : and he cannot wait or stay for 
 more 'worthiness or ^fitness in the persons he is 
 pleased to honour. Whatever may be thought of 
 the doctrine and of its evidence, it was a powerful 
 one in Wesley's hands. To the confidence, he 
 says, that God is both able and willing to sanctify 
 us now, there needs to be added one thing more, 
 a divine evidence and conviction that he doth it. 
 
 In that hour it is done. " Thou, therefore, look for 
 it every moment: you can be no worse if you are 
 
wesley's doctrines and opinions. 17*5 
 
 no better for that expectation ; for were you to 
 be disappointed of your hope, still you lose no- 
 thing. But you shall not be disappointed of your 
 hope ; it will come, it will not tarry. Look for it 
 then every day, every hour, every moment. Why 
 not this hour ? this moment ? Certainly you may 
 look for it now, if you believe it is by faith. And 
 by this token you may surely know whether you 
 seek it by faith or works. If by works, you want 
 something to be done first, before you are sanc- 
 tified. You think I mnst first be, or do thus or 
 thus. Then you are seeking it by works unto this 
 day. If you seek it by faith, you may expect it 
 as you are ; then expect it now. It is of import- 
 ance to observe, that there is an inseparable con- 
 nection between these three points — expect it by 
 Jaith, expect it as you are, and expect it now. To 
 deny one of them is to deny them all : to allow 
 one, is to allow them all. Do you believe we are 
 sanctified by faith? Be true then to your prin- 
 ciple, and look for this blessing just as you are, 
 neither better nor worse ; as a poor sinner, that 
 has nothing to pay, nothing to plead, but ' Christ 
 died.' And if you look for it as you are, then 
 expect it now. Stay for nothing! Why should 
 you ! Christ is ready, and he is all you want. He 
 is waiting for you ! he is at the door. Whosoever 
 thou art who desirest to be forgiven, first believe. 
 Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and then thou 
 shalt do all things well. Say not, I cannot be ac- 
 cepted yet, because I am not good enough. Who 
 is good enough, who ever was, to merit acceptance 
 
176 wesley's doctrines and opinions. 
 
 at God's hands? Say not, « I am not contrite 
 enough : I am not sensible enough of my sins.' I 
 know it. I would to God thou wert more sensible 
 of them, and more contrite a thousand fold than 
 thou art ! But do not stay for this. It may be 
 God will make thee so ; not before thou believest, 
 but by believing. It may be thou wilt not weep 
 much, till thou lovest much, because thou hast had 
 much forgiven." 
 
 Upon these fundamental doctrines of the New 
 Birth and Justification by Faith, he exhorted his 
 disciples to insist with all boldness, at all times, and 
 in all places : in public, those who were called 
 thereto ; and at all opportunities in private. But 
 what is faith ? " Not an opinion," said Wesley, 
 " nor any number of opinions put together, be 
 they ever so true. A string of opinions is no more 
 Christian faith, than a string of beads is Christian 
 holiness. It is not an assent to any opinion, or any 
 number of opinions. A man may assent to three, 
 or three-and-twenty creeds : he may assent to all 
 the Old and New Testament, (at least as far as he 
 understands them,) and yet have no Christian faith 
 at all. The faith by which the promise is attained 
 is represented by Christianity as a power wrought 
 by the Almighty in an immortal spirit, inhabiting 
 a house of clay, to see through that veil into the 
 world of spirits, into things invisible and eternal : 
 a power to discern those things which, with eyes of 
 flesh and blood, no man hath seen, or can see ; 
 either by reason of their nature, which (though 
 they surround us on every side) is not perceivable 
 
Wesley's doctrines and Opinions. 177 
 
 by these gross senses ; or by reason of their dis- 
 tance, as being yet afar offin the bosom of eternity. 
 It showeth what eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, 
 neither could it before enter into our heart to con- 
 ceive ; and all this in the clearest light, with the 
 fullest certainty and evidence. For it does not 
 leave us to receive our notice by mere reflection 
 from the dull glass of sense, but resolves a thou- 
 sand enigmas of the highest concern, by giving 
 faculties suited to things invisible. It is the eye 
 of the new-born soul, whereby every true believer 
 " seeth Him who is invisible." It is the ear of the 
 soul, whereby the sinner 4S hears the voice of the 
 Son of God and lives ;" the palate of the soul, (if 
 the expression may be allowed,) whereby a believer 
 " tastes the good word and the powers of the 
 world to come;" the feeling of the soul, whereby, 
 ** through the power of the Highest overshadow- 
 ing him," he perceives the presence of Him in 
 whom he lives, and moves, and has his being, and 
 feels the love of God shed abroad in his heart. It 
 is the internal evidence of Christianity, a perpetual 
 revelation, equally strong, equally new, through 
 all the centuries which have elapsed since the in- 
 carnation, and passing now, even as it has done 
 from the beginning, directly from God into the 
 believing soul. Do you suppose time will ever 
 dry up this stream? Oh no! It shall never be 
 cut off — 
 
 Labitur el labetur in omne volubilis cevum. 
 It flows, and as it flows, for ever will flow on. 
 
 VOL.11. N 
 
178 wesley's doctrines and opinions. 
 
 The historical evidence of Revelation, strong and 
 clear as it is, is cognizable by men of learning 
 alone ; but this is plain, simple, and level to the 
 lowest capacity. The sum is, " One thing I know i 
 I was blind, but now I see :" an argument of 
 which a peasant, a woman, a child, may feel all 
 the force. The traditional evidence gives an ac- 
 count of what was transacted far away and long 
 ago. The inward evidence is intimately present 
 to all persons, at all times, and in all places. " Ifc 
 is nigh thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, if thou 
 believest in the Lord Jesus Christ." This, then, 
 is the record, this is the evidence, emphatically so 
 called, that God hath given unto us eternal life, and 
 this life is in his Son. 
 
 Why, then, have not all men this faith ? Be- 
 cause no man is able to work it in himself: it is a 
 work of omnipotence. It requires no less power 
 thus to quicken a dead soul, than to raise a body 
 that lies in the grave. It is a new creation; and 
 none can create a soul anew, but he who at first 
 created the heavens and the earth. May not your 
 own experience teach you this ? said Wesley. Can 
 you give yourself this faith ? Is it in your power 
 to see, or hear, or taste, or feel God ? to raise in 
 yourself any perception of God, or of an invisible 
 world ? to open an intercourse between yourself 
 and the world of spirits ? to discern either them or 
 Him that created them ? to burst the veil that is 
 on your heart, and let in the light of eternity? 
 You know it is not. You not only do not, but 
 cannot (by your own strength) thus believe. The 
 
 *5 
 
WESLEY'S DOCTRINES AND OPINIONS. 179 
 
 more you labour so to do, the more you will be 
 convinced it is the gift of God. It is the Jree gift 
 of God, which he bestows not on those who are 
 worthy of his favour, not on such as are previously 
 holy, and sojit to be crowned with all the blessings 
 of his goodness ; but on the ungodly and unholy ; 
 on those who, till that hour, were Jit only for ever- 
 lasting destruction % those in whom was no good 
 thing, and whose only plea was, God be merciful 
 to me a sinner ! No merit, no goodness in man 
 precedes the forgiving love of God. His pardon- 
 ing mercy supposes nothing in us but a sense of 
 mere sin and misery ; and to all who see and feel, 
 and own their wants, and their utter inability to 
 remove them, God freely gives faith, for the sake 
 of him " in whom he is always well pleased." 
 Whosoever thou art, O man, who hast the sen- 
 tence of death in thyself, unto thee saith the Lord, 
 not, " Do this, perfectly obey all my commands, 
 and live ;" but " believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 and thou shalt be saved." 
 
 Without faith, a man cannot be justified, even 
 though he should have every thing else ; with faith, 
 he cannot but be justified, though every thing 
 else should be wanting. This justifying faith im- 
 plies not only the personal revelation, the inward 
 evidence of Christianity, but likewise a sure and 
 firm confidence in the individual believer that Christ 
 died for Jus sins, loved him, and gave his life for 
 him. And at what time soever a sinner thus be- 
 lieves, God justifieth him. Repentance, indeed, 
 must have been given him before ; but that repent- 
 n 2 
 
180 wesley's doctrines and opinions. 
 
 ance was neither more nor less than a deep sense 
 of the want of all good, and the presence of all 
 evil ; and whatever good he hath or doth from 
 that hour when he first believes in God through 
 Christ, faith does not find, but bring. Both re- 
 pentance, and fruits meet for repentance, are in 
 some degree necessary to justification; but they 
 are not necessary in the same sense with faith, nor 
 in the same degree. Not in the same degree^, for 
 these fruits are only necessary conditionally, if 
 there be time and opportunity for them. Not in 
 the same sense ; for repentance and its fruits are 
 only remotely necessary — necessary in order to 
 faith; whereas faith is immediately and directly 
 necessary to justification. In like manner, faith is 
 the only condition of sanctification. Every one that 
 believes is sanctified, whatever else he has, or has 
 not. In other words, no man can be sanctified 
 till he believes; every man when he believes is 
 sanctified. 
 
 Here Wesley came upon perilous ground. — We 
 must be holy in heart and life, before we can 
 be conscious that we are so. But we must love 
 God before we can be holy at all. We cannot 
 love Him till we know that He loves us ; and this 
 we cannot know till his Spirit witnesses it to our 
 spirit. The testimony of the Spirit of God must 
 therefore, he argued, in the very nature of things, 
 be antecedent to the testimony of our own spirit. 
 But he perceived that many had mistaken the voice 
 of their own imagination for this witness of the 
 Spirit, and presumed that they were children of 
 
Wesley's doctrines and opinions. 181 
 
 God, while they were doing the works of the Devil. 
 And he was not surprised that many sensible men, 
 seeing the effects of this delusion, should lean to- 
 ward another extreme, and question whether the 
 witness of the Spirit, whereof the apostle speaks, is 
 the privilege of ordinary Christians, and not rather 
 one of those extraordinary gifts, which they sup- 
 pose belonged only to the apostle's age. Yet, 
 when he asks, " How may one, who has the real 
 witness in himself, distinguish it from presump- 
 tion ?" he evades the difficulty, and offers a de- 
 clamatory reply, " How, I pray, do you distinguish 
 day from night? How do you distinguish light 
 from darkness ? or the light of a star, or of a glim- 
 mering taper, from the light of the noon-day 
 sun ?" This is the ready answer of every one who 
 has been crazed by enthusiasm. But Wesley re- 
 garded the doctrine as one of the glories of his 
 people, as one grand part of the testimony which 
 God, he said, had given them to bear to all man- 
 kind. It was by this peculiar blessing upon them, 
 confirmed by the experience of his children, that 
 this great evangelical truth, he averred, had been 
 recovered, which had been for many years well 
 nigh lost and forgotten. 
 
 These notions led to the doctrine of Assurance^ 
 which he had defended so pertinaciously against 
 his brother Samuel. But upon this, point his fer- 
 vour had abated, and he made a fairer retract- 
 ation than was to be expected from the founder of 
 a sect. " Some," said he, " are fond of the ex- 
 pression -, I am not : I hardly ever use it. But I 
 n 3 
 
182 wesley's doctrines and opinions. 
 
 will simply declare (having neither leisure nor in- 
 clination to draw the sword of controversy concern- 
 ing it) what are my present sentiments with regard 
 to the tiling which is usually meant thereby. I 
 believe a few, but very few Christians, have an 
 assurance from God of everlasting salvation; and 
 that is the thing which the apostle terms the ple- 
 rophory, or full assurance of hope. I believe more 
 have such an assurance of being now in the favour 
 of God, as excludes all doubt and fear : and this, 
 if I do not mistake, is what the apostle means by 
 the plerophory, or full assurance of faith. I believe 
 a consciousness of being in the favour of God 
 (which I do not term plerophory, or full assurance, 
 since it is frequently weakened, nay, perhaps inter- 
 rupted by returns of doubt or fear) is the common 
 privilege of Christians, fearing God, and working 
 righteousness. Yet I do not affirm there are no 
 exceptions to this general rule. Possibly some 
 may be in the favour of God, and yet go mourn- 
 ing all the day long. (But I believe this is. usually 
 owing either to disorder of body, or ignorance of 
 the gospel promises.) Therefore I have not, for 
 many years, thought a consciousness of acceptance 
 to be essential to justifying faith. And after I 
 have thus explained myself once for all, I think, 
 without any evasion or ambiguity, I am sure with- 
 out any self-contradiction, I hope all reasonable 
 men will be satisfied : and whoever will still dis- 
 pute with me on this head, must do it for disput- 
 ing^ sake." 
 
 The doctrine of Perfection is not less perilous,, 
 
Wesley's doctrines and opinions. 183 
 
 sure as the expression was to be mistaken by the 
 ignorant people to whom his discourses were ad- 
 dressed. This, too, was a doctrine which he had 
 preached with inconsiderate ardour at the com- 
 mencement of his career ; and which, as he grew 
 older, cooler, and wiser, he modified and softened 
 down, so as almost to explain it away. He defined 
 It to be a constant communion with God, which 
 lills the heart with humble love ; and to this he 
 insisted, that every believer might attain. Yet, 
 he admitted, that it did not include a power never 
 to think an useless thought, nor speak an useless 
 word. Such a perfection is inconsistent with a 
 corruptible body, which makes it impossible always 
 to think right : if, therefore, Christian perfection 
 implies this, he admitted that we must not expect 
 it till after death : — to one of his female disciples, 
 who seems to have written to him under a despond- 
 ing sense of her own imperfection, he replied in 
 these terms : — "I want you," he added, " to be 
 all love. This is the perfection I believe and 
 teach; and this perfection is consistent with a 
 thousand nervous disorders, which that high- 
 strained perfection is not. Indeed my judgment 
 is, that (in this case particularly) to overdo is to 
 undo ; and that to set perfection too high, is the 
 most effectual way of /driving it out of the world." 
 In like manner he justified the word to Bishop 
 Gibson, by explaining it to mean less than it ex- 
 pressed ; so that the bishop replied to him, " Why, 
 Mr. Wesley, if this is what you mean by perfec- 
 tion, who can be against it?" — " Man," he says, 
 
 n 4 
 
184 wesley's doctrines and opinions. 
 
 " in his present state, can no more attain Adamie 
 than angelic perfection. The perfection of which 
 man is capable, while he dwells in a corruptible 
 body, is the complying with that kind command, 
 * My son, give me thy heart l' It is the loving 
 the Lord his God, with all his heart, and with all 
 his soul, and with all his mind." But these 
 occasional explanations did not render the ge- 
 neral use of the word less mischievous, or less 
 reprehensible. Ignorant hearers took it for what 
 it appeared to mean ; and what, from the mouths 
 of ignorant instructors, it was intended to mean. 
 It nattered their vanity and their spiritual pride, 
 and became one of the most popular tenets of 
 the Methodists, precisely because it is one of 
 the most objectionable. Wesley himself repeat- 
 edly finds fault with his preachers if they ne- 
 glected to enforce a doctrine so well adapted 
 to gratify their hearers. In one place he says, 
 " The more I converse with the believers in Corn- 
 wall, the more am I convinced that they have 
 sustained great loss for want of hearing the doc- 
 trine of Christian Perfection clearly and strongly 
 enforced. I see wherever this is not done, the be- 
 lievers grow dead and cold. Nor can this be pre- 
 vented, but by keeping up in them an hourly 
 expectation of being perfected in love. I say an. 
 hourly expectation \ for to expect it at death, 01? 
 some time hence, is much the same as not expect- 
 ing it at all." And on another occasion he writes* 
 thus : — " Here I found the plain reason why the 
 work of God had gained no ground in this circuit 
 all the year. The preachers had given up the- 
 
wesley's doctrines and opinions. 185 
 
 Methodist testimony. Either they did not speak 
 of perfection at all, (the peculiar doctrine com- 
 mitted to our trust,) or they spoke of it only in ge- 
 neral terms, without urging the believers to go on 
 to perfection, and to expect it every moment: and 
 wherever this is not earnestly done, the work of 
 God does not prosper. As to the word perfec- 
 tion," said he, " it is scriptural, therefore neither 
 you nor I can, in conscience, object to it, unless 
 we would send the Holy Ghost to school, and 
 teach Him to speak who made the tongue." Thus 
 it was that he attempted to justify to others, and 
 to himself also, the use of language, for perse- 
 vering in which, after the intemperance of his en- 
 thusiasm had abated, there can be no excuse, 
 seeing that all he intended to convey by the ob- 
 noxious term might have been expressed without 
 offending the judicious, or deluding the ignorant 
 and indiscreet. 
 
 Wesley was not blind to the tendency of these 
 doctrines. " The true gospel," said he, " touches 
 the very edge both of Calvinism and Antinomi- 
 anism, so that nothing but the mighty power of 
 God can prevent our sliding either into the one 
 or the other." Many of his associates and fol- 
 lowers fell into both. He always declared himself 
 clearly and strongly against both ; though at the 
 expence of some inconsistency, when he preached 
 of a sanctification which left the subject liable to 
 sin, of an assurance which was not assured, and of 
 an imperfect perfection. But his real opinion could 
 not be mistaken ; and few men have combated 
 
186 wesley's doctrines and opinions. 
 
 these pesstilent errors with more earnestness or 
 more success. He never willingly engaged in those 
 subtle and unprofitable discussions which have 
 occasioned so much dissension in the Christian 
 world ; but upon those points in which speculation 
 is allowable, and error harmless, he freely indulged 
 his imagination. 
 
 It was his opinion that there is a chain of beings 
 advancing by degrees from the lowest to the 
 highest point, — from an atom of unorganized mat- 
 ter, to the highest of the archangels; an opinion 
 consonant to the philosophy of the bards, and con- 
 firmed by science, as far as our physiological 
 knowledge extends. He believed in the ministry 
 both of good and evil angels ; but whether every 
 man had a guardian angel to protect him, as the 
 Romanists hold, and a malignant demon conti- 
 nually watching to seduce him into the ways of 
 sin and death, this he considered as undetermined 
 by revelation, and therefore doubtful. Evil thoughts 
 he held to be infused into the minds of men by the 
 evil principle; and that " as no good is done, or 
 spoken, or thought by any man, without the assist- 
 ance of God working together in and with those 
 that believe in him ; so there is no evil done, or 
 spoken, or thought, without the assistance of the 
 Devil, who worketh with energy in the children 
 of unbelief. And certainly," said he, " it is as 
 easy for a spirit to speak to our heart, as for a man 
 to speak to our ears. But sometimes it is exceed- 
 ingly difficult to distinguish the thoughts which he 
 infuses from our own thoughts, those which he 
 
wesley's doctrines and opinions. 187 
 
 injects so exactly resembling those which natu- 
 rally arise in our own minds. Sometimes, indeed, 
 we may distinguish one from the other by this cir- 
 cumstance : the thoughts which naturally arise in 
 our minds are generally, if not always, occasioned 
 by, or, at least, connected with some inward or 
 outward circumstance that went before ; but those 
 that are preternaturally suggested, have frequently 
 no relation to, or connection (at least none that we 
 are able to discern) with any thing which pre- 
 ceded. On the contrary, they shoot in, as it were, 
 across, and thereby show that they are of a dif- 
 ferent growth." 
 
 His notions of diabolical agency went farther 
 than this : he imputed to it many of the accidents 
 and discomforts of life, — disease, bodily hurts, 
 storms and earthquakes, and nightmare: he be- 
 lieved that epilepsy was often, or always the effect 
 of posession, and that most madmen were demo- 
 niacs. A belief in witchcraft naturally' followed 
 from the^e premises ; but, after satisfying his un- 
 derstanding that supernatural acts and appearances 
 are consistent with the order of the universe, sanc- 
 tioned by Scripture, and proved by testimony too 
 general and too strong to be resisted, he invali- 
 dated his own authority, by listening to the most 
 absurd tales with implicit credulity, and recording 
 them as authenticated facts. He adhered to the 
 old opinion, that the devils were the gods of the 
 heathen; and he maintained, that the words in 
 the Lord's Prayer, which have been rendered evil, 
 mean, in the original, the wicked one, "empha- 
 
188 Wesley's doctrines and opinions. 
 
 tically so called, the prince and god of this world r 
 who works with mighty power in the children of 
 disobedience." 
 
 One of his most singular notions was concerning 
 the day of judgement. He thought it probable 
 that its duration would be several thousand years, 
 that the place would be above the earth, and that 
 the circumstances of every individual's life would 
 then be brought forth in full view, together with 
 all their tempers, and all the desires, thoughts, 
 and intents of their hearts. This he thought ab- 
 solutely necessary for the full display of the glory 
 of God, for the clear and perfect manifestation of 
 his wisdom, justice, power, and mercy. "Then 
 only," he argued, " when God hath brought to 
 light all the hidden things of darkness, will it be 
 seen that wise and good were all his ways ; that 
 he saw through the thick cloud, and governed all 
 things by the wise counsel of his own will ; that 
 nothing was left to chance or the caprice of men, 
 but God disposed all strongly, and wrought all 
 into one connected chain of justice, mercy, and 
 truth." Whether the earth and the material 
 heavens would be consumed by the general con- 
 flagration, and pass away, or be transmuted by 
 the fire into that sea of glass like unto crystal, 
 which is described in the Apocalypse as extending 
 before the throne, we could neither affirm nor 
 deny, he said ; but we should know hereafter. He 
 held the doctrine of the millennium to be scrip- 
 tural ; but he never fell into those wild and extra- 
 vagant fancies, in which speculations of this kind 
 
wesley's doctrines and opinions. 189 
 
 so frequently end. The Apocalypse is the fa- 
 vourite study of crazy religionists ; but Wesley 
 says of it, " Oh, how little do we know of this 
 deep book ! at least, how little do / know ! I can 
 barely conjecture, not affirm, any one point con- 
 cerning that part of it which is yet unfulfilled. ,, 
 
 He entertained some interesting opinions concern- 
 ing the brute creation, and derived whatever evils 
 inferior creatures endure, or inflict upon each other, 
 from the consequence of the Fall. In Paradise they 
 existed in a state of happiness, enjoying will and 
 liberty : their passions and affections were regular, 
 and their choice always guided by their under- 
 standing, which was perfect in its kind. " What," 
 says he, " is the barrier between men and brutes, 
 — the line which they cannot pass ? It is not 
 reason. Set aside that ambiguous term ; exchange 
 it for the plain word understanding, and who can 
 deny that brutes have this ? We may as well deny 
 that they have sight or hearing. But it is this: 
 man is capable of God ; the inferior creatures are 
 not. We have no ground to believe that they are 
 in any degree capable of knowing, loving, or obey- 
 ing God. This is the specific difference between 
 man and brute — the great gulf which they cannot 
 pass over. And as a loving obedience to God was 
 the perfection of man, so a loving obedience to 
 man was the perfection of brutes." While this 
 continued, they were happy after their kind, in 
 the right state and the right use of all their facul- 
 ties. Evil and pain had not entered into paradise ; 
 and they were immortal ; for " God made not 
 
190 wesley's doctrines and opinions. 
 
 death, neither hath he pleasure in the death of 
 any living." How true, then, is that word, " God 
 saw every thing that he had made, and behold it 
 was very good." 
 
 But as all the blessings of God flowed through 
 man to the inferior creatures, those blessings were 
 cut off when man made himself incapable of trans- 
 mitting them, and all creatures were then sub- 
 jected to sorrow, and pain, and evil of every 
 kind. It is probable that the meaner creatures 
 sustained much loss, even in the lower faculties of 
 their corporeal powers : they suffered more in their 
 understanding, and still more in their liberty, their 
 passions, and their will. The very foundations of 
 their nature were turned upside down. As man 
 is deprived of his perfection, his loving obedience 
 to God, so brutes are deprived of their perfection, 
 their loving obedience to man. The far greater 
 part flee from his hated presence ; others set him 
 at defiance, and destroy him when they can ; a few 
 only retain more or less of their original dispo- 
 sition, and, through the mercy of God, still love 
 him and obey him. And in consequence of the 
 first transgression, death came upon the whole 
 creation ; and not death alone, but all its train of 
 preparatory evils, pain, and ten thousand suffer- 
 ings ; nor these only, but likewise those irregular 
 passions, all those unlovely tempers, which in man 
 are sins, and even in brutes are sources of misery, 
 passed upon all the inhabitants of the earth, and 
 remain in all, except the children of God. Infe- 
 rior creatures torment, persecute, and devour each 
 
wesley's doctrines and opinions. 191 
 
 other, and all are tormented and persecuted by 
 man. But, says Wesley, will the creature, will 
 even the brute creation always remain in this de- 
 plorable condition? God forbid that we should 
 affirm this, yea, or even entertain such a thought. 
 — While the whole creation groaneth together, 
 whether men attend or not, their groans are not 
 dispersed in idle air, but enter into the ears of him 
 that made them. Away with vulgar prejudices, 
 and let the plain word of God take place ! " God 
 shall wipe away all tears : and there shall be no 
 more death, neither sorrow nor crying. Neither 
 shall there be any more pain j for the former things 
 are passed away.*' This blessing shall take place ; 
 not on men alone, (there is no such restriction in 
 the text,) but on every creature according to its 
 capacity. The whole brute creation will then un- 
 doubtedly be restored to all that they have lost, 
 and with a large increase of faculties. They will 
 be delivered from all unruly passions, from all 
 evil, and all suffering. And what if it should then 
 please the all-wise, the all-gracious Creator, to 
 raise them higher in the scale of beings ? What if 
 it should please Him, when he makes us equal to 
 angels, to make them what we are now, creatures 
 capable of God, capable of knowing, and loving, 
 and enjoying the author of their being ?" 
 
 Some teacher of materialism had asserted, that 
 if man had an immaterial soul, so had the brutes ; 
 as if this conclusion reduced that opinion to a ma- 
 nifest absurdity. " I will nof quarrel," said Wes- 
 ley, " with any that think they have. Nay, I 
 
19/2 wesley's doctrines and opinions. 
 
 wish he could prove it ; and surely I would rather 
 allow them souls, than I would give up my own." 
 He cherished this opinion, because it furnished a 
 full answer to a plausible objection against the 
 justice of God. That justice might seem to be 
 impugned by the sufferings to which brute animals 
 are subject ; those, especially, who are under the 
 tyranny of brutal men. But the objection vanishes, 
 if we consider that something better remains after 
 death for these poor creatures also. This good 
 end, he argued, was answered by thus speculating 
 upon a subject which we so imperfectly under- 
 stand; and such speculations might soften and 
 enlarge our hearts. 
 
 The kindness of Wesley's nature is apparent in. 
 this opinion, and that same kindness produced in 
 him a degree of charity, which has seldom been 
 found in those who aspire to reform a church or to 
 establish a sect. " We may die," he says, " with 
 out the knowledge of many truths, and yet be 
 carried into Abraham's bosom ; but if we die with- 
 out love, what will knowledge avail? Just as much 
 as it avails the devil and his angels ! I will not 
 quarrel with you about any opinion ; only see that 
 your heart be right towards God, that you know 
 and love the Lord Jesus Christ, that you love your 
 neighbour, and walk as your Master walked, and I 
 desire no more. I am sick of opinions : I am weary 
 to bear them : my soul loathes this frothy food. 
 Give me solid and substantial religion : give me 
 an humble gentle lover of God and man ; a man 
 full of mercy and good faith, without partiality, 
 
 l 7 
 
wesley's doctrines and opinions. 193 
 
 and without hypocrisy ; a man laying himself out 
 in the work of faith, the patience of hope, the la- 
 bour of love. Let my soul be with these Christians, 
 wheresoever they are, and whatsoever opinion they 
 are of. * Whosoever* thus 'doth the will of my Father 
 which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and 
 sister, and mother.' This temper of mind led him 
 to judge kindly of the * Romanists, and oft heretics 
 of every description, wherever a Christian dis- 
 i 
 
 * " I read the deaths of some of the order of La Trappe. I am 
 amazed at the allowance which God makes for invincible ignorance. 
 Notwithstanding the mixture of superstition which appears in every 
 one of these, yet what a strong vein of piety runs through all ! What 
 deep experience of the inward work of God, of righteousness, peace, 
 and joy in the Holy Ghost." 
 
 " In riding from Evesham to Bristol, I read over that surprising 
 book, the life of Ignatius Loyola : surely one of the greatest men that 
 ever was engaged in the support of so bad a cause ! I wonder any man 
 should judge him to be an enthusiast : no ; but he knew the people 
 with whom he had to do ; and setting out, like Count ZinzendorfF, 
 with a full persuasion that he might use guile to promote the glory of 
 God, or (which he thought the same thing) the interest of his church, 
 he acted in all things consistent with his principles." 
 
 •j- Of Pelagius he says, " by all I can pick up from ancient authors, 
 I guess he was both a wise and a holy man ; that we know nothing but 
 his name, for his writings are all destroyed — not one line of them left." 
 So, too, he says of some heretics of an earlier age ; " by reflecting on 
 an odd book which I had read in this journey, ' The General Delusion 
 of Christians with regard to Prophecy,' I was fully convinced of what 
 I had long suspected : 1st, that the Montanists, in the second and third 
 centuries, were real scriptaral Christians ; and 2d, that the grand rea- 
 son why the miraculous gifts were so soon withdrawn, was not only 
 that faith and holiness were well nigh lost, but that dry, formal, or- 
 thodox men began, even then, to ridicule whatever gifts they had not 
 themselves, and to decry them all, as either madness or imposture." 
 He vindicated Servetus also. " Being," he says," in the Bodleian 
 library, I light on Mr. Calvin's account of the case of Michael Ser- 
 vetus, several of whose letters he occasionally inserts, wherein Servetus 
 oftens declarer in terms, ' I believe the Father is God, the Son \s God, 
 
 VOL. II. O 
 
194« wesley's doctrines and opinions. 
 
 position and a virtuous life were found. He pub- 
 lished the lives of several Catholics, and of one* So- 
 cinian, for the edification of his followers. He 
 believed not only that Heathens, who did their 
 duty according to their knowledge, were capable 
 of eternal life ; but even that a communion with 
 the spiritual world had sometimes been vouchsafed 
 them. Thus, he affirmed, that the demon of So- 
 crates -was a ministering angel, and that Marcus 
 
 and" the Holy Ghost is God.' Mr. Calvin, however, paints him such a 
 monster as never was : an Arian, a blasphemer, and what not-; besides 
 strewing over him his flowers of dog, devil, swine, and so on, which 
 are the usual appellations he gives to his opponents. But still he ut- 
 terly denies his being the cause of Servetus's death. '* No," says he, 
 ". I only advised our magistrates, as baving a right, to restrain heretics 
 by the sword, to seize upon and try that arch-heretic ; but, after he 
 was condemned, I said not one word about his execution." 
 
 He reverts to this subject in his Remarks upon a Tract by Dr.Erskine. 
 " That Michael Servetus was ' one of the wildest Anti-Trinitarians 
 that ever appeared,' is by no means clear. I doubt of it, on the autho- 
 rity of Calvin himself, who certainly was not prejudiced in his favour. 
 For, if Calvin does not misquote his words, he was no Anti-Trinitarian 
 at all. Calvin himself gives a quotation from one of his letters, in 
 which he expressly declares, ' I do believe the Father is God, the Son 
 is God, and the Holy Ghost is God ; but I dare not use the word 
 Trinity, or person.' I dare, and I think them very good words ; but I 
 should think it very hard to be burnt alive for not using them, espe- 
 cially with a slow fire, made of moist green • wood. I believe Calvin 
 was a great instrument of God ; and that he was a wise and pious man ; 
 but J cannot but advise those who love his memory, to let Servetus 
 alone." 
 
 * Thomas Firmin. Wesley prefaces the life of this good man in his 
 magazine with these words : " I was exceedingly struck at reading the 
 following life, having long settled it in my mind, that the entertaining 
 wrong notions concerning the Trinity, was inconsistent with real piety.' " 
 But I cannot argue against matter of fact. I dare not deny that Mr. 
 Firman was a pious man, although his notions of the Trinity were quite 
 erroneous." 
 
wesley's doctrines and opinions. 195 
 
 Antoninus * received good inspirations, as he has 
 asserted of himself. And where there was no such 
 individual excellence, as in these signal instances, 
 he refused to believe that any man could be pre- 
 cluded from salvation by the accident of his birth- 
 place. Upon this point he vindicated divine jus- 
 tice, by considering the different relation in which 
 the Almighty stands to his creatures, as a creator 
 and as a governor. As a creator, he acts in all 
 things according to his own sovereign will : in that 
 exercise of his power, justice can have no place ; 
 for nothing is due to what has no being. Accord- 
 ing, therefore, to his own good pleasure, he allots 
 the time, the place, the circumstances for the birth 
 of each individual, and gives them various degrees 
 of understanding and of knowledge, diversified in 
 numberless ways. " It is hard to say how far this 
 extends : what an amazing difference there is be- 
 tween one born and bred up in a pious English 
 family, and one born and bred among the Hotten- 
 tots. Only we are sure the. difference cannot be 
 so great, as to necessitate one to be good, or the 
 other to be evil; to force one into everlasting 
 glory, or the other into everlasting burnings." 
 For, as a governor, the Almighty cannot possibly 
 
 * " I read to-day part of the meditations of Marcus Antoninus. 
 What a strange emperor ! and what a strange heathen ! giving thanks 
 to God for all the goods things he enjoyed ! in particular for his good 
 inspirations, and for twice revealing to him in dreams things whereby 
 he was cured of, otherwise incurable, distempers. I make no doubt 
 but this is one of those many who shall come from the East and the West, 
 and sit doum with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, while the children of the 
 kingdom, nominal Christians, are shut out" 
 
 O °Z 
 
196 wesley's doctrines and opinions. 
 
 act according to his own mere sovereign will ; but, 
 as he has expressly told us, according to the inva- 
 riable rules both of justice and mercy. Whatso- 
 ever, therefore, it hath pleased Him to do of his 
 sovereign pleasure as Creator, He will judge the 
 World in righteousness, and every man therein, 
 according to the strictest justice. He will punish 
 no man for doing any thing which he codld not 
 possibly avoid ; neither for omitting any thing 
 which he could not possibly do." 
 
 Wesley was sometimes led to profess a different 
 doctrince, in consequence of discussing questions 
 which serve rather to sharpen the disputatious 
 faculties than to improve a Christian dispostion. 
 Thus he has affirmed* in the Minutes of Confer- 
 ence, that a Heathen, a Papist, or a Church-of- 
 England man, if they die without being sanctified, 
 according to his notions of sanctification, cannot 
 see the Lord. And to the question, Can an un- 
 believer, whatever he be in other respects, chal- 
 lenge any thing of God's justice ? The answer is, 
 " absolutely nothing but hell." But the humaner 
 opinion was more congenial to his temper, and in 
 that better opinion he rested. 
 
197 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. 
 
 It is less surprising that Wesley should have ob- 
 tained so many followers, than that he should have 
 organised them so skilfully, and preserved his power 
 over them without diminution, to the end of his 
 long life. Francis of Assissi, and Ignatius Loyola, 
 would have produced little effect, marvellous en r 
 thusiasts as they were, unless their enthusiasm had 
 been assisted and directed by wiser heads. Wesley, 
 who in so many other respects may be compared 
 to these great agents in the Catholic world, stands 
 far above them in this. He legislated for the sect 
 which he raised, and exercised an absolute supre- 
 macy over his people. " The power 1 have," says 
 he, " I never sought : it was the undesired, un- 
 expected result of the work God was pleased to 
 work by me. I have a thousand times sought to 
 devolve it on others ; but as yet I cannot ; I there- 
 fore suffer it, till I can find any to ease me of my 
 burden." That time never arrived. It was con- 
 venient for the society that he should be really as 
 well as ostensibly their head ; and, however he may 
 have deceived himself, the love of power was a 
 ruling passion in his mind. 
 
 o 3 
 
198 DISCIPLINE OP THE METHODISTS. 
 
 The question was asked, at one of the Confer- 
 ences, what the power was which he exercised 
 over all the Methodists in Great Britain and Ire- 
 land. It was evidently proposed, that he might 
 have an opportunity of defining and asserting it. 
 He began his reply by premising, that Count Zin- 
 zendorff loved to keep all things closely, but that 
 he loved to do all things openly, and would there- 
 fore tell them all he knew of the matter. A few 
 persons, at the beginning, came to him in Lon- 
 don, and desired him to advise and pray with 
 them : others did the same in various parts of the 
 kingdom, and they increased every where. " The 
 desire," said he, " was on their part, not on mine : 
 my desire was to live and die in retirement ; but I 
 did not see that I could refuse them my help, and 
 be guiltless before God. Here commenced my 
 power ; namely, a power to appoint when, where, 
 and how they should meet ; and to remove those 
 whose life shewed that they had no desire to flee 
 from the wrath to come. And this power remained 
 the same, whether the people meeting together 
 were twelve, twelve hundred, or twelve thousand." 
 In a short time some of these persons said they 
 would not sit under him for nothing, but would sub- 
 scribe quarterly. He made answer, that he would 
 have nothing, because he wanted nothing ; for his 
 fellowship supplied him with all, and more than all 
 he wanted. But they represented that money was 
 wanted to pay for the lease of the Foundry, and 
 for putting it in repair. Upon that ground he suf- 
 fered them to subscribe. " Then I asked," said he, 
 
 1 
 
DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS^' 199 
 
 " who will take the trouble of receiving this money,, 
 and paying it where it is needful? One said, I will 
 do it, and keep the account for you : so here was 
 the first steward. Afterwards I desired one or two 
 more to help me as stewards ; and, in process of 
 time a greater number. Let it be remarked, it 
 was I myself, not the people who chose the 
 stewards, and appointed to each the distinct work 
 wherein he was to help me as long as 1 chose." 
 The same prescription he pleaded with regard to 
 his authority over the lay-preachers. The first of 
 these offered to serve him as sons, as he should 
 think proper to direct. " Observe," said he, " these 
 likewise desired me f not I them. And here com- 
 menced my power to appoint each of these, when* 
 where, and how to labour ; that is, while he chose 
 to continue with me j for each had a power to go 
 away when he pleased, as I had also to go away 
 from them, or any of them, if I saw sufficient 
 cause. The case continued the same when the 
 number of preachers increased. I had just the same 
 power still to appoint when, and where, and how 
 each should help me ; and to tell any, if I saw 
 cause, ' I do not desire your help any longer.' 
 On these terms, and no other, we joined at first ; 
 on these we continue joined. They do me no fa- 
 vour in being directed by me. It is true my reward 
 is with the Lord ; but at present I have nothing 
 from it but trouble and care, and often a burden I 
 scarce know how to bear." 
 
 His power over the Conference he rested upon 
 the same plea of prescription ; but it had originated 
 
 o 4 
 
200 DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS.' 
 
 with himself; not like his authority over the 
 preachers and the laity, in a voluntary offer of 
 obedience. He, of his own impulse, had invited 
 several clergymen, who acted with him, and all 
 the lay-preachers who at that time served him 
 as sons in the gospel, to meet and advise with him. 
 " They did not desire the meeting," said he, " but 
 / did, knowing that in a multitude of counsellors, 
 there is safety. And when their number in- 
 creased, so that it was neither needful nor conve- 
 nient to invite them all, for several years, I wrote 
 to- those with whom 1 desired to confer, and these 
 only met at the place appointed ; till at length I 
 gave a general permission, that all who desired it 
 might come. Observe : I myself sent for these, of 
 my own free choice ; and I sent for them to advise, 
 not govern me. Neither did I, at any of those 
 times, divest myself of any part of that power 
 which the providence of God had cast upon me, 
 without any design or choice of mine. What is, 
 that power ? It is a power of admitting into, and 
 excluding from, the societies under my care : of 
 choosing and removing stewards ; of receiving, or 
 not receiving helpers ; of appointing them when, 
 where, and how to help me ; and of desiring any 
 of them to meet me, when I see good. And as it 
 was merely in obedience to the providence of God, 
 and for the good of the people, that I at first ac- 
 cepted this pow 7 er, which I never sought ; nay, a 
 hundred times laboured to throw off; so it is on 
 the same considerations, not for profit, honour, or 
 pleasure, that I use it at this day." 
 
DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. 201 
 
 In reference to himself as the person in whom 
 the whole and sole authority was vested,- Wesley 
 called his preachers by the name of helpers; and 
 designated as assistants those among them who, 
 for the duties which they discharge, have since 
 been denominated superintendents. It soon be- 
 came expedient to divide the country into circuits. 
 There were, in the year 17^9, twenty in England, 
 two in Wales, two in Scotland, and seven in Ire- 
 land. In 1791, the. year of Mr. Wesley's death, 
 they had increased to seventy-two in England, 
 three in Wales, seven in Scotland, and twenty- 
 eight in Ireland. Every circuit had a certain 
 number of preachers appointed to it, more or less, 
 according to its extent, under an assistant, whose 
 office it was to admit or expel members, take lists 
 of the societies at Easter, hold quarterly meetings, 
 visit the classes quarterly, keep watch-nights and 
 love-feasts, superintend the other preachers, and 
 regulate the whole business of the circuit, spiritual 
 and temporal. 
 
 The helpers were not admitted indiscriminately : 
 gifts, as well as grace for the work, were required. 
 An aspirant was first examined concerning his 
 theological knowledge, that it might be seen 
 whether his opinions were sound : he was then to 
 exhibit his gift of utterance, by preaching before 
 Mr. Wesley ; and afterwards to give, either orally 
 or in writing, his reasons for thinking that he was 
 called of God to the ministry. The best proof of 
 this was, that some persons should have been con- 
 vinced of sin, and converted by his preaching. 
 
202 DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. 
 
 If a right belief and a ready utterance were found, 
 and these fruits had followed, the concurrence of 
 the three marks was deemed sufficient evidence of 
 a divine call : he was admitted on probation ; with 
 a caution, that he was not to ramble up and down, 
 but to go where the assistant should direct, and there 
 only ; and, at the ensuing conference, he might 
 be received into full connexion. After a while 
 the time of probation was found too short, and was 
 extended to four years. 
 
 The rules of a helper are strikingly characteristic 
 of Wesley, both in their manner and their spirit. 
 
 " 1. Be diligent. Never be unemployed a mo- 
 ment : never be triflingly employed. Never while 
 away time ; neither spend any more time at any 
 place than is strictly necessary. 
 
 2. Be serious. Let your motto be, Holiness to 
 the Lord. Avoid all lightness, jesting, and foolish 
 talking. 
 
 S. Converse sparingly and cautiously with wo- 
 men ; particularly with young women in private. 
 
 4. Take no step towards marriage without first 
 acquainting us with your design. 
 
 5. Believe evil of no one ; unless you see it done, 
 take heed how you credit it. Put the best con- 
 struction on every thing : you know the judge is 
 always supposed to be on the prisoner's side. 
 
 6. Speak evil of no one; else your word, espe- 
 cially, would eat as doth a canker. Keep your 
 thoughts within your own breast, till you come to 
 the person concerned. 
 
 .■ 7- Tell every one what you think wrong in him, 
 
DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. 203 
 
 and that plainly, and as soon as may be, else it 
 will fester in your heart. Make all haste to cast 
 the fire out of your bosom. 
 
 8. Do not affect the gentleman. You have no 
 more to do with this character than with that of a 
 dancing-master. A preacher of the gospel is the 
 servant of all. 
 
 9. Be ashamed of nothing but sin ; not of fetch- 
 ing wood (if time permit) or of drawing water ; 
 not of cleaning your own * shoes, or your neigh- 
 bours. 
 
 10. Be punctual. Do every thing exactly at 
 the time : and, in general, do not mend our rules, 
 but keep them ; nor for wrath, but for conscience 
 sake. 
 
 11. You have nothing to do but to save souls. 
 Therefore spend and be spent in this work. And 
 go always, not only to those who want you, but to 
 those who want you most. 
 
 12. Act in all things, not according to your own 
 will, but as a son in the gospel. As such, it is 
 
 * " Respecting these golden rules," says Mr. Crowther, " it may be 
 proper to observe, ' affecting the gentleman' was not designed to coun- 
 tenance clownishness, or any thing contrary to true Christian courtesy. 
 And when it is said, a preacher of the Gospel is the servant of all, it 
 certainly was not meant to insinuate that a preacher was to be set to 
 do the lowest and most slavish drudgery which any person could find 
 for him to do. I presume the servant of God is the servant of all in 
 gospel labours, and in nothing else. And though he may not be 
 ashamed of cleaning his own shoes, or the shoes of others, yet, I ap- 
 prehend, they ought to be ' ashamed' who would expect or suffer him 
 so to do, especially such as are instructed and profited by his ministerial 
 labours. And surely they ought to feel some shame also, who would 
 suffer the preacher to go from place to place, day after day, with his 
 shoes and boots uncleaned." 
 
 Portraiture of Methodism, p. 277. 
 
( 20i< DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. 
 
 your part to employ your time in the manner which 
 we direct; partly in preaching and visiting the 
 flock from house to house j partly in reading, me- 
 ditation, and prayer. Above all, if you labour 
 with us in our Lord's vineyard, it is needful that 
 you should do that part of the work which we ad- 
 vise, at those times and places which we judge 
 most for his glory." 
 
 Thus did Wesley, who had set so bad an ex- 
 ample of obedience, exact it from his own followers 
 as rigidly as the founder of a monastic order. Like 
 those founders, also, he invited his disciples to 
 enter upon a course of life which it required no 
 small degree of enthusiasm and of resolution to 
 embrace. The labour was hard, the provision 
 scanty, and the prospect for those who were super- 
 annuated, or worn out in the service, was, on this 
 side the grave, as cheerless as it well could be. 
 When a preacher was admitted into full connexion, 
 he paid one guinea, and from that time half-a- 
 guinea annually, toward the preachers' fund. If 
 he withdrew from the connexion, all that he had 
 subscribed was returned to him ; but if he lived to 
 be disabled, he received from the fund an annuity, 
 which should not be less than ten pounds ; and his 
 widow was entitled to a sum, according to the exi- 
 gence of the case, but not exceeding forty. 
 
 Some of the itinerant preachers, at one time, 
 entered into trade : the propriety of this was dis- 
 cussed in Conference : it was pronounced evil 
 in itself, and in its consequences, and they were 
 advised to give up every business, except the mi- 
 
DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. 205 
 
 nistry, to which they were pledged. There was 
 another more easy and tempting way of eking out 
 their scanty stipends, by printing their own spi- 
 ritual effusions, and availing themselves of the op- 
 portunities afforded, by the system of itinerancy, 
 for selling them. But Mr. Wesley was himself a 
 most voluminous author and compiler : the profits 
 arising from his publications were applied in aid of 
 the expenses of the society, which increased faster 
 than their means : the Methodists, for the most 
 part, had neither time to spare for reading, nor 
 money for books j and the preachers, who con- 
 sulted their own individual advantage, in this 
 manner, injured the general fund, in proportion as 
 they were successful ; it was therefore determined, 
 in Conference, that no preacher should print any 
 thing without Mr. Wesley's consent, nor till it had 
 been corrected by him. The productions which 
 some of them had set forth, both in verse and 
 prose, were censured as having brought a great 
 reproach upon the society, and " much hindered 
 the spreading of more profitable books j" and a 
 regulation was made, that the profits, even of those 
 which might be approved and licensed by the 
 founder, should go into the common stock. But 
 with regard to those which he himself had pub- 
 lished for the benefit of the society, and some of 
 which, he said, ought to be in every house, Wes- 
 ley charged the preachers to exert themselves in 
 finding sale for them. " Carry them with you," 
 said he, " through every round. Exert yourselves 
 in this : be not ashamed j be not weary $ leave no 
 
 3 
 
206 DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. 
 
 stone unturned." Being cut off from the resources 
 of authorship, some of them began to quack * for 
 the body as well as the soul ; and this led to a de- 
 cision in Conference, that no preacher, who would 
 not relinquish his trade of making and vending 
 pills, drops, balsams, or medicines of any kind, 
 should be considered as a travelling preacher any 
 longer. If their wives sold these things at home, 
 it was said to be well ; " but it is not proper for 
 any preacher to hawk them about. It has a bad 
 appearance : it does not well suit the dignity of his 
 calling." 
 
 They were restricted also from many indul- 
 gences. It was not in Wesley's power, because of 
 the age and country in which he lived, to bind his 
 preachers to a prescribed mode of living by an ab- 
 solute rule ; but he attempted to effect it, as far as 
 circumstances would allow. They were on no 
 account to touch snuff) nor to taste spirituous 
 liquors on any pretence. " Do you," said he, 
 *' deny yourselves every useless pleasure of sense, 
 imagination, honour ? Are you temperate in all 
 things ? To take one instance, — in food ? Do 
 you use only that kind, and that degree which is 
 best both for the body and soul ? Do you see the 
 necessity of this ? Do you eat no flesh suppers ? 
 no late suppers ? these naturally tend to destroy 
 
 * The Baptists used to tolerate such quackery in their ministers. 
 Crosby, in his history of that sect, contrived to inform the reader, that 
 he continued to prepare and sell a certain wonderful tincture, and cer- 
 tain sugar-plumbs for children, " which have been found to bring from 
 them many strange and monstrous worms." — Vol. Hi. p. 147. 
 
DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. 207 
 
 bodily health. Do you eat only three meals a-day ? 
 if four, are you not an excellent pattern to the 
 flock ? Do you take no more food than is neces- 
 sary at each meal ? you may know if you do, by a 
 load at your stomach ; by drowsiness or heaviness j 
 and, in a while, by weak or bad nerves. Do you 
 use only that kind and that degree of drink which 
 is best both for your body and soul ? Do you drink 
 water? Why not? Did you ever? Why did you 
 leave it off, if not for health ? When will you begin 
 again ? to-day ? How often do you drink wine or 
 ale ? Every day ? Do you want, or waste it ?" He 
 declared his own purpose, of eating only vegetables 
 on Fridays, and taking only toast and water in the 
 morning ; and he expected the preachers to observe 
 the same kind of fast. 
 
 The course of life which was prescribed for the 
 preachers left them little opportunity for the en- 
 joyment of domestic life. Home could scarcely 
 be regarded as a resting-place by men who were 
 never allowed to be at rest. Wesley insisted upon 
 a frequent and regular change of preachers, because 
 he well knew that the attention of the people was 
 always excited by a new performer in the pulpit. 
 " 1 know," said he, " were I to preach one whole 
 year in one place, I should preach both myself and 
 my congregation asleep. Nor can I believe it was 
 ever the will of the Lord that any congregation 
 should have one teacher only. We have found, by 
 long and constant experience, that a frequent 
 change of teachers is best. This preacher has one 
 
208 DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. 
 
 talent, that another. No one whom 1 ever yet 
 knew has all the talents which are needful for 
 beginning, continuing, and perfecting the work of 
 grace in a whole congregation." The institutions 
 of the Jesuits allowed an itinerant father of the 
 company to remain three months in a place, unless 
 any other term were specified in his instructions : 
 but Wesley went farther, and thought it injurious 
 both to the preacher and people, if one of his iti- 
 nerants should stay six or eight weeks together in 
 one place. " Neither," said he, " can he find matter 
 for preaching every morning and evening ; nor will 
 the people come to hear him. Hence he grows 
 cold by lying in bed, and so do the people ; 
 whereas, if he never stays more than a fortnight 
 together in one place, he may find matter enough, 
 and the people will gladly hear him." These fre- 
 quent changes were so gratifying to the people, 
 that the trustees of a meeting-house once expressed 
 an apprehension lest the Conference should impose 
 one preacher on them for many years ; and, to guard 
 against this, a provision was inserted in the deed, 
 that " the same preacher should not be sent, ordi- 
 narily, above one, never above two years together." 
 There may, perhaps, have been another motive in 
 Wesley's mind : a preacher, who found himself 
 comfortably settled, with a congregation to whom 
 he had made himself agreeable, might be induced 
 to take root there, throw off his dependence upon 
 the connexion, and set up a meeting of his own. 
 Instances of such defection were not wanting, and 
 
(DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. €0$ 
 
 the frequent change * of preachers was the likeliest 
 means of preventing them. 
 
 No preacher, according to a rule laid down by 
 Conference, was to preach oftener than twice on a 
 week-day, or three times on the Sabbath. One 
 of these sermons was always to be at five in the 
 morning, whenever twenty hearers could be brought 
 together. As the apostolic Eliot used to say to 
 students, Look to it that ye be morning birds! 
 so Wesley continually inculcated the duty of early 
 rising, as equally good for body and soul. " It 
 .helps the nerves," he said, " better than a thou- 
 sand medicines ; and especially preserves the sight, 
 and prevents lowness of spirits. Early preaching," 
 he said, f? is the glory of the Methodists. When- 
 ever this is dropt, they will dwindle t away into 
 
 * " The people" &ays Mr. Crowther, " ought to get great good from 
 the constant change of the preachers ; for, to the preachers, it is pro- 
 ductive of many inconveniences and painful exercises." 
 
 f The importance which he attached to this custom appears in hi 8 
 Journal. " I was surprised when I came to Chester, to find that there 
 alsp morning preaching was quite left off; for this worthy reason, be- 
 cause the people will not come, or, at least, not in the winter : if so, the 
 Methodists are a fallen people. Here is proof: they have lost their first 
 love ; and they never will or can recover it till they do the first works. 
 As soon as I set foot in Georgia, I began preaching at five in the 
 morning; and every communicant, that is, every serious person in the 
 town, constantly attended throughout the year : I mean, came every 
 morning, winter and summer, unless in the case of sickness. They did 
 so till I left the province. In the year 1738, when God began his great 
 work in England, I began preaching at the same hour, winter and 
 summer, and never wanted a congregation. If they will not attend 
 now, they have lost their zeal, and then, it cannot he denied, they are 
 a fallen people ; and, in the mean time, we are labouring to secure the 
 preaching-houses to the next generation ! In the name of God, let us, 
 if possible, secure the present generation from drawing back to per- 
 dition. Let all the preachers, that are still alive to God, join together 
 
 yol. ii. p 
 
210 DISCIPLINE OE THE METHODISTS. 
 
 nothing." He advised his preachers to begin and 
 end always precisely at the time appointed; and 
 always to conclude the service in about an hour : 
 to suit their subject to the audience, to choose the 
 plainest texts, and keep close to the text ; neither 
 rambling from it, nor allegorizing, nor spiritualiz- 
 ing too much. More than once in his Journal he 
 has recorded the death of men who were martyrs 
 to long and loud preaching, and he frequently 
 cautioned his followers against it. To one of them 
 he says, in a curious letter of advice, which he 
 desired might be taken as the surest mark of love, 
 " Scream no more, at the peril of your soul. God 
 now warns you by me, whom he has set over you. 
 Speak as earnestly as you can, but do not scream. 
 Speak with all your heart, but with a moderate 
 voice. It was said of our Lord, ' He shall not 
 cry ;' the word properly means, * He shall not 
 scream* Herein be a follower of me, as I am of 
 Christ. I often speak loud, often vehemently j 
 but I never scream. I never strain myself: I dare 
 not. I know it would be a sin against God and 
 my own soul." They were instructed also not to 
 pray above eight or ten minutes at most, without 
 intermission, unless for some pressing reason. 
 
 Before an aspirant was admitted upon trial as an 
 itinerant, he was exercised as a local preacher ; and 
 
 as one man, fast and pray, lift up their voice as a trumpet, be instant 
 in season, out of season, to convince them they are fallen, and exhort 
 them instantly to repent and do the first works ; this in particular, rising 
 in the morning, without which neither their souls nor bodies can long 
 remain in health." 
 
DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. 211 
 
 many persons remained contentedly in this humbler 
 office, which neither took them from their families, 
 nor interfered with their worldly concerns. They 
 carried on their business, whatever that might be, 
 six days in the week, and preached on the seventh : 
 but no person was admitted to this rank, unless he 
 were thought competent by the preachers of the 
 circuit. The places which they were to visit were 
 determined by the assistant, and their conduct un- 
 derwent an enquiry every quarter. Without their 
 aid, Methodism could not have been kept up over 
 the whole country, widely as it was diffused ; and 
 all that they received from the society was a little 
 refreshment, at the cost of the people to whom 
 they preached, and perhaps the hire of a horse for 
 the day. 
 
 A still more important part was performed by 
 the leaders, who are to Methodism what the non- 
 commissioned officers are in an army. The leader 
 was appointed by the assistant : it was his business 
 regularly to meet his class, question them, in order, 
 as to their religious affections and practice, and 
 advise, caution, or reprove, as the case might re- 
 quire. If any members absented themselves from 
 the class-meeting, he was to visit them, and en- 
 quire into the cause ; and he was to render an ac- 
 count to the officiating preacher of those whose 
 conduct appeared suspicious, or was in any way 
 reprehensible. By this means, and by the class- 
 paper for every week, which the leaders were re- 
 quired to keep, and regularly produce, the preachers 
 
 p C Z 
 
212 DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. 
 
 obtained a knowledge of every individual member 
 within their circuit ; and, by the class-tickets, 
 which were lenewed every quarter, a regular census 
 of the society was effected. The leaders not only 
 performed the office of drilling the young recruits, 
 they acted also as the tax-gatherers, and received 
 the weekly contributions of their class, which they 
 paid to the local stewards,- and the local stewards 
 to the steward of the circuit. 
 
 Thus far the discipline of the Methodists was 
 well devised : if the system itself had been unex- 
 ceptionable, the spiritual police was perfect. But 
 they were divided into bands as well as classes ; 
 and this subdivision, while it answered no one end 
 of possible utility, led to something worse than the 
 worst practice of the Romish church. The men 
 and the women, and the married and the single, 
 met separately in these bands, for the purpose of 
 confessing to each other. They engaged to meet 
 once a-week at least, and to speak, each in order, 
 freely and plainly, the true state of their souls, 
 with the faults they had committed in thought, 
 word, or deed, and the temptations they had felt 
 during the week. They were to be asked " as 
 many, and as searching questions as may be, 
 concerning their state, sins, and temptations:" 
 These four, in particular, at every meeting: What 
 known sin have you committed since our last meet- 
 ing? What temptations have you met with ? How 
 was you delivered ? What have you thought, said, 
 or done, of which you doubt whether it be sin or 
 
DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. 213 
 
 not ? And before any person entered into one 
 of these bands, a promise of the most unreserved 
 openness was required. " Consider, do you desire 
 we should tell you whatsoever we think, whatsoever 
 we fear, whatsoever we hear, concerning you ? Do 
 you desire that, in doing this, we should come as close 
 as possible, that we should cut to the quick, and 
 search your heart to the bottom ? Is it your desire 
 and design to be on this, and all other occasions, 
 entirely open, so as to speak every thing that is in 
 your heart without exception, without disguise, 
 and without reserve ?" The nature, and the ine- 
 vitable tendency of this mutual inquisition, must 
 be obvious to every reflecting mind ; and it is 
 marvellous, that any man should have permitted his 
 wife * or his daughter to enter into these bands, 
 where it is not possible for innocence to escape 
 contamination, t 
 
 * Wesley has himself recorded an instance of mischief arising from 
 these bands. " I searched to the bottom," says he, " a story I had 
 heard in part, and found it another tale of real woe. Two of our 
 society had lived together in uncommon harmony, when one, who met 
 in band with E. F. to whom she had mentioned that 6he had found a 
 temptation toward Dr. F. went and told her husband she was in love 
 with him, and that she had it from her own mouth. The spirit of 
 jealousy seized him in a moment, and utterly took away his reason. 
 And some one telling him his wife was at Dr. F.'s, on whom she had 
 called that afternoon, he took a great stick, and ran away, and meet- 
 ing her in the street, called out Strumpet ! strumpet ! and struck her 
 twice or thrice. He is now thoroughly convinced of her innocence j 
 but the water cannot be gathered up again. He sticks there — ' I do* 
 thoroughly forgive yon, but I can never love you more.' " After such 
 an example, Wesley ought to have abolished this part of his institutions. 
 
 -f- In one of his letters Wesley says, " I believe Miss F. thought she 
 felt evil before she did, and, by that very thought, gave occasion to its 
 re-entrance." And yet he did not perceive the danger of leading his, 
 
 p 3 
 
211 DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. 
 
 The institution of the select society or band was 
 not liable to the same objection. This was to con- 
 sist of persons who were earnestly athirst for the 
 full image of God, and of those who continually 
 walked in the light of God, having fellowship with 
 the Father and the Son : in other words, of those 
 who had attained to such a degree of spiritual 
 pride, that they professed to be in this state, — the 
 adepts of Methodism, who were not ashamed to 
 take their degree as perfect. " I saw," says 
 Mr. Wesley, " it might be useful to give some ad- 
 vice to those who thus continued in the light of 
 God's countenance, which the rest of their brethren 
 did not want, and probably could not receive. My 
 design was not only to direct them how to press 
 after perfection, to exercise their every grace, and 
 improve every talent they had received, and to in- 
 cite them to love one another more, and to watch 
 more carefully over each other ; but also to have a 
 select company, to whom I might unbosom my- 
 self on all occasions, without reserve j and whom 
 I could propose, to all their brethren, as patterns 
 of love, of holiness, and of all good works. They 
 had no need of being incumbered with many rules, 
 having the best rule of all in their hearts." Never- 
 theless, the judicious injunction was given them, 
 that nothing which was spoken at their meetings 
 
 people into temptation, by making them recur to every latent thought 
 of evil ; and compelling them to utter, with their lips, imaginations 
 which might otherwise have been suppressed within their hearts for 
 ever! 
 
DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. V 215 
 
 should be spoken again. Wesley says, he often felt 
 the advantage of these meetings, and experienced 
 there that, in the multitude of consellors, there 
 is safety. But they placed the untenable doctrine 
 of perfection in so obtrusive and obnoxious a light, 
 that he found it difficult to maintain them j and 
 they seem not to have become a regular part of 
 the system. 
 
 The watch-night was another of Wesley's ob- 
 jectionable institutions. It originated with some 
 reclaimed colliers of Kingswood, who, having been 
 accustomed to sit late on Saturday nights at the 
 alehouse, transferred their weekly meeting, after 
 their conversion, to the school-house, and conti- 
 nued there praying and singing hymns far into the 
 morning. Wesley was advised to put an end to 
 this ; but, <f upon weighing the thing thoroughly, 
 and comparing it with the practice of the ancient 
 Christians/' he could see no cause to forbid it ; be- 
 cause he overlooked the difference between their 
 times and his own, and shut his eyes to the ob- 
 vious impropriety of midnight meetings. So he 
 appointed them to be held- once a month, near 
 the time of full moon. " Exceedingly great," 
 says he, " are the blessings we have found therein; 
 it has generally been an extremely solemn season, 
 when the word of God sunk deep into the hearts 
 even of those who till then knew him not. If it be 
 said, this was only owing to the novelty of the 
 thing, (the circumstance which still draws such 
 multitudes together at those seasons,) or perhaps to 
 
 p 4 
 
#ld DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. 
 
 the aweful stillness of the night, I am not careful 
 to answer in this matter. Be it so : however, the 
 impression then made on many souls has never 
 since been effaced. Now, allowing that God did 
 make use either of the novelty, or any other indif- 
 ferent circumstance, in order to bring sinners to 
 repentance, yet they are brought, and herein let 
 us rejoice together. Now, may I not put the case 
 farther yet ? If I can probably conjecture, that 
 either by the novelty of this ancient custom, or by 
 any other indifferent circumstanee, it is in my 
 power to save a soul from death, and hide a mul- 
 titude of sins, am I clear before God if I do not ? 
 If I do not snatch that brand out of the burning ?" 
 The practice which Wesley thus revived had 
 been discountenanced, even in the most supersti- 
 tious Catholic countries, for its inconvenience, and 
 its manifest ill tendency ; and therefore it had long 
 been disused. While the converts to his doctrine 
 retained the freshness of their first impression, 
 watch-nights served to keep up the feeling to the 
 pitch at which he wished to maintain it ; and if 
 any person, who was almost a Methodist, attended 
 one of these meetings, the circumstances were likely 
 to complete his conversion. For the sake of these 
 advantages, Wesley disregared the scandal which 
 this part of his institutions was sure to occasion j 
 and he seems not to have considered the effect 
 among his own people, when their first fervour 
 should have abated, and the vigils be attended as 
 a mere formality. He also appointed three love* 
 
DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. 217 
 
 feasts in a quarter : one for the men, a second for 
 the women, and the third for both together ; " that 
 we might together eat bread," he says, '« as the 
 ancient Christians did, with gladness and single- 
 ness of heart. At these love-feasts (so we termed 
 them, retaining the name, as well as the thing, 
 which was in use from the beginning,) our food is 
 only a little plain cake and water ; but we seldom 
 return from them without being fed not only with 
 the meat which perisheth, but with that which en- 
 dureth to everlasting life." A travelling preacher 
 presides at these meetings : any one who chooses 
 may speak ; and the time is chiefly employed in re- 
 lating what they call their Christian experience. 
 In this point, also, Mr. Wesley disregarded the 
 offence which he gave, by renewing a practice 
 that had notoriously been abolished, because of the 
 abuses to which it led. 
 
 It cannot be supposed that a man of his sagacity 
 should have overlooked the objections to which 
 such meetings as the watch-nights and the love- 
 feasts were obnoxious : his temper led him to de- 
 spise and to defy public opinion ; and he saw how 
 well these practices accorded with the interests of 
 Methodism as a separate society. It is not suffi- 
 cient for such a society that its members should 
 possess a calm, settled principle of religion to be 
 their rule of life and their support in trial : religion 
 must be made a thing of sensation and passion, 
 craving perpetually for sympathy and stimulants, 
 instead of bringing with it peace and contentment, 
 
 7 
 
218 DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. 
 
 The quiet regularity of domestic devotion must 
 be exchanged for public performances ; the mem- 
 bers are to be professors of religion ; they must 
 have a part to act, which will at once gratify the 
 , sense of self-importance, and afford employment 
 for the uneasy and restless spirit with which they 
 are possessed. Wesley complained that family re- 
 ligion was the grand desideratum among the Me- 
 thodists ; but, in reality, his institutions were 
 such as to leave little time for it, and to take 
 away the inclination, by making it appear flat 
 and unprofitable after the excitement of class- 
 meetings, band-meetings, love-feasts, and midnight 
 assemblies. 
 
 Whenever a chapel was built, care was taken 
 that it should be settled on the Methodist plan ; 
 that is, that the property should be vested, not in 
 trustees, but in Mr. Wesley and the Conference. 
 The usual form among the dissenters would have 
 been fatal to the general scheme of Methodism ; 
 " because," said Wesley, " wherever the trustees 
 exert the power of placing and displacing preachers, 
 their itinerant preaching is no more. When they 
 have found a preacher they like, the rotation is at 
 an end ; at least till they are tired of him, and turn 
 him out. While he stays, the bridle is in his 
 mouth. He would not dare speak the full and the 
 whole truth j since, if he displeased the trustees, 
 he would be liable to lose his bread ; nor would he 
 dare expel a trustee, though ever so ungodly, from 
 the society. The power of the trustees is greater 
 than that of any patron, or of the king himselfi 
 
DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. 219 
 
 who could put in a preacher, but could not put him 
 out." Thus he argued, when a chapel at Birstall 
 had been erroneously settled upon trustees ; and 
 the importance of the point was felt so strongly 
 by the Conference, that it was determined, in 
 case these persons would not allow the deed to be 
 cancelled, and substitute one upon the Methodist 
 plan, to make a collection throughout the society, 
 for the purpose of purchasing ground, and build- 
 ing another chapel as near the one in question as 
 possible. 
 
 Wesley never wished to have any chapel or 
 burial-ground consecrated ; such ceremonies he 
 thought relics of popery, and flatly superstitious. 
 The impossibility of having them consecrated, led 
 him, perhaps, to consider the ceremony in this 
 light, at a time when he had not proceeded so far 
 as to exercise any ecclesiastical function, for which 
 he was not properly authorised. The buildings 
 themselves were of the plainest kind : it was dif- 
 ficult to raise money * even for these ; but 
 
 * The history of one of these chapels, at Sheerness, is curious. " It 
 is now finished," says Wesley, in his Journal for 1786, " but by means 
 never heard of. The building was undertaken, a few months since, by 
 a little handful of men, without any probable means of finishing it : 
 but God so moved the hearts of the people in the dock, that even 
 those who did not pretend to any religion, carpenters, shipwrights, 
 labourers, ran up at all their vacant hours, and worked with all their 
 might, without any pay. By these means a large square house was 
 soon elegantly finished, both within and without. And it is the neatest 
 building, next to the new chapel in London, of any in the south of 
 England." 
 
 A meeting-house at Haslinden, in Lancashire, was built for them on 
 speculation, by a person not connected with the society in any way. 
 He desired only three per cent, for what he laid out, (about 8001.) pro- 
 vided the seats let for so much ; of which, says Wesley, there is little 
 doubt. This was in 1788. 
 
220 DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. 
 
 Mr. Wesley had the happy art of representing that 
 as a matter of principle, which was a matter of ne- 
 cessity ; and, in the tastelessness of their chapels, 
 the Methodists were only upon a level with the 
 dissenters of every description. The * octagon, 
 which, of all architectural forms, is the ugliest, he 
 preferred to any other, and wished it to be used 
 wherever the ground would permit : but it has not' 
 been generally followed. The directions were, that 
 the windows should be sashes, opening down- 
 wards ; that there should be no tub-pulpits, and no 
 backs to the seats ; and that the men and women 
 should sit apart. A few years before his death, 
 the committee in London proposed to him that 
 families should sit together, and that private pews 
 might be erected ; " thus," he exclaims, " over- 
 throwing, at one blow, the discipline which I have 
 been establishing for fifty years !" But, upon 
 farther considerationj they yielded to his opinion. 
 He prided himself upon the singing in his meet- 
 
 * His predilection for this form seems to have arisen from a sight of 
 the Unitarian meeting-house at Norwich, " perhaps," he says, " the 
 most elegant one in Europe. It is eight-square, built of the finest brick, 
 with sixteen sash windows below, as many above, and eight sky-lights 
 in the dome, which, indeed, are purely ornamental. The inside is 
 finished in the highest taste, and is as clean as any nobleman's saloon. 
 The communion-table is fine mahogany : the very latches of the pew- 
 doors are polished brass. How can it t& thought that the old coarse 
 Gospel should find admission here ?" The sort of humility, which is 
 implied in this sneer, is well characterised by Landor, when he calls it 
 
 " A tattered garb that pride wears when deform'd." 
 
 It is no wonder that he was struck by the cleanness of the chapel. 
 This curious item occurs in the minutes of Conference for 1776- 
 " Q. 23. Complaint is made that sluts spoil our houses. How can we 
 prevent this ? A. Let no known slut live in any of them." 
 
DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. §21 
 
 ing houses : there was a talent in his family both 
 for music and verse ; and he availed himself, with 
 great judgement of both. A collection of hymns ' 
 was published for the Society, some few of which 
 were selected from various authors ; some were his 
 own composition ; but far the greater part were by 
 his brother Charles. Perhaps no poems have ever 
 been so devoutly committed to memory as these, 
 nor quoted so often upon a death-bed. The man- 
 ner in which they were sung tended to impress 
 them strongly on the mind: the tune was made 
 wholly subservient to the words, not the words to 
 the tune. 
 
 The Romanists are indebted for their church- 
 music to the Benedictines, an order to which all 
 Europe is so deeply indebted for many things. Our 
 fine cathedral service is derived from them : may it 
 continue for ever ! The psalmody of our churches 
 was a popular innovation, during the first years of 
 the Reformation ; and the psalms of Sternhold and 
 Hopkins were allowed * to be sung, not enjoined. 
 The practice, however, obtained ; and having con- 
 tributed in no slight measure, to the religious re- 
 volution, when the passion wherein it originated 
 was gone by, it became a mere interlude in the 
 service, serving no other purpose than that of al- 
 lowing a little breathing-time to the minister ; and 
 the manner in which this interval is filled, where 
 there is no organ to supply the want of singers, or 
 
 • *'" Those who have searched into the matter with the utmost care 
 and curiosity," says Collier, (vol.ii. 326.) could never discover any 
 authority either from the crown or the convocation," 
 
222 DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. 
 
 cover their defects, is too often irreverent and dis- 
 graceful. Aware of the great advantage to be 
 derived from psalmody, and with an ear, as well as 
 an understanding, alive to its abuse, Wesley made it 
 an essential part of the devotional service in his 
 chapels ; and he triumphantly contrasted the prac- 
 tice of his people in this respect, with that of the 
 churches. " Their solemn addresses to God," 
 said he, " are not interrupted either by the formal 
 drawl of a parish-clerk, the screaming of boys, who 
 bawl out what they neither feel nor understand, or 
 the unseasonable and unmeaning impertinence of 
 a voluntary * on the organ. When it is seasonable 
 to sing praise to God, they do it with the spirit 
 and the understanding also ; not in the miserable, 
 scandalous doggerel of Hopkins and Sternhold, but 
 in psalms and hymns, which are both sense and 
 poetry, such as would sooner provoke a critic to 
 turn Christian, than a Christian to turn critic. 
 What they sing is therefore a proper continuation 
 of the spiritual and reasonable service, being se- 
 lected for that end ; not by a poor hum-drum 
 wretch, who can scarcely read what he drones out 
 with such an air of importance, but by one who 
 knows what he is about, and how to connect the 
 preceding with the following part of the service. 
 Nor does he take just ? two staves,' but more or 
 less as may best raise the soul to God ; especially 
 when sung in well-composed and well-adapted 
 
 * Yet Wesley has noticed, that he once found at church an uncom- 
 mon blessing, when he least of all expected it ; namely, " while the 
 organist was playing a voluntary." 
 
DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODISTS. 2*23 
 
 times ; not by a handful of wild unawakened strip- 
 lings but by a whole serious congregation ; and 
 these, not lolling at ease, or in the indecent posture 
 of sitting, drawling out one word after another, 
 but all standing before God, and praising him 
 lustily, and with a good courage." He especially 
 enjoined that the whole congregation should sing, 
 that there should be no repetition of words, no 
 dwelling upon disjointed syllables, and that they 
 should not sing in parts, but with one heart and 
 voice, in one simultaneous and uninterrupted 
 feeling. * 
 
 The preachers were forbidden to introduce any 
 hymns of their own composing ; in other respects 
 they had great latitude allowed them : they might 
 use the liturgy, if they pleased, or an abridgment 
 of it, which Mr. Wesley had set forth ; or they 
 might discard it altogether, and substitute an ex- 
 temporaneous service, according to their own taste 
 and that of the congregation. Like the Jesuits, in 
 this respect, they were to adapt themselves to all 
 men. The service was not long : Wesley generally 
 concluded it within the hour. 
 
 * This feeling, however, must have been disturbed in a strange 
 manner, if the preachers observed the directions of the first Conference, 
 to guard against formality in singing, by often stopping short, and ask- 
 ing the people, " Now do you know what you said last ? Did you speak 
 no more than you felt ; Did you sing it as unto the Lord, with the 
 spirit and with the understanding also ? 
 
n%\> 
 
 CHAPTER XX IL 
 
 Methodism in wales and in Scotland. 
 
 U pon Wesley's first journey into Wales, he thought 
 that most of the inhabitants were indeed ripe for 
 the Gospel. " I mean" says he, '* if the expres- 
 sion appear strange, they are earnestly desirous of 
 being instructed in it ; and as utterly ignorant of 
 it they are as any Creek or Cherokee Indian. I 
 do not mean they are ignorant of the name of 
 Christ : many of them can say both the Lord's 
 Prayer and the Belief; nay, and some all the 
 Catechism : but take them out of the road of what 
 they have learned by rote, and they know no 
 more (nine in ten of those with whom I conversed) 
 either of Gospel salvation, or of that faith whereby 
 alone we can be saved, than Chicali or Tomo 
 Chachi." This opinion was formed during a journey 
 through the most civilized part of South Wales. 
 He was not deceived in judging that the Welsh 
 were a people highly susceptible of such impres- 
 sions as he designed to make ; but he found him- 
 self disabled in his progress, by his ignorance of 
 their language. " Oh," he exclaims, " what a 
 heavy curse was the confusion of tongues, and 
 how grievous are the effects of it. All the birds of 
 the air, all the beasts of the field, understand the 
 
METHODISM IN WALES. %%& 
 
 language of their own species ; man only is a bar- 
 barian to man, unintelligible to his own brethren 1" 
 This difficulty was insuperable. He found, how- 
 ever, a few Welsh clergymen, who entered into 
 his views with honest ardour, and an extravagance 
 of a new kind grew up in their congregations. 
 After the preaching was over, any one who pleased 
 gave out a verse of a hymn ; and this they sung 
 over and over again, with all their might and main 
 thirty or forty times, till some of them worked 
 themselves into a sort of drunkenness or madness : 
 they were then violently agitated, and leaped up 
 and down, in all manner of postures, frequently 
 for hours together. <c I think," says Wesley, 
 " there needs no great penetration to understand 
 this. They are honest, upright men, who really 
 feel the love of God in their hearts ; but they have 
 little experience either of the ways of God or the 
 devices of Satan ; so he serves himself by their 
 simplicity, in order to wear them out, and to bring 
 a discredit on the work of God." This was the be- 
 ginning of the * Jumpers. 
 
 Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, the remarkable 
 men who made the secession from the Scotch 
 church, invited Whitefield into Scotland, before 
 his breach with Wesley. Accordingly, in the year 
 1741, he accepted the invitation ; and thinking it 
 
 * " At seven in the morning," says Whitefield, " have I seen, per- 
 haps, ten thousand from different parts, in the midst of a sermon, 
 crying, Gogunniant bendyitti, ready to leap for joy." Had they been 
 reprehended at that time, this extravagant folly might have been 
 prevented. 
 
 VOL. II. Q 
 
^26' METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 proper that they should have the first-fruits of his 
 ministry in that kingdom, preached his first sermon 
 in the seceding meeting-house belonging to Ralph 
 Erskine, at Dumferline. The room was thronged ; 
 and when he had named his text, the rustling 
 which was made by the congregation opening their 
 bibles all at once surprised him, who had never, 
 till then, witnessed a similar practice. A few days 
 afterwards he met the Associate Presbytery of 
 the Seceders by their own desire ; a set of grave 
 venerable men. They soon proposed to form them- 
 selves into a presbytery, and were proceeding to 
 choose a moderator, when Mr. Whitefield asked 
 them for what purpose this was to be done : they 
 made answer, it was to discourse and set him right 
 about the matter of church government, and the 
 solemn league and covenant. Upon this Mr. White- 
 field observed, they might save themselves the 
 trouble, for he had no scruples about it ; and that 
 settling church government, and preaching about 
 the solemn league and covenant, was not his plan. 
 And then he gave them some account of the his- 
 tory of his own mind, and the course of action in 
 which he was engaged. This, however, was not 
 satisfactory to the Associate Presbytery, though one 
 of the synod apologised for him, urging that, as he 
 had been born and bred in England, and had never 
 studied the point, he could not be supposed to be 
 perfectly acquainted with the nature of their co- 
 venants, and therefore they ought to have patience 
 with him. This was of no avail : it was answered, 
 that no indulgence could be shown him j for Eng- 
 
METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 227 
 
 land had revolted most with respect to church go- 
 vernment, and that he could not but be acquainted 
 with the matter in debate. It was a new thing for 
 Whitefield, who had been accustomed to receive 
 homage wherever he went, to be schooled in this 
 manner; but he bore this arrogant behaviour with 
 great complacency, and replied, that indeed he 
 never yet had studied the solemn league and co- 
 venant, because he had been too busy about things 
 which, in his judgement, were of greater import- 
 ance. Several of them then cried out, that every 
 pin of the tabernacle was precious. Whitefield was 
 ready in reply : he told them that, in every build- 
 ing, there were outside and inside workmen ; that 
 the latter was at that time his province ; and that, 
 if they thought themselves called to the former, 
 they might proceed in their own way, as he would 
 do in his. The power of these persons happily, 
 was not so inquisitorial as their disposition ; and 
 when he seriously asked them what they wished 
 him to do, they answered, that they did not desire 
 him immediately to subscribe to the solemn league 
 and covenant, but that he would preach for them 
 exclusively till he had farther light. " And why 
 for them alone ? " he enquired. Ralph Erskine 
 made answer, " They were the Lord's people." 
 " I then," says Whitefield, " asked, whether there 
 Were no other Lord's people but themselves ? and, 
 supposing all others were the devil's people, they 
 certainly," I told them, " had more need to be 
 preached to, and therefore I was more and more de- 
 termined to go out into the highways and hedges j 
 
 d 2 
 
2^8 METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 aud that if the Pope himself would lend me his 
 pulpit, I would gladly proclaim the righteousness 
 of Jesus Christ therein." Soon after this the com- 
 pany broke up ; and one of these otherwise ve- 
 nerable men immediately went into the meeting- 
 house, and preached upon these words, " Watch- 
 man, what of the night ? Watchman, what of the 
 night ? The watchman said, the morning cometh, 
 and also the night ; if ye will enquire, enquire ye j 
 return, come." I attended ; but the good man 
 so spent himself, in the former part of his sermon, 
 in talking against prelacy, the common-prayer- 
 book, the surplice, the rose in the hat, and such 
 like externals, that when he came to the latter 
 part of his text, to invite poor sinners to Jesus 
 Christ, his breath was so gone, that he could 
 scarce be heard. What a pity that the last was 
 not first, and the first last ! The consequence of 
 all this was an open breach. I retired, I wept, I 
 prayed, and, after preaching in the fields, sate down 
 and dined with them, and then took a final * leave. 
 
 * In honour of Whitefield, I annex here part of a letter upon this 
 subject written a few days after this curious scene, and addressed to a 
 son of one of the Erskines. " The treatment I met with from the 
 Associate Presbytery was not altogether such as I expected. It grieved 
 me as much as it did you. I could scarce refrain from bursting into 
 a flood of tears. I wish all were like-minded with your honoured father 
 and uncle, matters then would not be carried on with so high an hand. 
 I fear they are led too much. Supposing the scheme of government 
 which the Associate Presbytery contend for to be scriptural, yet for- 
 bearance and long-suffering is to be exercised towards such as may 
 differ from them .- and, I am verily persuaded, there is no such form of 
 government prescribed in the book of God, as excludes a toleration of 
 all other forms whatsoever. Was the New Testament outward taber- 
 nacle to be built as punctual as the Old, as punctual directions would 
 have been given about the building it ; whereas it is only deduced by 
 
 6 
 
METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 229 
 
 At table, a gentlewoman said, she had heard that 
 I had told some people that the Associate Presbytery 
 were building a Babel. I said, " Madam, it is 
 quite true ; and I believe the Babel will soon fall 
 down about their ears. But enough of this. Lord, 
 what is man — what the best of men — but men at 
 the best !" 
 
 Coming as a stranger into Scotland, and being 
 free from all prejudice and passion upon the sub 
 ject, Whitefield saw the folly and the mischief of 
 the schisms in which his new acquaintance were 
 engaged. They spared no pains to win him over 
 to their side. " I find," said he, " Satan now 
 turns himself into an angel of light, and stirs up 
 God's children to tempt me to come over to some 
 particular party." To one of his correspondents 
 he replies, " I wish you would not trouble your- 
 self or me in writing about the corruption of the 
 Church of England. I believe there is no church 
 
 inference; and thus we see Independents, Presbyterians, and Episco- 
 palians bring the same text to support their particular scheme : and I 
 believe Jesus Christ thereby would teach us to exercise forbearance and 
 long-suffering to each other. Was the Associate Presbytery scheme to 
 take effect, out of conscience, if they acted consistently, they must 
 restrain and grieve, if not persecute, many of God's children, who 
 could not possibly come into their measures: and I doubt not but 
 their present violent methods, together with the corruptions of that 
 assembly, will cause many to turn Independents, and set up particular 
 churches of their own. This was the effect of Archbishop Laud's 
 acting with so high a hand; and whether it be presbytery or epis- 
 copacy, if managed in the same manner, it will be productive of the 
 same effects. O, dear Sir, I love and honour your pious father. Re- 
 member me in the kindest manner to the good old man. I pray God 
 his last days may not be employed too much in the non-essentials of 
 celigion." 
 
 Q 3 
 
230 METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 perfect under heaven ; but as God, by his provi- 
 dence, is pleased to send me forth simply to preach 
 the Gospel to all, I think there is no need of cast- 
 ing myself out." He was invited to Aberdeen by 
 the minister of one of the kirks in that city ; but 
 the minister's co-pastor had prepossessed the ma- 
 gistrates against him, so that when he arrived they 
 refused to let him preach in the kirk-yard. They 
 had, however, sufficient curiosity to attend when 
 he officiated in his friend's pulpit ; the congrega- 
 tion was very large, and, in Whitefield' s own words, 
 " light and life fled all around." In the afternoon 
 it was the other pastor's turn : he began his prayers 
 as usual ; but, in the midst of them, he named 
 Whitefield by name, whom he knew to be then 
 present, and intreated the Lord to forgive the dis- 
 honour that had been put upon him, when that 
 man was suffered to preach in that pulpit. Not 
 satisfied with this, he renewed the attack in his 
 sermon, reminded his congregation that this per- 
 son was a curate of the Church of England, and 
 quoted some passages from his first printed dis- 
 courses, which he said were grossly Arminian. 
 " Most of the congregation," says Whitefield, 
 " seemed surprised and chagrined ; especially his 
 good-natured colleague, who, immediately after 
 sermon, without consulting me in the least, stood 
 up, and gave notice that Mr. Whitefield would 
 preach in about half an hour. The interval being 
 so short, the magistrates returned into the sessions- 
 house, and the congregation patiently waited, big 
 with expectation of hearing my resentment. At the 
 
METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 231 
 
 time appointed I went up, and took no other 
 notice of the good man's ill-timed zeal, than to 
 observe, in some part of my discourse, that if the 
 good old gentleman had seen some of my later 
 writings, wherein I had corrected several of my 
 former mistakes, he would not have expressed him- 
 self in such strong terms. The people being thus 
 diverted from controversy with man, were deeply 
 impressed with what they heard from the word of 
 God. All was hushed, and more than solemn. 
 And on the morrow the magistrates sent for me, 
 expressed themselves quite concerned at the treat- 
 ment I had met with, and begged I would accept 
 of the freedom of the city." 
 
 This triumph Whitefield obtained, as much by 
 that perfect self-command which he always pos- 
 sessed in public, as by his surpassing oratory. But 
 wherever he could obtain a hearing, his oratory 
 was triumphant, and his success in Scotland was, in 
 some respects, greater than it had yet been in Eng- 
 land. " Glory be to God," he says, " he is doing 
 great things here. I walk in the continual sun- 
 shine of his countenance. Congregations consist 
 of many thousands. Never did I see so many 
 bibles, nor people look into them, when I am ex- 
 pounding, with such attention. Plenty of tears 
 flow from the hearers' eyes. I preach twice dajjy, 
 and expound at private houses at night $ and am 
 employed in speaking to souls under distress great 
 part of the day. Every morning I have a constant 
 levee of wounded souls, many of whom are quite 
 slain by the law. At seven in the morning (this 
 
 q 4 
 
232 METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 was at Edinburgh) we have a lecture in the fields, 
 attended not only by the common people, but per- 
 sons of great rank. 1 have reason to think several 
 of the latter sort are coming to Jesus. I am only 
 afraid lest people should idolize the instrument, 
 and not look enough to the glorious Jesus, in whom 
 alone I desire to glory. I walk continually in the 
 comforts of the Holy Ghost. The love of Christ 
 quite strikes me dumb. O grace, grace ! let that 
 be my song." In Scotland it was that he first 
 founcl access to people of rank. " Saints," says 
 Jie, " have been stirred up and edified j and many 
 others, I believe, are translated from darkness to 
 light, and from the kingdom of Satan to the king- 
 dom of God. The good that has been done is in- 
 expressible. I am intimate with three noblemen, 
 and several ladies of quality, who have a great 
 liking for the things of God. I am now writing 
 in an earl's house, surrounded with fine furniture ; 
 but, glory be to free grace, my soul is in love only 
 with Jesus !" 
 
 His exertions increased with his success. " Yes- 
 terday," he says, " I preached three times, and 
 lectured at night. This day Jesus has enabled me 
 to preach seven times ; once in the church, twice 
 at the girl's hospital, once in the park, once at the 
 old people's hospital, and afterwards twice at a 
 private house ; notwithstanding, I am now as fresh 
 as when I arose in the morning. « They that wait 
 upon the Lord shall renew their strength ; they 
 shall mount on wings like eagles.' It would delight 
 your soul to see the effects of the power of God. 
 
METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 233 
 
 Both in the church and park the Lord was with 
 us. The girls in the hospital were exceedingly af- 
 fected, and so were the standers-by. One of the 
 mistresses told me, she is now awakened in the 
 morning by the voice of prayer and praise ; and 
 the master of the boys says, that they meet to- 
 gether every night to sing and pray ; and when he 
 goes to their rooms at night, to see if all be safe, 
 he generally disturbs them at their devotions. The 
 presence of God at the old people's hospital was 
 really very wonderful. The Holy Spirit seemed 
 to come down like a mighty rushing wind. The 
 mourning of the people was like the weeping in 
 the valley of Hadad-Rimmon. They appear more 
 and more hungry. Every day I hear of some fresh 
 good wrought by the power of God. 1 scarce 
 know how to leave Scotland." 
 
 The representation thus given by this remark- 
 able man, of the effect which his preaching pro- 
 duced upon all ranks and descriptions of people, 
 is not exaggerated. Dr. Franklin has justly ob- 
 served, that it would have been fortunate for his 
 reputation if he had left no written works, his 
 talents would then have been estimated by the ef- 
 fect which they are known to have produced ; for, 
 on this point, there is the evidence of witnesses 
 whose credibility cannot be disputed. White- 
 field's writings, of every kind, are certainly below 
 mediocrity. They afford the measure of his know- 
 ledge and of his intellect, but not of his genius as 
 a preacher. His printed sermons, instead of being, 
 as is usual, the most elaborate and finished dis- 
 
Q34> METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 courses of their author, have indeed the disad- 
 vantage of being precisely those upon which the 
 least care had been bestowed. This may be easily 
 explained. 
 
 " By hearing him often," says Franklin, " I 
 came to distinguish easily between sermons newly 
 composed, and those which he had often preached 
 in the course of his travels. His delivery of the 
 latter was so improved by frequent repetition, that 
 every accent, every emphasis, every modulation 
 of voice, was so perfectly well turned, and well 
 placed, that, without being interested in the sub- 
 ject, one could not help being pleased with the 
 discourse : a pleasure of much the same kind with 
 that received from an excellent piece of music. 
 This is an advantage itinerant preachers have over 
 those who are stationary, as the latter cannot well 
 improve their delivery of a sermon by so many re- 
 hearsals." It was a great advantage, but it was 
 not the only one, nor the greatest which he de- 
 rived from repeating his discourses, and reciting 
 instead of reading them. Had they been delivered 
 from a written copy, one delivery would have been 
 like the last ; the paper would have operated like 
 a spell, from which he could not depart — inven- 
 tion sleeping, while the utterance followed the 
 eye. But when he had nothing before him except 
 the audience whom he was addressing, the judge- 
 ment and the imagination, as well as the memory, 
 were called forth. Those parts were omitted which 
 had been felt to come feebly from the tongue, and 
 fall heavily upon the ear, and their place was sup- 
 
METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 235 
 
 plied by matter newly laid-in in the course of his 
 studies, or fresh from the feeling of the moment. 
 They who lived with him could trace him in his 
 sermons to the book which he had last been read- 
 ing, or the subject which had recently taken his 
 attention. But the salient points of his oratory 
 were not prepared passages, — they were bursts of 
 passion, like jets from a Geyser, when the spring 
 is in full play. 
 
 The theatrical talent which he displayed in boy* 
 hood manifested itself strongly in his oratory. 
 When he was about to preach, whether it was from 
 a pulpit, or a table in the streets, or a rising 
 ground, he appeared with a solemnity of manner, 
 and an anxious expression of countenance, that 
 seemed to show how deeply he was possessed with 
 a sense of the importance of what he was about to 
 say. His elocution was perfect. They who 
 heard him most frequently could not remember 
 that he ever stumbled at a word, or hesitated for 
 want of one. He never faultered, unless when the 
 feeling to which he had wrought himself overcame 
 him, and then his speech was interrupted by a flow 
 of tears. Sometimes he would appear to lose all 
 self-command, and weep exceedingly, and stamp 
 loudly and passionately ; and sometimes the emo- 
 tion of his mind exhausted him, and the beholders 
 felt a momentary apprehension even for his life. 
 And, indeed, it is said, that the effect of this 
 vehemence upon his bodily frame was tremendous ; 
 that he usually vomited after he had preached, 
 and sometimes discharged in this manner, a con- 
 
23G METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 siderable quantity of blood. But this was when 
 the effort was over, and nature was left at leisure 
 to relieve herself. While he was on duty, he con- 
 trolled all sense of infirmity or pain, and made his 
 advantage of the passion to which he had given 
 way. " You blame me for weeping," he would 
 say, ". but how can I help it, when you will not 
 weep for yourselves, though your immortal souls 
 are upon the verge of destruction, and, for aught 
 I know, you are hearing your last sermon, and may 
 never more have an opportunity to have Christ 
 offered to you !" 
 
 Sometimes he would set before his congregation 
 the agony of our Saviour, as though the scene was 
 actually before them. " Look yonder !" he would 
 say, stretching out his hand, and pointing while 
 he spake, " what is it that I see ? It is my ago- 
 nizing Lord! Hark, hark ! do you not hear? — O 
 my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from 
 me ! nevertheless, not my will, but thine be 
 done !" This he introduced frequently in his ser- 
 mons ; and one who lived with him says, the effect 
 was not destroyed by repetition ; even to those 
 who knew what was coming, it came as forcibly 
 as if they had never heard it before. In this re- 
 spect it was like fine stage acting: and, indeed, 
 Whitefield indulged in an histrionic manner of 
 preaching, which would have been offensive if it 
 had not been rendered admirable by his natural 
 gracefulness and inimitable power. Sometimes, at 
 the close of a sermon, he would personate a judge 
 about to perform the last awful part of his office* 
 
METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 237 
 
 With his eyes full of tears, and an emotion that 
 made his speech faulter, after a pause which kept 
 the whole audience in breathless expectation of 
 what was to come, he would say, " I am now 
 going to put on my condemning cap. Sinner, I 
 must do it : I must pronounce sentence upon you !" 
 and then, in a tremendous strain of eloquence, 
 describing the eternal punishment of the wicked, 
 he recited the words of Christ, " Depart from me, 
 ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the 
 devil and his angels." When he spoke of St. Peter, 
 how, after the cock crew, he went out and wept 
 bitterly, he had a fold of his gown ready, in which 
 he hid his face. 
 
 Perfect as it was, histrionism like this would 
 have produced no lasting effect upon the mind, had 
 it not been for the unaffected earnestness and the 
 indubitable sincerity of the preacher, which equally 
 characterized his manner, whether he rose to the 
 height of passion in his discourse, or won the at- 
 tention of the motley crowd by the introduction 
 of familiar stories, and illustrations adapted to the 
 meanest * capacity. To such digressions his dispo- 
 sition led him, which was naturally inclined to a 
 comic playfulness. Minds of a certain power will 
 
 * Wesley says of him, in his Journal, " how wise is God in giving 
 different talents to different preachers ! Even the little improprieties 
 both of his language and manner, were a means of profiting many who 
 would not have been touched by a more correct discourse, or a more 
 calm and regular manner of speaking." St. Augustine somewhere 
 says, that is the best key which opens the door: quid enivi prodest 
 clavis aurea si aperire quod volumus non potest ? aut quod obest lignea, 
 si hoc potest, quando nihil qucerimus nisipatere quod clausum est? 
 
238 METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 sometimes express their strongest feelings with a 
 levity at which formalists are shocked, and which 
 dull men are wholly unable to understand. But 
 language which, when coldly repeated, might seem 
 to border upon irreverence and burlesque, has its 
 effect in popular preaching, when the intention of 
 the speaker is perfectly understood : it is suited to 
 the great mass of the people, it is felt by them 
 when better things would have produced no im- 
 pression, and it is borne away when wiser argu- 
 ments would have been forgotten. There was an- 
 other and more uncommon way in which White- 
 field's peculiar talent sometimes was indulged : he 
 could direct his discourse toward an individual so 
 skilfully, that the congregation had no suspicion 
 of any particular purport in that part of the ser- 
 mon ; while the person at whom it was aimed felt 
 it, as it was directed, in its full force. There was 
 sometimes a degree of sportiveness *. almost akin to 
 mischief in his humour. 
 
 * Mr. Winter relates a curious anecdote of his preaching at a maid- 
 servant who had displeased him by some negligence in the morning. 
 '* In the evening," says the writer, " before the family retired to rest, 
 I found her under great dejection, the reason of which I did not ap- 
 prehend ; for it did not strike me that, in exemplifying a conduct in- 
 consistent with the Christian's professed fidelity to his Redeemer, he 
 was drawing it from remissness of duty in a living character ; but she 
 felt it so sensibly, as to be greatly distressed by it, until he relieved 
 her mind by his usually amiable deportment. The next day, being 
 about to leave town, he called out to her ' farewell :' she did not 
 make her appearance, which he remarked to a female friend at dinner, 
 who replied, ' Sir, you have exceedingly wounded poor Betty.' This 
 excited in him a hearty laugh ; and when I shut the coach door upon 
 him, he said, ' Be -sure to remember me to Betty; tell her the account 
 is settled, and that I have nothing more against her.'" 
 
 8 
 
METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 239 
 
 Remarkable instances are related of the manner 
 in which he impressed his hearers. A man at 
 Exeter stood with stones in his pocket, and one in 
 his hand, ready to throw at him ; but he dropped it 
 before the sermon was far advanced, and going up 
 to him after the preaching was over, he said, " Sir, 
 I came to hear you with an intention to break your 
 head ; but God, through your ministry, has given 
 me a broken heart." A ship-builder was once 
 asked what he thought of him. " Think!" he 
 replied, " I tell you,' Sir, every Sunday that I go 
 to my parish church, I can build a ship from stem 
 to stern under the sermon ; but, were it to save 
 my soul, under Mr. Whitefield, I could not lay a 
 single plank." Hume * pronounced him the most 
 ingenious preacher he had ever heard ; and said, it 
 was worth while to go twenty miles to hear him. 
 But, perhaps, the greatest proof of his persuasive 
 powers was, when he drew from Franklin's pocket 
 the money which that clear cool reasoner had de- 
 termined not to give : it was for the orphan-house 
 at Savannah. " I did not," says the American 
 philosopher, " disapprove of the design : but as 
 
 * One of his flights of oratory, not in the best taste, is related on 
 Hume's authority. " After a solemn pause, Mr. Whitefield thus ad- 
 dressed his audience : — The attendant angel is just about to leave the 
 threshold, and ascend to Heaven ; and shall he ascend and not bear 
 with him the news of one sinner, among all the multitude, reclaimed 
 from the error of his ways ! To give the greater effect to this excla- 
 mation, he stamped with his foot, lifted up his hands and eyes to 
 Heaven, and cried aloud, Stop, Gabriel ! stop, Gabriel ! stop, ere 
 you enter the sacred portals, and yet carry with you the news of one 
 sinner converted to God!" Hume said this address was accompanied 
 with such animated, yet natural action, that it surpassed any thing he 
 ever saw or heard in any other preacher. 
 
240 METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 Georgia was then destitute of materials and work- 
 men, and it was proposed to send them from Phi- 
 ladelphia at a great expense, I thought it would 
 have been better to have built the house at Phila- 
 delphia, and brought the children to it. This I 
 advised ; but he was resolute in his first project, 
 rejected my counsel, and I therefore refused to 
 contribute. I happened, soon after, to attend one 
 of his sermons, in the course of which I perceived 
 he intended to finish with a collection, and I si- 
 lently resolved he should get nothing from me. I 
 had in my pocket a handful of copper money, three 
 or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. 
 As he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded 
 to give the copper ; another stroke of his oratory 
 made me ashamed of that, and determined me to 
 give the silver ; and he finished so admirably, that 
 I emptied my pocket wholly into the collector's 
 dish, gold * and all." 
 
 No wonder that such a preacher should be ad- 
 mired and followed in a country where the habits 
 of the people were devotional. On his second visit 
 to Scotland, he was met on the shore at Leith by 
 
 * "At this sermon," continues Franklin, " there was also one of our 
 club, who, being of 1113' sentiments respecting the building in Georgia, 
 and suspecting a collection might be intended, had, by precaution, 
 emptied his pockets before he came from home : towards the conclu- 
 sion of the discourse, however, he felt a strong inclination to give, and 
 applied to a neighbour, who stood near him, to lend him some money 
 for the purpose. The request was fortunately made to perhaps the only 
 man in the company who had the firmness not to be affected by the 
 preacher. His answer was, ' At any other time, friend Hopkinson, 
 I would lend to thee freely, but not now ; for thee seems to me to be 
 out of thy right senses." 
 
METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. &41 
 
 multitudes, weeping and blessing him, and they 
 followed his coach to Edinburgh, pressing to wel- 
 come him when he alighted, and to hold him in 
 their arms. Seats, with awnings, were erected in 
 the park, in the form of an amphitheatre, for his 
 preaching. Several youths left their parents and 
 masters to follow him as his servants and children 
 in the Gospel ; but he had sense enough to show 
 them their error, and send them back. The effect 
 which he produced was maddening. At Cambus- 
 lang it exceeded any thing which he had ever wit- 
 nessed in his career. " 1 preached at two," he 
 says, " to a vast body of people, and at six in the 
 evening, and again iat nine. Such a commotion, 
 surely, never was heard of, especially at eleven at 
 night. For about an hour and a half there was 
 such weeping, so many falling into deep distress, 
 and expressing it various ways, as is inexpressible. 
 The people seem to be slain by scores. They are 
 carried off, and come into the house, like soldiers 
 wounded in and carried off a field of battle. Their 
 cries and agonies are exceedingly affecting. Mr. M. 
 preached, after I had ended, till past one in the 
 morning, and then could scarce persuade them to 
 depart. All night, in the fields, might be heard 
 the voice of prayer and praise. Some young ladies 
 were found by a gentlewoman praising God at 
 break of day : she went and joined with them." 
 Soon afterwards he returned there to assist at the 
 sacrament. " Scarce ever," he says, " was such 
 a sight seen in Scotland. There were, undoubt- 
 edly, upwards of twenty thousand persons. Two 
 
 VOL. II. it 
 
242 METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 tents were set up, and the holy sacrament was ad- 
 ministered in the fields. When I began to serve 
 a table, the power of God was felt by numbers ; 
 but the people crowded so upon me, that I was 
 obliged to desist, and go to preach at one of the 
 tents, whilst the ministers served the rest of the 
 tables. God was with them, and with his people. 
 There was preaching all day by one or another ; 
 and in the evening, when the sacrament was over, 
 at the request of the ministers, I preached to the 
 whole congregation. I preached about an hour 
 and a half. Surely it was a time much to be re- 
 membered. On Monday morning I preached again 
 to near as many ; but such an universal stir I never 
 saw before. The motion fled as swift as lightning 
 from one end of the auditory to another. You 
 might have seen thousands bathed in tears : some 
 at the same time wringing their hands, others almost 
 swooning, and others crying out and mourning over 
 a pierced Saviour." 
 
 The Erskines were astonished at all this. One 
 of the associate presbytery published a pamphlet 
 againt him, wherein, with the true virulence of 
 bigotry, he ascribed these things to the influence 
 of the devil j and the heads of the seceders ap- 
 pointed a public fast to humble themselves for his 
 being in Scotland, whither they themselves had 
 invited him, and for what they termed, the delusion 
 at Cambuslang. They might have so called it, 
 with more propriety, if they had not been under 
 a delusion themselves; for Whitefield perfectly 
 understood their feelings, when he said, " all this 
 
METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 243 
 
 because I would not consent to preach only for 
 them till I had light into, and could take the so- 
 lemn league and covenant !" He made many other 
 visits to Scotland j and there, indeed, he seems to 
 have obtained that introduction to persons of rank, 
 which in its consequences led to the establishment 
 of a college for Calvinistic Methodism in England. 
 But he aimed at nothing more than could be pro- 
 duced by his own preaching ; it was neither con- 
 genial to his talents nor his views to organize a 
 body of followers ; and, in the intervals between 
 his visits, the seed which he had scattered was left 
 to grow up, or to wither as it might. 
 
 Wesley had other views : his aim, wherever he 
 went, was to form a society. It was not till ten 
 years after his former colleague had first visited 
 Scotland, that he resolved to go there. A reconcili- 
 ation had then taken place between them, — for en- 
 mity could not be lasting between two men who 
 knew each other's sincerity and good intentions so 
 well, — and Whitefield would have dissuaded him 
 from going. " You have no business there," he 
 said ; " for yOur principles are so well known, that 
 if you spoke like an angel, none would hear you ; 
 and if they did, you would have nothing to do but 
 to dispute with one and another from morning to 
 night." Wesley replied, " If God sends me, 
 people will hear. And I will give them no provoca- 
 tion to dispute ; for I will studiously avoid contro- 
 verted points, and keep to the fundamental truths 
 of Christianity ; and if any still begin to dispute, they 
 may, but I will not dispute with them." He was 
 
 r 2 
 
S44 METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 however, so aware of the bitter hostility with which 
 Arminian principles would be received in Scotland, 
 that, he says, when he went into that kingdom, 
 he had no intention of preaching there ; nor did 
 he imagine that any persons would desire him so 
 to do. He might have reckoned with more con- 
 fidence upon the curiosity of the people. He 
 was invited to preach at Musselborough ; the au- 
 dience remained like statutes from the beginning of 
 the sermon till the end, and he flattered himself 
 that " the prejudice which the devil had been se- 
 veral years planting, was torn up by the roots in 
 one hour." From this time Scotland was made a 
 part of his regular rounds. " Surely," says he, 
 " with God nothing is impossible ! Who would 
 have believed, five-and-twenty years ago, either that 
 the minister would have desired it, or that I should 
 have consented to preach in a Scotch kirk !" 
 
 He flattered himself egregiously when he ac- 
 cepted these beginnings as omens of good success, 
 and when he supposed that the prejudice against 
 him w T as eradicated. An old Burgher minister at 
 Dalkeith preached against him, affirming that, if he 
 died in his present sentiments, he would be damned; 
 and the fanatic declared that he would stake his 
 own salvation upon it. It was well for him that 
 these people were not armed with temporal autho- 
 rity. " The Seceders," says Wesley, " who have 
 fallen in my way, are more uncharitable than the 
 Papists themselves. I never yet met a Papist who 
 avowed the principle of murdering heretics. But a 
 Seceding minister being asked, ' Would not you, if 
 
METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. f M5 
 
 it was in your power, cut the throats of all the 
 Methodists?' replied directly, * Why, did not 
 Samuel hew Agag in pieces before the Lord ?' I 
 have not yet met a Papist in this kingdom who 
 would tell me to my face, all but themselves must 
 be damned ; but I have seen Seceders enough who 
 make no scruple to affirm, none but themselves 
 could be saved. And this is the natural conse- 
 quence of their doctrine ; for, as they hold that 
 w r e are saved by faith alone, and that faith is the 
 holding such and such opinions, it follows, all who 
 do not hold those opinions have no faith, and 
 therefore cannot be saved." Even Whitefield, pre- 
 destinarian as he was, was regarded as an abomi- 
 nation by the Seceders : how, then, was it possible 
 that they should tolerate Wesley, who taught that 
 redemption was offered to all mankind ? A Me- 
 thodist one day comforted a poor woman, whose 
 child appeared to be dying, by assuring her that, 
 for an infant, death would only be the exchange 
 of this miserable life for a happy eternity ; and the 
 Seceder, to whose flock she belonged, was so 
 shocked at this doctrine, that the deep-dyed Cal- 
 vinist devoted the next Sabbath to the task of con- 
 vincing his people, that the souls of all non-elect 
 infants were doomed to certain and inevitable 
 damnation. 
 
 But it was Wesley's fortune to meet with an 
 obstacle in Scotland more fatal to Methodism than 
 the fiercest opposition would have been. Had his 
 followers been more generally opposed, they would 
 have multiplied faster : opposition would have in- 
 
 r 3 
 
246 METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 flamed their zeal ; it was neglected, and died away. 
 From time to time he complains in his Journal of 
 the cold insensibility of the people. " O what a 
 difference is there between the living stones," he 
 says, speaking of the Northumbrians, " and the 
 dead unfeeling multitudes in Scotland. At Dun- 
 dee," he observes, " I admire the people ; so de- 
 cent, so serious, and so perfectly unconcerned !" 
 " At Glasgow I preached on the Old Green to a 
 people, the greatest part of whom hear much, know 
 every thing, and feel nothing." They had been 
 startled by the thunder and lightning of White- 
 field's oratory : but they were as unmoved by the 
 soft persuasive rhetoric of Wesley, as by one of 
 their own Scotch mists. 
 
 Wesley endeavoured to account for this morti- 
 fying failure, and to discover " what could be the 
 reason why the hand of the Lord (who does no- 
 thing without a cause) was almost entirely stayed 
 in Scotland." He imputed it to the unwillingness 
 of those, who were otherwise favourably inclined 
 to admit the preaching of illiterate men ; and to 
 the rude bitterness and bigotry of those who re- 
 garded an Arminian as an Infidel, and the church 
 of England as bad as the church of Rome. The 
 Scotch bigots, he said, were beyond all others. 
 He answered, before a large congregation at Dun- 
 dee, most of the objections which had been made 
 to him. — He was a member of the church of Eng- 
 land, he said, but he loved good [men of every 
 church. He always used a short private prayer 
 when he attended the public service of God : why 
 did not they do the same ? was it not according 
 
METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 247 
 
 to the bible ? He stood whenever he was singing 
 the praises of God in public : were there not plain 
 precedents for this in Scripture ? He always knelt 
 before the Lord when he prayed in public ; and 
 generally, in public he used the Lord's Prayer, 
 because Christ has taught us, when we pray, to 
 say, Our Father, which art in heaven. But it 
 was not by such frivolous objections as these that 
 the success of Methodism in Scotland was im- 
 peded. The real cause of its failure was, that it 
 was not wanted — that there was no place for it : 
 the discipline of the kirk was not relaxed, the 
 clergy possessed great influence over their pa- 
 rishioners, the children were piously brought up, 
 the population had not out-grown the church-estab- 
 lishment, and the Scotch, above all other people, 
 deserved the praise of being a frugal, industrious, 
 and religious nation. 
 
 Obvious as this is, Wesley seems not to have 
 perceived it ; and it is evident that he regarded 
 both the forms and discipline of the church of 
 Scotland, with a disposition rather to detect what 
 was* objectionable, than to acknowledge what was 
 
 * One of his charges against the Scotch clergy was, that " with 
 pride, bitterness, and bigotry, self-indulgence was joined; self-denial 
 was little taught and practised. It is well if some of them did not 
 despise or even condemn all self-denial in things indifferent, as in ap- 
 parel or food, as nearly allied to popery." (Journal x. p. 20.) And in 
 one of his sermons he says, " there is always a fast-day in the week 
 preceding the administration of the Lord's Supper (in Scotland). But 
 occasionally looking into a book of accounts, in one of their vestries, I 
 observed so much set down for the dinners of the ministers on the fast 
 day. And I am informed there is the same article in them all. And is 
 there any doubt but that the people fast just as their ministers do. 
 But what a farce is this ! what a miserable burlesque upon a plain 
 Christian duty !" (Works, vol. x. p. 419.) 
 
 R 4 
 
248 METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 good. " Lodging with a sensible man," he writes, 
 " I enquired particularly into the present discipline 
 of the Scotch parishes. In one parish, it seems, 
 there are twelve ruling elders ; in another, there 
 are fourteen. And what are these ? men of great 
 sense and deep experience ? Neither one nor the 
 other ; but they are the richest men in the parish. 
 And are the richest y of course, the best and the 
 wisest men ? Does the bible teach this ? I fear 
 not. What manner of governors, then, will these 
 be? Why, they are generally just as capable of 
 governing a parish, as of commanding an army." 
 Had he been free from prejudice, instead of being 
 led away by an abuse of words, he w r ould have 
 perceived how the fact stood, — that the elders 
 were required to be respectable in their circum- 
 stances, as well as in character ; and that, without 
 that respectability, they could not have obtained 
 respect. That the forms of the kirk, or, rather, 
 its want of forms, should offend him, is not sur- 
 prising. " O," he cries, " what a difference is 
 there between the English and the Scotch mode of 
 burial I The English does honour to human na- 
 ture, and even to the poor remains that were once 
 a temple of the Holy Ghost : but when I see in 
 Scotland a coffin put into the earth, and covered 
 up without a word spoken, it reminds me of what 
 was spoken concerning Jehoiakim, he shall be bu- 
 ried with the burial of an ass." It was, indeed, no 
 proof of judgement, or of feeling, to reject the 
 finest and most affecting ritual that ever was com- 
 posed — a service that finds its way to the heart, 
 when the heart stands most in need of such conso-f 
 
METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 249 
 
 lation, and is open to receive it. Yet Wesley 
 might have known, that the silent interment of the 
 vScotch is not without solemnity; and, in their 
 lonely burial-grounds, and family burial-places, he 
 might have seen something worthy of imitation in 
 England. 
 
 Writing at Glasgow, he says, " My spirit was 
 moved within me at the sermons I heard, both 
 morning and afternoon. They contained much 
 truth, but were no more likely to awaken one soul 
 than an Italian opera." The truth was, that he 
 did not understand the Scotch character, and there- 
 fore condemned the practice of those preachers 
 who did. " I spoke as closely as I could," he says 
 of his own sermons, <c and made a pointed appli- 
 cation to the hearts of all that were present. I am 
 convinced this is the only way whereby we can 
 do any good in Scotland. This very day I heard 
 many excellent truths delivered in the kirk ; but 
 as there was no application, it was likely to do as 
 much good as the singing of a lark. I wonder 
 the pious ministers in Scotland are not sensible of 
 this : they cannot but see that no sinners are con- 
 vinced of sin, none converted to God by this way 
 of preaching j how strange is it then, that neither 
 reason nor experience teaches them to take a better 
 way !" They aimed at no such effect, The new- 
 birth of the Methodists, their instantaneous conver- 
 sions, their assurance, their sanctification, and their 
 perfection, were justly regarded as extravagances 
 by the Scotch as well as by the English clergy. 
 
 It was with more reason that Wesley groaned 
 over the manner in which the Reformation had 
 
250 METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 been effected in Scotland; and, when he stood 
 amid the ruins of Aberbrothock, exclaimed, " God, 
 deliver us from reforming mobs !" Nor would he 
 admit of the apology that is offered for such havoc, 
 and for the character of John Knox. " I know," 
 he says, " it is commonly said, the work to be 
 done needed such a spirit. Not so : the work of 
 God does not, cannot need the work of the devil to 
 forward it. And a calm even spirit goes through 
 rough work far better than a furious one. Al- 
 though, therefore, God did use, at the time of 
 the Reformation, sour, overbearing, passionate 
 men, yet he did not use them because they were 
 such ; but notwithstanding they were so. And 
 there is no doubt he would have used them much 
 more, had they been of a humbler and milder 
 spirit." On the other hand, he bore testimony to 
 the remarkable decorum with which public worship 
 was conducted by the Episcopalians in Scotland : 
 it exceeded any thing which he had seen in Eng- 
 land : and he admitted, that even his own congre- 
 gations did not come up to it. 
 
 He did, however, this justice to the Scotch, 
 that he acknowledged they were never offended at 
 plain dealing ; and that, in this respect, they were 
 a pattern to all mankind. Nor did he ever meet 
 with the slightest molestation from mobs, or the 
 slightest insult. One day, however, a warrant 
 was issued against him at Edinburgh, by the 
 sheriff, and he was carried to a house adjoining 
 the Tolbooth. A certain George Sutherland, who, 
 to his own mishap, had at one time been a mem- 
 ber of the society, had deposed, that Hugh San- 
 
 5 
 
METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 251 
 
 derson, one of John Wesley's preachers, had 
 taken from his wife one hundred pounds in, money, 
 and upwards of thirty pounds in goods ; and had, 
 besides that, terrified her into madness ; so that, 
 through the want of her help, and the loss of busi- 
 ness, he was damaged five hundred pounds. He 
 had deposed also, that the said John Wesley and 
 Hugh Sanderson, to evade his pursuit, were pre- 
 paring to fly the country ; and, upon these grounds, 
 had obtained a warrant to search for, seize, and 
 incarcerate them in the Tolbooth, till they should 
 find security for their appearance. The sheriff, 
 with great indiscretion, granted this warrant 
 against Wesley, who could in no way be held le- 
 gally responsible for the conduct of any of his 
 preachers ; but when the affair was tried, the ac- 
 cusation was proved to be so false and calumnious, 
 that the prosecutor was heavily fined. * 
 
 Looking for any cause of failure rather than the 
 real one, Wesley imputed the want of success in 
 Scotland to the disposition which his preachers 
 manifested to remain stationary there. " We are 
 not called," he says, " to sit still in one place : it 
 is neither for the health of our souls nor bodies : 
 we will have travelling preachers in Scotland, or 
 none. I will serve the Scotch as we do the English, 
 or leave them. While I live, itinerant preachers 
 shall be itinerants, if they choose to remain in 
 connection with us. The thing is fixed : the man- 
 ner of effecting it is to be considered." But here 
 
 * One thousand pounds, says Wesley in his Journal : and omits to 
 add, that it was one thousand pounds Scotch, Anglice, A thousand 
 shillings. 
 
$5& METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 lay the difficulty ; for the spiritual warfare of Me- 
 thodism was carried on upon the principle of de- 
 riving means from its conquests ; and the errant- 
 preacher, who failed of success in his expeditions, 
 oftentimes fasted, when there was no virtue of self- 
 denial in the compulsory abstinence. 
 
 A curious instance of this occurred in the case 
 of Thomas Taylor, one of those preachers who tem- 
 pered zeal with judgement, and who found means, 
 during his itinerancy, by the strictest economy of 
 time, to acquire both the Greek and Hebrew 
 languages. This person was appointed to Glasgow. 
 He had gone through hard service in Wales and in 
 Ireland, in wild countries, and among wild men : 
 but this populous city presented a new scene, and 
 offered something more discouraging than either 
 bodily fatigue or bodily danger. There were no 
 Methodists here, no place of entertainment, no 
 place to preach in, no friend with whom to com- 
 municate : it was a hard winter, and he was in 
 a strange land. Having, however, taken a lodg- 
 ing, he gave out that he should preach on the 
 green : a table was carried to the place, and going 
 there at the appointed time, he found — two bar- 
 bers' boys and two old women waiting. " My very 
 soul," he says, " sunk within me. I had travelled 
 by land and by water near six hundred miles to 
 this place, and behold my congregation! None 
 but they who have experienced it can tell what a 
 task it is to stand out in the open air to preach to 
 nobody, especially in such a place as Glasgow!" 
 Nevertheless, he mounted his table, and began to 
 sing; the singing he had entirely to Jiimselfj but 
 
METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 253 
 
 perseverance brought about him some two hundred 
 poor people ; and continuing, day after day, he 
 collected at last large audiences. One evening, 
 the largest congregation he had ever seen was 
 assembled ; his table was too low ; and even when 
 a chair was placed upon, the rostrum was still 
 not sufficiently elevated for the multitudes, who 
 surrounded him ; so he mounted upon a high wall, 
 and cried aloud, " The hour is coming, and now 
 is, when the dead shall .hear the voice of the Son 
 of God, and they that hear shall live!" They 
 were still as the dead; and he conceived great 
 hope, from the profound attention with which they 
 listened : but when he had done, he says, " they 
 made a lane for me to walk through the huge mul- 
 titude, while they stood staring at me, but no one 
 said, where dwellest thou !" 
 
 This reception brought with it double mortifi- 
 cation, — 'to the body as well as the mind. An 
 itinerant always counted upon the hospitality of 
 his flock, and stood, indeed in need of it. Taylor 
 had every thing to pay for : his room, fire, and at- 
 tendance cost him three shillings per week ; his 
 fare was poor in proportion to his lodging; and to 
 keep up his credit with his landlady, he often com- 
 mitted the pious fraud of dressing himself as if 
 he were going out to dinner, and after a dry 
 walk returned home hungry. He never, in all 
 the rest of his life, kept so many fast days. He 
 sold his horse : this resource, however, could not 
 maintain him long ; and in the midst of his dis- 
 tress, a demand was made upon him by one of his 
 
254 METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 hearers which was not likely to give him a favour- 
 able opinion of the national character. This man, 
 perceiving that Taylor was a bad singer, and fre- 
 quently embarrassed by being obliged to sing the 
 Scotch version, (because the people knew nothing 
 of the Methodist hymns,) offered his services to act 
 as precentor, and lead off the psalms. This did ex- 
 cellently well, till he brought in a bill of thirteen 
 and fourpence for his work, which was just four- 
 pence a time : the poor preacher paid the demand, 
 and dismissed him and the Scotch psalms together. 
 Taylor's perseverance was not, however, wholly 
 lost. Some dissenters from the kirk were then 
 building what is called in Glasgow a Kirk of Relief, 
 for the purpose of choosing their own minister. 
 One of the leading men had become intimate with 
 him, and offered to secure him a majority of the 
 voters. This was no ordinary temptation : com- 
 fort, honour, and credit, with 140/. a year, in ex- 
 change for hunger and contempt : but there was 
 honour also on the other side. The preacher, 
 though he was alone in Glasgow, belonged to a 
 well-organised and increasing society, where he 
 had all the encouragement of co-operation, friend- 
 ship, sympathy and applause. He rejected the 
 offer; and, before spring, he formed a regular 
 society of about forty persons, who procured a 
 place to meet in, and furnished it with a pulpit 
 and seats. When they had thus housed him, they 
 began to enquire how he was maintained ; if he 
 had an estate; or what supplies from England. 
 He then explained to them his own circumstances, 
 
METHODISM IN SCOTLAND. 255 
 
 and the manner in which the preachers were sup- 
 ported, by small contributions. This necessary 
 part of the Methodist ceconomy was cheerfully 
 established among them ; and, when he departed, 
 he left a certain provision for his successor, and a 
 flock of seventy souls. But, even in this populous 
 city, Wesley, upon his last visit to Scotland, when 
 his venerable age alone might have made him an 
 object of curiosity and reasonable wonder, at- 
 tracted few hearers. " The congregation," he 
 says, " was miserably small, verifying what I had 
 often heard before, that the Scotch dearly love the 
 word of the Lord — on the Lord's day. If I live 
 to come again, I will take care to spend only the 
 Lord's day at Glasgow." 
 
256 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 METHODISM IN IRELAND. 
 
 Melancholy and anamalous as the civil history of 
 Ireland is, its religious history is equally mournful, 
 and not less strange. Even at the time when it 
 was called the Island of Saints, and men went 
 forth from its monasteries to be the missionaries, 
 not of monachism alone, but of literature and 
 civilization, the mass of the people continued 
 savage, and was something worse than heathen. 
 They accommodated their new religion to their 
 own propensities, with a perverted ingenuity, at 
 once humourous and detestable, and altogether 
 peculiar to themselves. Thus, when a child was 
 immersed at baptism, it was customary not to dip 
 the right arm, to the intent that he might strike a 
 more deadly and ungracious blow therewith ; and 
 under an opinion, no doubt, that the rest of the 
 body would not be responsible at the resurrection, 
 for any thing which had been committed by the 
 unbaptized hand. Thus, too, at the baptism, the 
 father took the wolves for his gossips ; and thought 
 that by this profanation, he was forming an alli- 
 ance, both for himself and the boy, with the 
 fiercest beasts of the woods. The son of a chief 
 was baptized in milk ; water was not thought 
 
 
METHODISM IN IRELAND* 257 
 
 good enough, and whiskey had not then been in- 
 vented. They used to rob in the beginning, of the 
 year as a point of devotion, for the purpose of 
 laying up a good stock of plunder against Easter ; 
 and he whose spoils enabled him to furnish the 
 best entertainment at that time, was looked upon as 
 the best Christian, — so they robbed in emulation 
 of each other ; and reconciling their habits to their 
 conscience, with a hardihood beyond that of the 
 boldest casuists, they persuaded themselves that, 
 if robbery, murder, and rape had been sins, Provi- 
 dence would never put such temptations in their 
 way ; nay, that the sin would be, if they were so 
 ungrateful as not to take advantage of a good op- 
 portunity when it was offered them. 
 
 These things would appear incredible, if they 
 were not conformable to the spirit of Irish history, 
 fabulous and authentic. Yet were the Irish, be- 
 yond all other people, passionately attached to the 
 religion wherein they were so miserably ill in- 
 structed. Whether they were distinguished by 
 this peculiar attachment to their church, when 
 the supremacy of the Pope was acknowledged 
 throughout Europe, cannot be known, and may, 
 with much probability, be doubted; this is evi- 
 dent, that it must have acquired strength and in- 
 veteracy when it became a principle of opposition 
 to their rulers, and was blended with their hatred 
 of the English, who so little understood their duty 
 and their policy as conquerors, that they neither 
 made themselves loved, nor feared, nor respected* 
 
 VOL. II. s 
 
258 METHODISM IN IRELAND. 
 
 Ireland is the only country in which the Reform- 
 ation produced nothing but evil. Protestant Eu- 
 rope has been richly repaid for the long calamities 
 of that great revolution, by the permanent bless- 
 ings which it left behind ; and even among those 
 nations where the papal superstition maintained its 
 dominion by fire and sword, an important change 
 was effected in the lives and conduct of the Romish 
 clergy. Ireland alone was so circumstanced as to 
 be incapable of deriving any advantage, while it 
 was exposed to all the evils of the change. The 
 work of sacrilege and plunder went on there as it 
 did in England and Scotland j but the language of 
 the people, and their savage state, precluded all 
 possibility of religious improvement. It was not 
 till nearly the middle of the seventeenth century, 
 that the Bible was translated into Irish, by means 
 of Bishop Bedell, a man worthy to have Sir Henry 
 Wotton for his patron, and Father Paolo Sarpi for 
 his friend. The church property had been so scan- 
 dalously plundered, that few parishes * could afford 
 even a bare subsistence to a protestant minister, and 
 therefore few ministers were to be found. Mean- 
 time the Romish clergy were on the alert, and 
 they were powerfully aided by a continued supply 
 of fellow-labourers from the seminaries estab- 
 lished in the Spanish dominions; men who, by 
 their temper and education, were fitted for any 
 work in which policy might think proper to em- 
 
 * The best living in Connaught was not worth more than forty shil- 
 lings a-year ; and some were as low as sixteen ! 
 
 
METHODISM IN IRELAND. 259 
 
 ploy fanaticism. The Franciscans have made it 
 their boast, that, at the time of the Irish massacre, 
 there appeared among the rebels more than six 
 hundred Friars Minorite, who had been instigating 
 them to that accursed rebellion while living among 
 them in disguise. 
 
 Charles II. restored to the Irish church all the 
 impropriations and portions of tithes which had 
 been vested in the crown j removing, by this wise 
 and meritorious measure, one cause of its ineffi- 
 ciency. When, in the succeeding reign, the civil 
 liberties of England were preserved by the Church 
 of England, the burthen of the Revolution again 
 fell upon Ireland. That unhappy country became 
 the seat of war, and, from that time, the Irish Ca- 
 tholics stood, as a political party, in the same re- 
 lation to the French as they had done during 
 Elizabeth's reign to the Spaniards. The history of 
 Ireland is little else but a history of crimes and of 
 misgovernment. A system of half persecution was 
 pursued, at once odious for its injustice, and con- 
 temptible for its inefficacy. Good principles, and 
 generous feelings, were thereby provoked into an 
 alliance with superstition and priestcraft ; and the 
 priests, whom the law recognized only for the pur- 
 pose of punishing them if they discharged the 
 forms of their office, established a more absolute 
 dominion over the minds of the Irish people, than 
 was possessed by the clergy in any other part of the 
 world. 
 
 Half a century of peace and comparative tran- 
 quillity, during which great advances were made 
 
 s2 
 
260 METHODISM IN IRELAND. 
 
 in trade, produced little or no melioration in the 
 religious state of the country. Sectarians of every 
 kind, descript and non-descript, had been intro- 
 duced in Cromwell's time ; and what proselytes 
 they obtained were won from the established 
 Church, not from the Catholics, whom both the 
 Dissenters and the clergy seem to have consi- 
 dered as inconvertible. In truth, the higher or- 
 ders were armed against all conviction by family 
 pride, and old resentment, and the sense of their 
 wrongs ; while the great body of the native Irish 
 were effectually secured by their language and 
 their ignorance, even if the priests had been less 
 vigilant in their duty, and the Protestants more 
 active in theirs. Bishop Berkeley (one of the best, 
 wisest, and greatest men whom Ireland, with all 
 its fertility of genius, has produced) saw the evil, 
 and perceived what ought to be the remedy. In 
 that admirable little book, the Querist, from which, 
 even at this day, men of all ranks, from the ma- 
 nufacturer to the statesman, may derive instruc- 
 tion, it is asked by this sagacious writer, " Whether 
 there be an instance of a people's being converted, 
 in a Christian sense, otherwise than by preaching 
 to them, and instructing them in their own lan- 
 guage ? Whether catechists, in the Irish tongue, 
 may not easily be procured and subsisted? and 
 whether this would not be the most practicable 
 means for converting the natives? Whether it be 
 not of great advantage to the Church of Rome, 
 that she hath clergy suited to all ranks of men, in 
 gradual subordination from cardinals down to men- 
 
 6 
 
METHODISM IN IRELAND. g6l 
 
 dicants? Whether her numerous poor clergy are 
 not very useful in missions, and of much influence 
 with the people ? Whether, in defect of able mis- 
 sionaries, persons conversant in low life, and speak- 
 ing the Irish tongue, if well instructed in the first 
 principles of religion, and in the Popish contro- 
 versy, though, for the rest, on a level with the 
 parish-clerks, or the school-masters of charity- 
 schools, may not be fit to mix with and bring 
 over our poor illiterate natives to the Established 
 Church ? Whether it is not to be wished that some 
 parts of our liturgy and homilies were publicly read 
 in the Irish language ; and whether, in these 
 views, it may not be right to breed up some of the 
 better sort of children in the charity-schools, and 
 qualify them for missionaries, catechists, and 
 readers?" What Berkeley desired to see, Me- 
 thodism would exactly have supplied, could it have 
 been taken into the service of the church ; and 
 this might have been done in Ireland, had it not 
 been for the follies and extravagances by which it 
 had rendered itself obnoxious in England at its 
 commencement. 
 
 Twelve years after the publication of the Querist, 
 John Wesley landed in Dublin, where one of his 
 preachers, by name Williams, had formed a small 
 society. The curate of St. Mary's lent him his 
 mlpit, and his first essay was not very promising ; 
 for he preached from it, he says, to as gay and 
 senseless a congregation as he had ever seen. The 
 clergyman who gave this proof of his good-will dis- 
 approved, however, of his employing lay preachers, 
 
 s3 
 
g62 METHODISM IN- IRELAND. 
 
 and of his preaching any where but in a church ; 
 and told him that the Archbishop of Dublin was 
 resolved to suffer no such irregularities in his dio- 
 cese. Wesley, therefore, called on the archbishop, 
 and says, that, in the course of a long conversa- 
 tion, he answered abundance of objections ; some, 
 perhaps, he removed ; and, if he did not succeed 
 in persuading the prelate of the utility of Me- 
 thodism, he must certainly have satisfied him that 
 he was not to be prevented from pursuing his own 
 course^ 
 
 i Wesley's first impressions of the Irish were very 
 favourable; a people so generally civil he had 
 never seen, either in Europe or America. Even 
 when he failed to impress them, they listened re- 
 spectfully. " Mockery," said he, " is not the 
 custom here : all attend to what is spoken in the 
 name of God. They do not understand the 
 making sport with sacred things ; so that whether 
 they approve or not, they behave with seriousness." 
 He even thought that, if he or his brother could 
 have remained a few months at Dublin, they might 
 have formed a larger society than in London, the 
 people in general being of a more teachable spirit 
 than in most parts of England ; but, on that very 
 account, he observed, they must be watched over 
 with the more care, being equally susceptible of 
 good or ill impressions. " What a nation," he 
 says, " is this ! every man, woman, and child, ex- 
 cept, a few of the great vulgar, not only patiently, 
 but gladly suffer the work of exhortation I" And 
 he called them an immeasurably loving people. 
 
 
METHODISM IN IRELAND. 263 
 
 There was, indeed, no cause to complain of insen- 
 sibility in his hearers, as in Scotland. He excited 
 as much curiosity and attention as he could desire j 
 but, if Methodism had been opposed by popular 
 outcry, and by mobs in England, it was not to be 
 expected that it could proceed without molestation 
 in Ireland. In Wesley's own words, " The roaring 
 lion began to shake himself here also." 
 
 The Romish priests were the first persons to take 
 the alarm. One of them would sometimes come, 
 when a Methodist was preaching, and drive away 
 his hearers like a flock of sheep. A Catholic mob 
 broke into their room at Dublin, and destroyed 
 every thing : several of the rioters ^were appre- 
 hended, but the grand jury threw out the bills 
 against them ; for there were but too many of the 
 Protestants who thought the Methodists fair game. 
 It happened that Cennick, preaching on Christmas- 
 day, took for his text these words from St. Luke's 
 Gospel : " And this shall be a sign unto you : ye 
 shall And the babe, wrapped in swaddling clothes, 
 lying in a manger." A Catholic who was present, 
 and to whom the language of Scripture was a ■ no- 
 velty, thought this so ludicrous, that he called the 
 preacher a Swaddler, in derision; and this un- 
 meaning word became the nickname of the Me- 
 thodists, and had all the effect of the most oppro- 
 brious appellation. At length, when Charles Wesley 
 was at Cork, a mob was raised against him and his 
 followers in that city, under the guidance of one 
 Nicholas Butler, who went about the streets dressed 
 in a clergyman's gown and band, with a Bible in 
 
 s4 
 
264) METHODISM IN IRELAND. 
 
 one hand, and a bundle of ballads for sale in th 
 other. Strange as it may appear, this blackguard 
 relied upon the approbation and encouragement of 
 the mayor ; and when that magistrate was asked 
 whether he gave Butler leave to beset the houses 
 of the Methodists with a mob, and was required to 
 put a stop to the riots, he replied, that he neither 
 gave him leave nor hindered him : and when, with 
 much importunity, a man, whose house was at- 
 tacked, prevailed upon him to repair to the spot, 
 and, as he supposed, afford him some protection, 
 the mayor said aloud, in the midst of the rabble, 
 "It is your own fault for entertaining these 
 preachers. If you will turn them out of your 
 house, I will engage there shall be no more harm 
 done ; but if you will not turn them out, you must 
 take what you will get." Upon this the mob set 
 up a huzza, and threw stones faster than before. 
 The poor man exclaimed, " This is fine usage un- 
 der a Protestant government ! If I had a priest 
 saying mass in every room of it, my house would 
 not be touched :" to which the mayor made an- 
 swer, that " the priests were tolerated, but he was 
 not." 
 
 These riots continued many days. The mob 
 paraded the streets, armed with swords, staves, and 
 pistols, crying out, " Five pounds for a Swaddler's 
 head!" Many persons, women as well as men, were 
 bruised and wounded, to the imminent danger of 
 their lives. Depositions of these outrages were 
 taken and laid before the grand jury ; but they 
 threw out all the bills, and, instead of affording relief 
 
 
METHODISM IN IRELAND. %65 
 
 or justice to the injured persons, preferred bills 
 against Charles Wesley, and nine of the Me- 
 thodists, as persons of ill-fame, vagabonds, and 
 common disturbers of His Majesty's peace, 
 praying that they might be transported. Butler 
 was now in high glory, and declared that he had 
 full liberty to do whatever he would, even to 
 murder, if he pleased. The prejudice against the 
 Methodists must have been very general, as well as 
 strong, before a Protestant magistrate, and a Pro- 
 testant grand jury in Ireland, would thus abet a 
 Catholic rabble in their excesses ; especially when 
 the Romans, as they called themselves, designated 
 the Methodists as often by the title of heretic dogs, 
 as by any less comprehensive appellation. The 
 cause must be found partly in the doctrines of the 
 Methodists, and partly in their conduct. Their 
 notions of perfection and assurance might well 
 seem fanatical, in the highest degree, if brought 
 forward, as they mostly were, by ignorant and 
 ardent men, who were not, like the Wesleys, care- 
 ful to explain and qualify the rash and indefensible 
 expressions. The watch-nights gave reasonable 
 ground for scandal ; and the zeal of the preachers 
 was not tempered with discretion, or softened by 
 humanity. One of them asked a young woman, 
 whether she had a mind to go to hell with her 
 father ; and Mr. Wesley himself, in a letter upon the 
 proceedings at Cork, justified this * brutality so 
 
 * This person, whose name was Jonathan Reeves, only acted upon a 
 principle which had been established at the third Conference. The 
 following part of the minutes upon that subject is characteristic :— 
 
METHODISM IN IRELAND. 
 
 far as to declare, that, unless he knew the circum- 
 stances of the case, he could not say whether it 
 was right or wrong ! 
 
 Several of the persons, whom the grand jury had 
 presented as vagabonds, appeared at the next as- 
 sizes. Butler was the first witness against them. 
 Upon being asked what his calling might be, he 
 replied, " I sing ballads." Upon which the judge 
 lifted up his hands, and said, " Here are six gen- 
 tlemen indicted as vagabonds, and the first accuser 
 is a vagabond by profession !" The next witness, 
 in reply to the same question, replied, " I am an 
 
 Q. 1 . Can an unbeliever (whatever he be in other respects) challenge 
 any thing of God's justice? 
 
 A. Absolutely nothing but hell. And this is a point which we can- 
 not too much insist on. 
 
 Q. 2. Do we empty men of their own righteousness, as we did at 
 first ? Do we sufficiently labour, when they begin to be convinced of 
 sin, to take away all they lean upon ? Should we not then endeavour, 
 with all our might, to overturn their false foundations ? 
 
 A. This was at first one of our principal points ; and it ought to be 
 so still ; for, till all other foundations are overturned, they cannot build 
 upon Christ. 
 
 Q.3. Did we not then purposely throw them into convictions ; into 
 strong sorrow and fear ? Nay, did we not strive to make them incon- 
 solable ; refusing to be comforted ? 
 
 A. We did; and so we should do still; for, the stronger the con- 
 viction, the speedier is the deliverance: and none so soon receive 
 the peace of God as those who steadily refuse all other comfort. 
 
 Q. 4. Let us consider a particular case. Were you, Jonathan 
 Reeves, before you received the peace of God, convinced that, not- 
 withstanding all you did, or could do, you were in a state of 
 damnation ? 
 
 J. R. I was convinced of it as fully as that I am now alive. 
 
 Q. 5. Are you sure that conviction was from God ? 
 
 J. R. I can have no doubt but that it was. 
 
 Q. 6. What do you mean by a state of damnation ? 
 
 J. R. A state wherein if a man dies he perisheth for ever. 
 
METHODISM IN IRELAND. 267 
 
 Anti-swaddler, my lord;" and the examination 
 ended in his being ordered out of court for con- 
 tempt. The judge delivered such an opinion as 
 became him upon the encouragement which had 
 been given to the rioters. In the ensuing year 
 Wesley himself visited Cork, and preached in a 
 place called Hammond's Marsh, to a numerous 
 but quiet assembly. As there was a report that 
 the mayor intended to prevent him from preach- 
 ing at that place again, Wesley, with more de- 
 ference to authority than he had shown in England, 
 desired two of his friends to wait upon him, and 
 say, that if his preaching there would be offensive, 
 he would give up the intention. The mayor did 
 not receive this concession graciously : he replied, 
 in anger, that there were churches and meetings 
 enough ; he would have no more mobs and riots 
 — no more preaching ; and if Mr. Wesley at- 
 tempted to preach, he was prepared for him. Some 
 person had said, in reply to one who observed that 
 the Methodists were tolerated by the king, they 
 should find that the mayor was king of Cork ; and 
 Mr. Wesley now found, that there was more mean- 
 ing in this than he had been disposed to allow. 
 When next he began preaching in the Methodist 
 room, the mayor sent the drummers to drum be- 
 fore the door. A great mob was by this means 
 collected, and when Wesley came out of the 
 house, they closed him in. He appealed to one 
 of the Serjeants to protect him ; but the man re- 
 plied, he had no orders to do so ; and the rabble 
 began to pelt him: by pushing on, however, and 
 
268 METHODISM IN IRELAND. 
 
 looking them fairly in the face, with his wonted 
 composure, he made way, and they opened to let 
 him pass. But a cry was set up, Hey for the Ro- 
 mans ! the congregation did not escape so well as 
 the leader ; many of them were roughly handled, 
 and covered with mud ; the house was presently 
 gutted, the floors were torn up, and, with the 
 window-frames and doors, carried into the street 
 and burnt : and the next day the mob made a 
 grand procession, and burnt Mr. Wesley in effigy. 
 The house was a second time attacked, and the 
 boards demolished, which had been nailed against 
 the windows ; and a fellow posted up a notice at 
 the public exchange, with his name affixed, that 
 he was ready to head any mob, in order to pull 
 down any house that should harbour a Swaddler. 
 
 The press also was employed against the Me- 
 thodists, but with little judgement and less ho- 
 nesty. One writer accused Mr. Wesley of " rob- 
 bing and plundering the poor, so as to leave them 
 neither bread to eat, nor raiment to put on." He 
 replied victoriously to this accusation : " A heavy 
 charge," said he, " but without all colour of truth ; 
 yea, just the reverse is true. Abundance of those 
 in Cork, Bandon, Limerick, and Dublin, as well as 
 in all parts of England, who, a few years ago, either 
 through sloth or profaneness, had not bread to eat, 
 or raiment to put on, have now, by means of the 
 preachers called Methodists, a sufficiency of both. 
 Since by hearing these, they have learned to fear 
 God, they have learned also to work with their 
 hands, as well as to cut oft' every needless expence* 
 
METHODISM IN IRELAND. 269 
 
 and to be good stewards of the mammon of un- 
 righteousness." He averred also, that the effect of 
 his preaching had reconciled disaffected persons to 
 the government ; and that they who became Me- 
 thodists were, at the same time, made loyal sub- 
 jects. He reminded his antagonists, that when 
 one of the English bishops had been asked what 
 could be done to stop these new preachers, the 
 prelate had replied, " If they preach contrary to 
 Scripture, confute them by Scripture ; if contrary 
 to reason, confute them by reason. But beware 
 you use no other weapons than these, either in op- 
 posing error, or defending the truth." He com- 
 plained that, instead of fair and honourable argu- 
 ment, he had been assailed at Cork with gross 
 falsehoods, mean abuse, and base scurrility. He 
 challenged any of his antagonists, or any who 
 would come forward, to meet him on even ground, 
 writing as a gentleman to a gentleman, a scholar 
 to a scholar, a clergyman to a clergyman. " Let 
 them," said he, " thus shew me wherein I have 
 preached or written amiss, and I will stand re- 
 proved before all the world ; but let them not con- 
 tinue to put persecution in the place of reason: 
 either private persecution, stirring up husbands to 
 threaten or beat their wives, parents their children, 
 masters their servants; gentlemen to. ruin their 
 tenants, labourers, or tradesmen, by turning them 
 out of their favour or cottages; employing, or 
 buying of them no more, because they worship 
 God according to their own conscience : or open, 
 bare-faced, noon-day Cork persecution, breaking 
 
270 METHODISM IN IRELAND. 
 
 open the houses of His Majesty's Protestant sub- 
 jects, destroying their goods, spoiling or tearing 
 the very clothes from their backs ; striking, bruis- 
 ing, wounding, murdering them in the streets; 
 dragging them through the mire, without any re- 
 gard to age or sex, not sparing even those of 
 tender years ; no, nor women, though great with 
 child ; but, with more than Pagan or Mahometan 
 barbarity, destroying infants that were yet un- 
 born." He insisted, truly, that this was a common 
 cause ; for, if the Methodists were not protected, 
 what protection would any men have? what se- 
 curity for their goods or lives, if a mob were to be 
 both judge, jury, and executioner ? " I fear God, 
 and honour the king," said he. " I earnestly de- 
 sire to be at peace with all men. I have not, 
 willingly, given any offence, either to the magi- 
 strates, the clergy, or any of the inhabitants of the 
 city of Cork ; neither do I desire any thing of 
 them, but to be treated (I will not say as a clergy- 
 man, a gentleman, or a christian) with such justice 
 and humanity as are due to a Jew, a Turk, or a 
 Pagan." 
 
 Whitefield visited Ireland, for the first time, in 
 the ensuing year, and found himself the safer for 
 the late transactions. Such outrages had com- 
 pelled the higher powers to interfere ; and, when 
 he arrived at Cork, the populace was in a state of 
 due subordination. He seems to have regarded 
 the conduct of Wesley and his lay-preachers with 
 no favourable eye : some dreadful offences, he said, 
 had been given ; and he condemned all politics as 
 3 
 
METHODISM IN IRELAND. 271 
 
 below the children of God ; alluding, apparently, 
 to the decided manner in which Wesley always in- 
 culcated obedience to government as one of the 
 duties of a Christian ; making it his boast, that, 
 whoever became a Methodist, became at the same 
 time a good subject. Though his success was not 
 so brilliant as in Scotland, it was still sufficient to 
 encourage and cheer him. " Providence," says 
 he, " has wonderfully prepared my way, and over- 
 ruled every thing for my greater acceptance. 
 Every where there seems to be a stirring among 
 the dry bones ; and the trembling lamps of God's 
 people have been supplied with fresh oil. The 
 word ran, and was glorified." Hundreds prayed 
 for him when he left Cork ; and many of the Ca- 
 tholics said, that, if he would stay, they would 
 leave their priests : but, on a second expedition to 
 Ireland, Whitefield narrowly escaped with his life. 
 He had been well received, and had preached once 
 or twice, on week days, in Oxminton Green; a 
 place which he describes as the Moorfields of 
 Dublin. The Ormond Boys, and the Liberty Boys, 
 (these were the current denominations of the mob- 
 factions at that time,) generally assembled there 
 every Sunday — -to fight; and Whitefield, mindful, 
 no doubt, of his success in a former enterprize, 
 under like circumstances, determined to take the 
 field on that day, relying upon the interference of 
 the officers and soldiers, whose barracks were close 
 by, if he should stand in need of protection. The 
 singing, praying, and preaching went on without 
 much interruption; only now and then a few 
 
272 METHODISM IN IRELAND* 
 
 stones, and a few clods of dirt, were thrown. After 
 the sermon, he prayed for success to the Prussian 
 arms, it being in time of war. Whether this prayer 
 offended the party-spirit of his hearers, or whether 
 the mere fact of his being a heretic, who went 
 about seeking to make proselytes, had excited, in 
 the catholic part of the mob, a determined spirit 
 of vengeance ; or whether, without any principle 
 of hatred or personal dislike, they considered him 
 as a bear, bull, or badger, whom they had an op- 
 portunity of tormenting, the barracks, through 
 which he intended to return as he had come, 
 were closed against him ; and when he endea- 
 voured to make his way across the green, the rabble 
 assailed him. " Many attacks,'* says he, " have I 
 had from Satan's children, but now you would 
 have thought he had been permitted to have given 
 me an effectual parting blow." Vollies of stones 
 came from all quarters, while he reeled to and fro 
 under the blows, till he was almost breathless, and 
 covered with blood. A strong beaver hat, which 
 served him for a while as a scull-cap, was knocked 
 off at last, and he then received many blows and 
 wounds on the head, and one large one near the 
 temple. "I thought of Stephen," says he, " and 
 was in great hopes that, like him, I should be dis- 
 patched, and go off, in this bloody triumph, to the 
 immediate presence of my Master." The door of 
 a minister's house was opened for him in time, 
 and he staggered in, and was sheltered there, tilf 
 a coach could be brought, and he was conveyed 
 safely away. 
 
METHODISM IN IRELAND. ^7^ 
 
 The bitter spirit of the more ignorant Catholics 
 was often exemplified. The itinerants were fre- 
 quently told, that it would be doing both God and 
 the church service to burn all such as them in one 
 fire ; and one of them, when he first went into the 
 county of Kerry, was received with the threat 
 that they would kill him, and make whistles of his 
 bones. Another was nearly murdered by a fero- 
 cious mob, one of whom set his foot upon his face, 
 swearing that he would tread the Holy Ghost out 
 of him. At Kilkenny, where the Catholics were 
 not strong enough to make a riot with much hope 
 of success, they gnashed at Wesley with their 
 teeth, after he had been preaching in an old bowl- 
 ing-green, near the Castle ; and one of them cried, 
 " Och ! what is Kilkenny come to !" But it was 
 from among the Irish Catholics that Wesley ob- 
 tained one of the most interesting of his coad- 
 jutors, and one of the most efficient also during 
 his short life. 
 
 Thomas Walsh, whom the Methodists justly 
 reckon among their most distinguished members, 
 was the son of a carpenter at Bally Lynn, in the 
 county of Limerick. His parents were strong Ro- 
 manists : they taught him the Lord's Prayer and 
 the Ave Maria, in Irish, which was his mother 
 tongue, and the hundred and thirtieth psalm in 
 Latin : and he was taught also, that all who differ 
 from the Church of Rome are in a state of dam- 
 nation. At eight years old he went to school to 
 learn English j and was afterwards placed with 
 one of his brothers, who was a schoolmaster, to 
 
 VOL. II. X 
 
274 METHODISM IN IRELAND. 
 
 learn Latin and mathematics. At nineteen he 
 opened a school for himself. The brother, by 
 whom he was instructed, had been intended for 
 the priesthood : he was a man of tolerable learning, 
 and of an enquiring mind, and seeing the errors of 
 the Romish church, he renounced it. ' This occa- 
 sioned frequent disputes with Thomas Walsh, who 
 was a strict Catholic ; the one alleging the tradi- 
 tions and canons of the church, the other appealing 
 to the law and to the testimony. " My brother, 
 why do you not read God's word ?" the elder 
 would say, " lay aside prejudice, and let us reason 
 together." After many struggles between the mis- 
 givings of his mind, and the attachment to the 
 opinions in which he had been bred up, and the 
 thought of his parents, and shame, and the fear 
 of man, this state of suspense became intolerable, 
 and he prayed to God in his trouble. " All things 
 are known to Thee," he said, in his prayer, " and 
 Thou seest that I want to worship Thee aright ! 
 Shew me the way wherein I ought to go, nor suffer 
 me to be deceived by men !" 
 
 He then went to his brother, determined either 
 to convince him, or to be convinced. Some other 
 persons of the Protestant persuasion were present : 
 they brought a Bible, and with it Nelson's Festivals 
 and Fasts of the Church of England ; and, with 
 these books before them, they discussed the subject 
 till midnight. It ended in his fair and complete 
 conversion. « I was constrained," said he, " to 
 give place to the light of truth : it was so con- 
 vincing, that I had nothing more to say ; I was 
 judged of all ; and at length confessed the weak- 
 
THOMAS WALSH. 275 
 
 ness of my former reasonings, and the strength of 
 those which were opposed to me. About one 
 o'clock in the morning I retired to my lodging, 
 and, according to my usual custom, went to 
 prayer ; but now only to the God of heaven. I 
 no longer prayed to any angel or spirit ; for I was 
 deeply persuaded, that ' there is but one God, 
 and one Mediator between God and man, the man 
 Christ Jesus.' Therefore I resolved no longer to 
 suffer any man to beguile me into a voluntary hu- 
 mility, in worshipping either saints or angels. 
 These latter I considered as * ministering spirits, 
 sent to minister to them who shall be heirs of sal- 
 vation.' But with regard to any worship being 
 paid them, one of themselves said, * See thou do 
 it not ; worship God, God only.' All my sophisms 
 on this head were entirely overthrown by a few 
 hours candid reading the Holy Scriptures, which 
 were become as a Janthorn to my feet;, and a lamp 
 to my paths, directing me in the way wherein I 
 should go." Soon afterwards he publicly abjured 
 the errors of the Church of Rome. * 
 
 
 * His disposition would have made him a saint in that church, but 
 his principles were truly catholic in the proper sense of that abused 
 ■word. " I bear them witness," says he, speaking of the Romanists, 
 <: that they have a zeal for God, though not according unto know- 
 ledge. Many of them love justice, mercy, and truth ; and may, not- 
 withstanding many errors in sentiment, and therefore in practice (since, 
 as is God's majesty, so is his mercy,) be dealt with accordingly. There 
 have been, doubtless, and still are amongst them, some burning and 
 ■shining lights ; persons who (whatever their particular sentiments may 
 be) are devoted to the service of Jesus Christ, according as their light 
 and opportunities admit. And, in reality, whatever opinions people 
 may hold, they are most approved of God, whose temper and behaviour 
 ■correspond with the model of his holy word. This, however, can be 
 
 T 2 
 
^76 METHODISM IN IRELAND, 
 
 This had been a sore struggle : a more painful 
 part of his progress was yet to come. He read the 
 Scriptures diligently, and the works of some of the 
 most eminent Protestant divines ; his conviction 
 was confirmed by this course of study ; and, from 
 
 no justification of general and public unscriptural tenets, such as are 
 many of those of the Church of Rome. It may be asked, then, why 
 did I leave their communion, since I thought so favourably of them ? 
 I answer, because I was abundantly convinced that, as a church, they 
 have erred from the right way, and adulterated the truths of God with 
 the inventions and traditions of men ; which the Scriptures, and even 
 celebrated writers of themselves, abundantly testify. God is my wit- 
 ness, that the sole motive which induced me to leave them, was an 
 unfeigned desire to know the way of God more perfectly, in order to 
 the salvation of my soul. For, although I then felt, and do yet feel 
 my heart to be, as the prophet speaks, deceitful and desperately 
 wicked with regard to God ; yet I was sincere in my reformation, 
 having, from the Holy Spirit, an earnest desire to save my soul. If it 
 should still be asked, But could I not be saved ? I answer, if I had 
 never known the truth of the Scriptures concerning the way of sal- 
 vation, nor been convinced that their principles were anti-scriptural» 
 then I might possibly have been saved in her communion, the merciful 
 God making allowance for my invincible ignorance. But I freely pro- 
 fess, that now, since God hath enlightened my mind, and given me to 
 see the truth, as it is in Jesus, if I had still continued a member of 
 the Church of Rome, - I could not have been saved. With regard to 
 others, I say nothing ; I know that every man must bear his own bur- 
 den, and give an account of himself to God. To our own Master both 
 they and I must stand or fall for ever. But love, however, and tender 
 compassion for their souls, constrained me to pour out a prayer to 
 God in their behalf: — All souls are Thine, O Lord God, and Thou 
 wiliest all to come to the knowledge of the truth, and be saved. For 
 this end Thou didst give thy only-begotten Son, that whosoever be- 
 lieveth in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life. I beseech 
 thee, O eternal God, shew thy tender mercies upon those poor souls 
 who have been long deluded by the God of this world, the Pope, and 
 his clergy. Jesus, thou lover of souls and friend of sinners, send to 
 them thy light and thy truth, that they may lead them. Oh let thy 
 bowels yearn over them, and call those straying sheep, now perishing 
 for the lack of knowledge, to the light of thy word, which is able to 
 make them wise to salvation, through faith which is in Thee." 
 
THOMAS WALSH. 277 
 
 perceiving clearly the fallacious nature and evil 
 consequences of the doctrine of merits, as held by 
 the Romanists, a dismal view of human nature 
 opened upon him. His soul was not at rest : it 
 was no longer harassed by doubts, but the peace 
 of God was wanting. In this state of mind, he 
 happened one evening to be passing along the 
 main street in Limerick, when he saw a great 
 crowd on the parade, and turning aside to know for 
 what they were assembled, found that Robert Swin- 
 dells, one of the first itinerants in Ireland, was then 
 delivering a sermon in the open air. The preacher 
 was earnestly enforcing the words of our Re- 
 deemer, — words which are worth more than all 
 the volumes of philosophy : " Come unto me all 
 ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give 
 you rest ! Take my yoke upon you, and learn of 
 me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye 
 shall find rest unto your souls ! For my yoke is 
 easy, and my burden is light." Walsh was pre- 
 cisely in that state which rendered him a fit re- 
 cipient for the doctrines which he now first heard. 
 He caught the fever of Methodism, and it went 
 through its regular course with all the accustomed 
 symptoms. Some weeks he remained in a miser- 
 able condition ; he could find no rest, either by 
 night or day. " When I prayed," says he, " I 
 was troubled; when I heard a sermon, I was 
 pierced as with darts and arrows." He could 
 neither sleep nor eat ; his body gave way under 
 this mental suffering, and at length he took to his 
 bed. After a while the re-action began ; fear and 
 
 t 3 
 
2JS METHODISM IN IRELAND. 
 
 wretchedness gradually gave place to the love of 
 God, and the strong desire for salvation : and the 
 crisis was brought on at a meeting, where, he says, 
 " the power of the Lord came down in the midst 
 of them ; the windows of heavens were opened, and 
 the skies poured down righteousness, and his heart 
 melted like wax before the tire." To the psycho- 
 logist it may be interesting to know, by what words 
 this state of mind was induced. It was by the ex- 
 clamation of the prophet, " Who is this that 
 Cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from 
 Bozrah ; this that is glorious in his apparel, travel- 
 ling in the greatness of his strength ?" a passage 
 which, with that that follows, is in the highest 
 strain of lyric sublimity ; it might seem little likely 
 to convey comfort to a spirit which had long been 
 inconsolable ; but its effect was like that of a spark 
 of fire upon materials which are ready to burst 
 into combustion. He cried aloud in the congre- 
 gation ; and, when the throe was past, declared 
 that he had now found rest, and was filled with 
 joy and peace in believing. 
 
 " And now," says he, " I felt of a truth, that 
 faith is the substance, or subsistence, of things 
 hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. 
 God, and the things of the invisible world, of 
 which I had only heard before by the hearing of 
 the ear, appeared now, in their true light, as sub- 
 stantial realities. Faith gave me to see a recon- 
 ciled God, and an all-sufficient Saviour. The 
 kingdom of God was within me. I drew water out 
 of the wells of salvation. I walked and talked 
 
THOMAS WALSH. 279 
 
 with God all the day long : whatsoever I believed 
 to be his will, I did with my whole heart. I could 
 unfeignedly love them that hated me, and pray 
 for them that despitefully used and persecuted me. 
 The commandments of God were my delight : I 
 not only rejoiced evermore, but prayed without 
 ceasing, and in every thing gave thanks : whether 
 I ate or drank, or whatever I did, it was in the 
 name of the Lord Jesus, and to the g? ory of God." 
 This case is the more remarkable, because the 
 subject was of a calm and thoughtful mind, a 
 steady and well-regulated temper, and a melan- 
 choly temperament, He had now to undergo 
 more obloquy and ill-will than had been brought 
 upon him by his renunciation of the errors of the 
 Romish church. That change his relations thought 
 was bad enough ; but, to become a Methodist, was 
 worse, and they gave him up as undone for ever. 
 And not his relations only, nor the Romanists — 
 " Acquaintances and neighbours," says he, " rich 
 and poor, old and young, clergy and laity, were 
 all against me. Some said I was an hypocrite, 
 others that I was mad ; others, judging more fa- 
 vourably, that I was deceived. Reformed and 
 unreformed I found to be just alike ; and that 
 many, who spoke against the Pope and the Inqui- 
 sition, were themselves, in reality, of the same 
 disposition." 
 
 Convinced that it was his duty now to become a 
 minister of that gospel which he had received, he 
 offered his services to Mr. Wesley, as one who be- 
 lieved, and that not hastily or lightly, but after 
 
 t 4 
 
280 METHODISM IN IRELAND. 
 
 ardent aspirations, and continued prayer and study 
 of the Scriptures, that he was inwardly moved by 
 the Holy Spirit to take upon himself that office. 
 He had prepared himself, by diligent study of the 
 Scriptures, which he read often upon his knees ; 
 and the prayer which he was accustomed to use at 
 such times, may excite the admiration of those 
 even in whom it shall fail to find sympathy. ' ' Lord 
 Jesus, I lay my soul at thy feet, to be taught and 
 governed by Thee. Take the veil from the mys- 
 tery, and shew me the truth as it is in Thyself. 
 Be thou my sun and star, by day and by night!" 
 Wesley told him it was hard to judge what God 
 had called him to, till trial had been made. He 
 encouraged him to make the trial, and desired him 
 to preach in Irish. The command of that lan- 
 guage gave him a great advantage. It was long 
 ago said in Ireland, " When you plead for your 
 life, plead in Irish." Even the poor Catholics list- 
 ened willingly, when they were addressed in their 
 mother tongue : his hearers frequently shed silent 
 tears, and frequently sobbed aloud, and cried for 
 mercy ; and in country towns the peasantry, who, 
 going there upon market-day, had stopt to hear 
 the preacher, from mere wonder and curiosity, 
 were oftentimes melted into tears, and declared 
 that they could follow him all over the world. 
 One, who had laid aside some money, which he 
 intended to bequeath, for the good of his soul, to 
 some priest or friar, offered to bequeath it to him 
 if he would accept it. In conversation, too, and 
 upon all the occasions which occurred in daily life, 
 
THOMAS WALSH* 281 
 
 — at inns, and upon the highway, and in the 
 streets, — this remarkable man omitted no oppor- 
 tunity of giving religious exhortation to those who 
 needed it ; taking care always not to shock the 
 prejudices of those whom he addressed, and to 
 adapt his speech to their capacity. Points of dis- 
 pute, whether they regarded the difference of 
 churches, or of doctrines, he wisely avoided ; sin, 
 and death, and judgment, and redemption, were 
 his themes ; and upon these themes he enforced 
 so powerfully at such times, that the beggars, to 
 whom he frequently addressed himself in the 
 streets, would fall on their knees, and beat their 
 breasts, weeping, and crying for mercy. 
 
 Many calumnies were invented to counteract 
 the effect which this zealous labourer produced 
 wherever he went. It was spread abroad that he 
 had been a servant boy to a Romish priest, and 
 having stolen his master's books, had learned, by 
 that means, to preach. But it was not from the 
 Catholics alone that he met with opposition. He 
 was once waylaid near the town of Rosgrea, 
 by about fourscore men, armed with sticks, and 
 bound by oath in a confederacy against him : they 
 were so liberal a mob, that, provided they could 
 reclaim him from Methodism, they appeared not 
 to care what they made of him ; and they insisted 
 upon bringing a Romish priest, and a minister 
 of the Church of England, to talk with him. 
 Walsh, with great calmness, explained to them, 
 that he contended with no man concerning opi- 
 nions, nor preached against particular churches, 
 
282 METHODISM IN IRELAND. 
 
 but against sin and wickedness in all. And he so 
 far succeeded in mitigating their disposition toward 
 him, that they offered to let him go, provided he 
 would swear never again to come to Rosgrea. 
 Walsh would rather have suffered martyrdom than 
 have submitted to such an oath, and martyrdom 
 was the alternative which they proposed ; for they 
 carried him into the town, where the whole rabble 
 surrounded him, and it was determined that he 
 should either swear, or be put into a well. The 
 courage with which he refused to bind himself by 
 any oath or promise, made him friends even among 
 so strange an assembly : some cried out vehemently 
 that he should go into the well ; others took his 
 part : in the midst of the uproar, the parish minister 
 came up, and, by his interference, Walsh was per- 
 mitted to depart. At another country town, about 
 twenty miles from Cork, the magistrate, who was 
 the rector of the place, declared he would commit 
 him to prison, if he did not promise to preach no 
 more in those parts. Walsh replied, by asking if 
 there were no swearers, drunkards, sabbath-break- 
 ers, and the like, in those parts; adding that, if, 
 after he should have preached there a few times, 
 there appeared no reformation among them, he 
 would never come there again. Not satisfied with 
 such a proposal, the magistrate committed him to 
 prison : but Walsh was popular in that town ; the 
 people manifested a great interest in his behalf; 
 he preached to them from the prison-window, and 
 it was soon thought advisable to release him. He 
 was more cruelly handled by the Presbyterians in 
 
THOMAS WALSH. 283 
 
 the north of Ireland : the usage which he received 
 from a mob of that persuasion, and the exertions 
 which he made to escape from them, threw him 
 into a fever, which confined him for some time to 
 his bed: and he professed that, in all hisjourney- 
 ings, and in his intercourse among people of many 
 or most denominations, he had met with no such 
 treatment ; no, not even from the most enraged 
 of the Romanists themselves. 
 
 The life of Thomas Walsh might almost convince 
 a* Catholic, that saints are to be found in other 
 communions, as well in the church of Rome. 
 Theopathy was, in him, not merely the ruling, 
 it was the only passion : his intellect was of no 
 common order; but this passion, in its excess, 
 acted like a disease upon a mind that was, by con- 
 stitution, melancholy. To whatever church he 
 had belonged, the elements of his character would 
 have been the same : The only difference would 
 have been in its manifestation. As a Romanist, he 
 might have retired to a cell or an hermitage, con- 
 tented with securing his own salvation, by per- 
 petual austerity and prayer, and a course of con- 
 tinual self-tormenting. But he could not have 
 been more dead to the world, nor more entirely 
 possessed by a devotional spirit. His friends de- 
 scribed him as appearing like one who had re- 
 turned from the other world ; and perhaps it was 
 this unearthly manner which induced a Romish 
 priest to assure his flock, that the Walsh, who had 
 turned heretic, and went about preaching, was 
 dead long since ; and that he who preached under 
 
284 METHODISM IN IRELAND. 
 
 that name, was the devil in his shape. It is said 
 that he walked through the streets of London with 
 as little attention to all things around him, as if he 
 had been in a wilderness, unobservant of whatever 
 would have attracted the sight of others, and as 
 indifferent to all sounds of excitement, uproar, 
 and exultation, as to the passing wind. He 
 shewed the same insensibility to the influence of 
 fine scenery and sunshine : the only natural object, 
 of which he spoke with feeling, was the starry 
 firmament, — for there he beheld infinity. 
 
 With all this, the zeal of this extraordinary man 
 was such, that, as he truly said of himself, the 
 sword was too sharp for the scabbard. At five- 
 and-twenty he might have been taken for forty 
 years of age ; and he literally wore himself out 
 before he attained the age of thirty, by the most 
 unremitting and unmerciful labour, both of body 
 and mind. His sermons were seldom less than an 
 hour long, and they were loud as well as long. 
 Mr. Wesley always warned his preachers against 
 both these errors, and considered Walsh as, in 
 in some degree, guilty of his own death, by the ex- 
 cessive exertion which he made at such times, 
 notwithstanding frequent advice, and frequent re- 
 solutions, to restrain the vehemence of his spirit. 
 He was not less intemperate in study. Wesley 
 acknowledged him to be the best biblical scholar 
 whom he had ever known : if he were questioned 
 concerning any Hebrew word in the Old, or any 
 Greek one in the New Testament, he would tell, 
 after a pause, how often it occurred in the Bible, 
 
 6 
 
THOMAS WALSH. 285 
 
 and what it meant in every place r Hebrew was 
 his favourite study : he regarded it as a language 
 of divine origin, and therefore perfect : " O truly 
 laudable and worthy study !" he exclaims concern- 
 ing it : " O industry above all praise ! whereby a 
 man is enabled to converse with God, with holy 
 angels, with patriarchs, and with prophets, and 
 clearly to unfold to men the mind of God from the 
 language of God !" And he was persuaded that 
 he had not attained the full and familiar knowledge 
 of it, which he believed that he possessed, without 
 special assistance from Heaven. At this study he 
 frequently sate up late ; and his general time of 
 rising was at four. When he was entreated to 
 allow himself more sleep, by one who saw that he 
 was wasting away to death, his reply was, " Should 
 a man rob God ?" His friends related things of 
 him which would have been good evidence in a 
 suit for canonization. Sometimes he was lost, 
 they say, in glorious absence on his knees, with 
 his face heavenward, and arms clasped round his 
 breast, in such composure, that scarcely could he 
 be perceived to breathe. His soul seemed absorbed 
 in God ; and from the serenity, and " something 
 resembling splendour, which appeared on his 
 countenance, and in all his gestures afterwards, it 
 might easily be discovered what he had been 
 about." Even in sleep, the devotional habit still 
 predominated, and " his soul went out in groans, 
 and sighs, and tears to God/' They bear witness 
 to his rapts and extasies, and record circum- 
 stances which they themselves believed to be proofs 
 
286 METHODISM IN IRELAND. 
 
 of his communion with the invisible world. With 
 all this intense devotion, the melancholy of his 
 disposition always predominated : and though he 
 held the doctrines of sanctification and assurance* 
 and doubted not but that his pardon was sealed 
 by the blood of the covenant, no man was ever 
 more distressed in mind, nor laboured under a 
 greater dread of death. Even when he was en- 
 forcing the vital truths of religion, with the whole 
 force of his intellect, and with all his heart, and 
 soul, and strength, thoughts would come across 
 him which he considered as diabolical suggestions ; 
 and he speaks with horror of the agony w T hich 
 he endured in resisting them. Indeed he was 
 thoroughly persuaded that he was an especial ob- 
 ject of hatred to the devil. This persuasion sup- 
 plied a ready solution for the nervous affections to 
 which he was subject, and, in all likelihood, fre- 
 quently produced those abhorred thoughts, which 
 were to him a confirmation of that miserable be- 
 lief. Romish superstition affords a remedy for 
 this disease ; for, if relics and images fail to avert 
 the fit, the cilice and the scourge amuse the pa- 
 tient with the belief that he is adding to his stock 
 of merits, and distress of mind is commuted for 
 the more tolerable sense of bodily pain. 
 
 For many years Mr. Wesley kept up an inter- 
 change of preachers between England and Ireland ; 
 and when Walsh was in London, he preached in 
 Irish at a place called Short's Garden, and in 
 Moorfields. Many of his poor countrymen were 
 attracted. by the desire of hearing their native 
 
THOMAS WALSH. 287 
 
 tongue, and, as others also gathered round, won- 
 dering at the novelty, he addressed them after- 
 wards in English. But, on such occasions, mere 
 sound* and sympathy will sometimes do the work, 
 without the aid of intelligible words. It is related 
 in Walsh's life, that, once in Dublin, when he 
 was preaching in Irish, among those who were af- 
 fected by the discourse, there was one man " cut 
 to the heart" though he did not understand the 
 language. Whatever language he used, he was a 
 powerful preacher; and contributed, more than 
 any other man, to the diffusion of Methodism in 
 Ireland. All circumstances were as favourable for 
 the progress of Methodism in that country as they 
 were adverse to it in Scotland : the inefficiency of 
 the Established Church, the total want, not of dis- 
 cipline alone, but of order, and the ardour of the 
 Irish character, of all people the most quick and 
 lively in their affections. And as his opposition 
 to the Calvinistic notions made Wesley unpopular 
 among the Scotch, in Ireland he obtained a cer- 
 
 * The most extraordinary convert that ever was made, was a certain 
 William Heazley, in the county of Antrim, a man who was deaf and 
 dumb from his birth. By mere imitation, and the desire of being like 
 his neighbours, he was converted, in the 25th year of his age, from a pro- 
 fligate life; for his delight had been in drinking, cock-fighting, and other 
 brutal amusements. On the days when the leader of the Society was 
 expected, he used to watch for him, and run from house to house to 
 assemble the people; and he would appear exceedingly mortified if 
 the leader did not address him as he did the others. This man fol- 
 lowed the occupation of weaving linen, and occasionally shaving, which 
 was chiefly a Sunday's work ; but after his conversion, he never would 
 shave any person on the Sabbath. 
 
288 METHODISM IN IRELAND. 
 
 tain degree of favour, for his decided opposition to 
 the Romish church ; while he was too wise a man 
 ever to provoke hostility, by introducing any dis- 
 putatious matter in his sermons. After • a few 
 years he speaks of himself as having, he knew not 
 how, become an honourable man there : " The 
 scandal of the cross," says he, " is ceased, and all 
 the kingdom, rich and poor, Papists and Protest- 
 ants, behave with courtesy, nay, and seeming 
 good-will." Perhaps he was hardly sensible how 
 much of this was owing to the change which had 
 imperceptibly been wrought in his own conduct, 
 by the sobering influence of time. The ferment of 
 his spirit had abated, and his language had be- 
 come far less indiscreet ; nor, indeed, had he ever, 
 in Ireland, provoked the indignation of good men, 
 by the extravagances which gave such just offence 
 in England at the beginning of his career. Some 
 of the higher clergy, therefore, approved and 
 countenanced his labours ; and it would not have 
 been difficult, in that country, to have made the 
 Methodists as subservient to the interests of the 
 Established Church, as the Regulars are to the 
 Church of Rome, 
 
 Among so susceptible a people, it might be ex- 
 pected that curious effects would frequently be pro- 
 duced by the application of so strong a stimulant. 
 A lady wrote from Dublin to Mr. Wesley in the 
 following remarkable words : — " Reverend Sir, the 
 most miserable and guilty of all the human race, 
 who knew you when she thought herself one of 
 
METHODISM IN IRELAND. 289 
 
 the happiest, may be ashamed to write, or speak 
 to you, in her present condition ; but the des- 
 perate misery of my state makes me attempt any 
 thing that may be a means of removing it. My 
 request is, that you, dear Sir, and such of your 
 happy people who meet in Band, and ever heard 
 the name of that miserable wretch P. T., would 
 join in fasting and prayer on a Tuesday, the day 
 on which I was born, that the Lord would have 
 mercy on me, and deliver me from the power of 
 the devil, from the most uncommon blasphemies, 
 and the expectation of hell, which I labour under, 
 without power to pray, or hope for mercy. May 
 be the Lord may change my state, and have mercy 
 on me, for the sake of his people's prayer. In- 
 deed I cannot pray for myself; and, if I could, I 
 have no hopes of being heard. Nevertheless, He, 
 seeing his people afflicted for me, may, on that 
 account, deliver me from the power of the devil. 
 Oh, what a hell have I upon earth ! I would not 
 charge God foolishly, for he has been very mer- 
 ciful to me ; but I brought all this evil on myself 
 by sin, and by not making a right use of his mercy. 
 Pray continually for me ; for the prayer of faith 
 will shut and open heaven. It may be a means of 
 my deliverance, which will be one of the greatest 
 miracles of mercy ever known.'* 
 
 If Mr. Wesley received this letter in time, it 
 cannot be doubted but that he would have com- 
 plied with the request. The unhappy writer was 
 in Swift's Hospital, and, perhaps, in consequence 
 
 VOL. II. u 
 
290 METHODISM IN IRELAND. 
 
 of not receiving an answer to her letter, she got 
 her mother to address a similar one to the preacher 
 at Cork, and he appointed two Tuesdays to be ob- 
 served, as she had requested, both in that city and 
 at Limerick. There may be ground for reasonable 
 suspicion that Methodism had caused the disease ; 
 the Cork preacher was apprised, by a brother at 
 Dublin, of the manner in which it operated the 
 cure. " I have to inform you of the mercy of 
 God to Miss T. She was brought from Swift's 
 Hospital on Sunday evening, and on Tuesday night, 
 about ten o'clock, she was in the utmost distress. 
 She thought she saw Christ and Satan fighting for 
 ner ; and that she heard Christ say, * I will have 
 her !' In a moment hope sprung up in her heart ; 
 the promises of God flowed in upon her ; she cried 
 out, I am taken from hell to heaven ! She now 
 declares she could not tell whether she was in the 
 body or out of it. She is much tempted, but in 
 her right mind, enjoying a sense of the mercy of 
 God. She remembers all that is past, and knows 
 it was a punishment for her sins." As nearly 
 twenty years elapsed before Wesley published 
 these letters, it may be inferred that the cure was 
 permanent. 
 
 " Are there any drunkards here ?" said a preacher 
 one day in his sermon, applying his discourse in 
 that manner which the Methodists have found so 
 effectual. A poor Irishman looked up, and replied,, 
 " Yes, I am one !" And the impression which he 
 then received, enabled him to throw off his evil 
 
METHODISM IN IRELAND. 291 
 
 habits, and become, from that day forward, a re- 
 claimed man. The Methodists at Wexford met in 
 a long barn, and used to fasten the door, because 
 they were annoyed by a Catholic mob. Being 
 thus excluded from the meeting, the mob became 
 curious to know what was done there ; and taking 
 counsel together, they agreed that a fellow should 
 get in and secrete himself before the congregation 
 assembled, so that he might see all that was going 
 on, and, at a proper time, let in his companions. 
 The adventurer could find no better means of con- 
 cealment than by getting into a sack which he 
 found there, and lying down in a situation near the 
 entrance. The people collected, secured the door 
 as usual, and, as usual, began their service by sing- 
 ing. The mob collected also, and, growing im- 
 patient, called repeatedly upon their friend Patrick 
 to open the door ; but Pat happened to have a 
 taste for music, and he liked the singing so well, 
 that he thought, as he afterwards said, it would be 
 a thousand pities to disturb it. And when the 
 hymn was done, and the itinerant began to pray, 
 in spite of all the vociferation of his comrades, he 
 thought that, as he had been so well pleased with 
 the singing, he would see how he liked the prayer ; 
 but, when the prayer proceeded, " the power of 
 God," says the relater, " did so confound him, 
 that he roared out with might and main ; and not 
 having power to get out of the sack, lay bawling 
 and screaming, to the astonishment and dismay of 
 the congregation, who probably supposed that Sa- 
 il 2 
 
292 METHODISM IN IRELAND. 
 
 tan himself was in the barn. Somebody, at last, 
 ventured to see what was in the sack ; and help- 
 ing him out, brought him up, confessing his sins, 
 and crying for mercy." This is the most comical 
 case of instantaneous conversion that ever was re- 
 corded, and yet the man is said to have been 
 thoroughly converted. 
 
 A memorable instance of the good effects pro- 
 duced by Methodism was shown, in a case of ship- 
 wreck upon the Isle of Cale, off the coast of the 
 county of Down. There were several Methodist 
 societies in that neighbourhood, and some of the 
 members went wrecking with the rest of the people, 
 and others bought, or received presents of the 
 plundered goods. As soon as John Prickard, who 
 was at that time travelling in the Lisburn circuit, 
 heard of this, he hastened to enquire into it, and 
 found that all the societies, except one, had, more 
 or less, " been partakers of the accursed thing." 
 Upon this he preached repentance and restitution ; 
 and, with an almost broken heart, read out sixty- 
 three members on the following Sunday, in Down- 
 patrick ; giving notice, that those who would 
 make restitution should be restored, at a proper 
 time, but that for those who would not, their names 
 should be recorded in the general steward's book, 
 with an account of their crime and obstinacy. 
 This severity produced much of its desired effect, 
 and removed the reproach which would otherwise 
 have attached to the Methodists. Some persons, 
 who did not belong to the Society, but had merely 
 
 14 
 
 
METHODISM IN IRELAND. ^\fO 
 
 attended as hearers, were so much affected by the 
 exhortation and the example, that they desired to 
 make restitution with them. The owners of the 
 vessel empowered Prickard to allow salvage ; but, 
 with a proper degree of austerity, he refused to do 
 this, because the people, in the first instance, had 
 been guilty of a crime. This affair deservedly 
 raised the character of the Methodists in those 
 parts ; and it was observed, by the gentry in the 
 neighbourhood, that if the ministers of every other 
 persuasion had acted as John Prickard did, most 
 of the goods might have been saved. 
 
 " Although I had many an aching head and 
 pained breast," says one of the itinerants, speak- 
 ing of his campaigns in Ireland, " yet it was de- 
 lightful to see hundreds attending to my blunder- 
 ing preaching, with streaming eyes, and attention 
 still as night. " " The damp, dirty, * smoky 
 
 * There is a letter of advice from Mr. Wesley to one of his Irish 
 preachers (written in 1769), which gives a curious picture of the people 
 for whom such advice could be needful. — " Dear brother," he says, 
 
 I shall now tell you the things which have been, more or less, upon 
 my mind, ever since I was in the north of Ireland. If you forget 
 them, you will be a sufferer, and so will the people ; if you observe 
 them, it will be good for both. Be steadily serious. There is no 
 country upon earth where this is more necessary than Ireland, as you 
 are generally encompassed with those who, with a little encourage- 
 ment, would laugh or trifle from morning till night. In every town 
 visit all you can, from house to house ; but on this, and every other 
 occasion, avoid all familiarity with women : this is deadly poison, both 
 to them and to you. You cannot be too wary in this respect. Be active, 
 be diligent ; avoid all laziness, sloth, indolence ; fly from every de- 
 gree, every appearance of it, else you will never be more than half a 
 Christian. Be cleanly: in this let the Methodists take pattern by the 
 
 U 3 
 
294< METHODISM IN IRELAND, 
 
 cabins of Ulster," says another, " were a good 
 trial j but what makes a double amends for all 
 these inconveniences, to any preacher who loves 
 the word of God. is, that our people here are in 
 general the most zealous, lively, affectionate Chris- 
 tians we have in the kingdom." Wesley himselfj 
 while he shuddered at the ferocious character of 
 Irish history, loved the people ; and said, he had 
 seen as real courtesy in their cabins, as could be 
 found at St. James's or the Louvre. He found 
 them more * liberal than the English Methodists, 
 
 Quakers. Avoid all nastiness, dirt, slovenliness, both in your person, 
 clothes, house, and all about you. Do not stink above ground ! 
 
 ' Let thy mind's sweetness have its operation 
 Upon thy person, clothes, and habitation.' 
 
 Herbert. 
 Whatever clothes you have, let them be whole : no rents, no tatters-, 
 no rags; these are a scandal to either man or woman, being another 
 fruit of vile laziness. Mend your clothes, or I shall never expect to see 
 you mend your lives. Let none ever see a ragged Methodist. Clean 
 yourselves of lice : take pains in this. Do not cut off your hair; but 
 clean it, and keep it clean. Cure yourself and your family of the itch ; 
 a spoonful of brimstone will cure you. To let this run from year to 
 year, proves both sloth and uncleanness : away with it at once ; let not 
 the North be any longer a proverb of reproach to all the nation. Use 
 no snuff, unless prescribed by a physician. I suppose no other nation 
 in Europe is in such vile bondage to this silly, nasty, dirty custom, as 
 the Irish are. Touch no dram : it is liquid fire ; it is a sure, though 
 slow, poison ; it saps the very springs of life. In Ireland, above all 
 countries in the world, I would sacredly abstain from this, because 
 the evil is so general; and to this, and snuff, and smoky cabins, I 
 impute the blindness which is so exceeding common throughout the 
 nation. I particularly desire, wherever you have preaching, that there 
 may be a Little House. Let this be got without delay. Wherever it 
 is not, let none expect to see me." 
 
 * " The meeting-house at Athlone was built and given, with the ground 
 on which it stood, by a single gentleman. In Cork, one person; 
 
 12 
 
METHODISM IN IRELAND. 
 
 295 
 
 and he lived to see a larger society at Dublin than 
 any in England, except that in the metropolis. 
 
 Mr. Thomas Jones, gave between three and four hundred pounds to- 
 wards the preaching-house. Towards that in Dublin, Mr. Lunell gave 
 four hundred pounds. I know no such benefactorg among the Me- 
 thodists in England." Journal, xvi. p. 25. 
 
 u 4/ 
 
206 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 It is with the minds of men as with fermented 
 liquors ; they are long in ripening, in proportion 
 to their strength. Both the Wesleys had much to 
 work off, and the process, therefore, was of long 
 continuance. In Charles it was perfected about 
 middle life. His enthusiasm had spent itself, and 
 his opinions were modified by time, as well as so- 
 bered by experience. In the forty-first year of his 
 age, he was married by his brother, at Garth, in 
 Brecknockshire, to Miss Sarah Gwynne. " It 
 was a solemn day," says John, " such as became 
 the dignity of a christian marriage." For a while 
 he continued to itinerate, as he had been wont j 
 but, after a few years, he became a settled man, 
 and was contented to perform the duties and enjoy 
 the comforts of domestic life. 
 
 John also began to think of marriage, after 
 his brother's example, though he had published 
 " Thoughts on a single life," wherein he advised 
 all unmarried persons, who were able to receive it, 
 to follow the counsel of our Lord and of St. Paul, 
 and " remain single for the kingdom of heaven's 
 sake." He did not, indeed, suppose that such a 
 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. ^97 
 
 precept could have been intended for the many, 
 and assented fully to the sentence of the apostle, 
 who pronounced the "forbidding to marry to be 
 a doctrine of devils." Some notion, however, that 
 the marriage state was incompatible with holiness, 
 seems, in consequence, perhaps, of this treatise, 
 to have obtained ground among some of his fol- 
 lowers at one time ; for it was asked, at the Con- 
 ference of 1745, whether a sanctified believer could 
 be capable of marriage. The answer was, " Why 
 should he not ?" and probably the question was 
 asked for the purpose of thus condemning a pre- 
 posterous opinion. When he himself resolved to 
 marry, it appears that he made both his determina- 
 tion and his choice without the knowledge of 
 Charles ; and that Charles, when he discovered the 
 affair, found means, for reasons which undoubtedly 
 he must have thought sufficient, to break off the 
 match. But John was offended, and, for a time, 
 there was a breach of that union between them, 
 which had never before been disturbed. It was 
 not long before he made a second choice, and, un- 
 fortunately for himself, no one then interfered. 
 
 The treatise which he had written in recommend- 
 ation of celibacy, placed him in an unfortunate situ- 
 ation; and, for the sake of appearances, he consulted 
 certain religious friends, that they might advise 
 him to follow his own inclination. His chief 
 counsellor was Mr. Perronet, vicar of Shoreham. 
 " Having received a full answer from Mr. Per- 
 ronet," he says, te I was clearly convinced that I 
 
298 
 
 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 ought to marry. For many years I remained 
 single, because I believed I could be more useful 
 in a single than in a married state ; and I praised 
 God who enabled me so to do. I now as fully be- 
 lieved, that, in my present circumstances, I might 
 be more useful in a married state ; into which, 
 upon this clear conviction, and by the advice of 
 my friends, I entered a few days after." He 
 thought it expedient, too, to meet the single men 
 of the Society in London, and show them " on 
 how many accounts it was good for those who had 
 received that gift from God, to remain single for 
 the kingdom of heaven's sake, unless when a par- 
 ticular case might be an exception to the general 
 rule !" To those who properly respected Mr. Wes- 
 ley, this must have been a painful scene : to his 
 blind admirers, no doubt, comic as the situation 
 was, it was an edifying one. 
 
 The lady whom he married was a widow, by 
 name Vizelle, with four * children, and an inde- 
 pendent fortune ; but he took care that this should 
 be settled upon herself, and refused to have any 
 
 * One of them quitted the profession of surgery, because, he said, 
 " it made him less sensible of human pain." Wesley says, when he 
 relates this, " I do not know (unless it unfits us for the duties of life) 
 that we can have too great a sensibility of human pain. Methinks I 
 should be afraid of losing any degree of this sensibility. And I have 
 known exceeding few persons who have carried this tenderness of 
 spirit to excess." He appears to have mentioned the conduct of his 
 son-in-law as to his honour; but he relates elsewhere the saying of 
 another surgeon in a right manly spirit : — " Mr. Wesley, you know I 
 would not hurt a fly; I would not give pain to any living thing; but, 
 if it were necessary, I would scrape all the flesh off a man's bones, and 
 never turn my head aside." 
 

 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 299 
 
 command over it. It was agreed also, before their 
 marriage, that he should not preach one sermon, 
 nor travel one mile the less on that account : "if 
 I thought I should," said he, " as well as I love 
 you, I would never see your face more." And in 
 his Journal at this time he says, " I cannot under- 
 stand how a Methodist preacher can answer it to 
 God, to preach one sermon, or travel one day less, 
 in a married than in a single state. In this respect, 
 surely, it remaineth, that they who have wives, be 
 as though they had none." For a little while she 
 travelled with him ; but that mode of life, and 
 perhaps the sort of company to which, in the course 
 of their journies, she was introduced, soon became 
 intolerable — as it must necessarily have been to 
 any woman who did not enter wholly into his 
 views, and partake of his enthusiasm, But, of all 
 women, she is said to have been the most unsuited 
 to him. Fain would she have made him, like 
 Marc Antony, give up all for love ; and being 
 disappointed in that hope, she tormented him in 
 such a manner, by her outrageous jealousy, and 
 abominable temper, that she deserves to be classed 
 in a triad with Xantippe and the wife of Job, as 
 one of the three bad wives. Wesley, indeed, v was 
 neither so submissive as Socrates, nor so patient as 
 the man of Uz. He knew that he was by nature 
 the stronger vessel, of the more worthy gender, 
 md lord and master by law ; and that the words, 
 honour and obey, were in the bond. " Know me," 
 said he, in one of his letters to her, " and know 
 yourself. Suspect me no more, asperse me no 
 
300 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 more, provoke me no more : do not any longer 
 contend for mastery, for power, money, or praise ; 
 be content to be a private insignificant person, 
 known and loved by God and me. Attempt no 
 more to abridge me of my liberty, which I claim 
 by the laws of God and man : leave me to be go- 
 verned by God and my own conscience ; then shall 
 I govern you with gentle sway, even as Christ the 
 church." He reminded her that she had laid to 
 his charge things that he knew not, robbed him, 
 betrayed his confidence, revealed his secrets, given 
 him a thousand treacherous wounds, and made it 
 her business so to do, under the pretence of vin- 
 dicating her own character ; " whereas," said he, 
 " of what importance is your character to mankind? 
 if you was buried just now, or, if you had never 
 lived, what loss would it be to the cause of God ?" 
 This was very true, but not Very conciliating ; and 
 there are few stomachs which could bear to have 
 humility administered in such doses. 
 
 " God," said he, in this same letter, " has used 
 many means to curb your stubborn will, and break 
 the impetuosity of your temper. He has given you 
 a dutiful, but sickly, daughter. He has taken 
 away one of your sons ; another has been a griev- 
 ous cross, as the third probably will be. He has 
 suffered you to be defrauded of much money : He 
 has chastened you with strong pain ; and still He 
 may say, how long liftest thou up thyself against 
 me? Are you more humble, more gentle, more 
 patient, more placable than you was ? I fear, quite 
 the reverse e I fear your natural tempers are rather 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 301 
 
 increased than diminished. Under all these con- 
 flicts, it might be an unspeakable blessing that you 
 have a husband who knows your temper, and can 
 bear with it ; who is still willing to forgive you all, 
 to overlook what is past, as if it had not been, 
 and to receive you with open arms ; only not while 
 you have a sword in your hand, with which you 
 are continually striking at me, though you cannot 
 hurt me. If, notwithstanding, you continue strik- 
 ing, what can I, what can all reasonable men 
 think, but that either you are utterly out of your 
 senses, or your eye is not single ; that you married 
 me only for my money ; that, being disappointed, 
 you was almost always out of humour : that this 
 laid you open to a thousand suspicions, which, 
 once awakened, could sleep no more. My dear 
 Molly, let the time past suffice. If you have not 
 (to prevent my giving it to bad women) robbed me 
 of my substance too ; if you do not blacken me, 
 on purpose that, when this causes a breach be- 
 tween us, no one may believe it to be your fault ; 
 stop, and consider what you do. As yet the 
 breach may be repaired : you have wronged me 
 much, but not beyond forgiveness. I love you 
 still, and am as clear from all other women as the 
 day I was born." 
 
 Had Mrs. Wesley been capable of understanding 
 her husband's character, she could not possibly 
 have been jealous ; but the spirit of jealousy pos- 
 sessed her, and drove her to the most unwarrant- 
 able actions. It is said that she frequently tra- 
 velled a hundred miles, for the purpose of watch- 
 ing, from a window, who was in the carriage with 
 
302 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 him when he entered a town. She searched his 
 pockets, opened his * letters, put his letters and 
 
 * There is no allusion in Wesley's Journal to his domestic unhap- 
 piness, unless it be in Journal xi. p. 9., where, after noticing some 
 difficulties upon the road, he says, " Between nine and ten came to 
 Bristol. Here I met with a trial of another kind : but this also shall 
 be for good." His letters throw some light upon this part of his his- 
 tory, which would not be worth elucidating, if it did not, at the same 
 time, elucidate his character. Writing to Mrs. S. R. (Sarah Ryan, a 
 most enthusiastic woman), he says, " Last Friday, after many severe 
 words, my wife left me, vowing she would see me no more. As I had 
 wrote to you the same morning, I began to reason with myself, till I 
 almost doubted whether I had done well in writing, or whether I ought 
 to write to you at all. After prayer, that doubt was taken away ; yet 
 I was almost sorry that I had written that morning. In the evening, 
 while I was preaching at the chapel, she came into the chamber where 
 I had left my clothes, searched my pockets, and found the letter there 
 which I had finished, but had not sealed. While she read it, God 
 broke her heart ; and I afterwards found her in such a temper, as I 
 have not seen her in for several years. She has continued in the same 
 ever since. So I think God has given a sufficient answer with regard 
 to our writing to each other." But he says to the same person, eight 
 years afterwards, " It has .frequently been said, and with some appear- 
 ance of truth, that you endeavour to monoi)oUze the affections of all 
 that fall into your hands ; that you destroy the nearest and dearest 
 connexion they had before, and make them quite cool and indifferent 
 to their most intimate friends. I do not at all speak on my own ac- 
 count ; I set myself out of the question ; but, if there be any thing of 
 the kind with regard to other people, I should be sorry both for them 
 and you." 
 
 There is an unction about his correspondence with this person, which 
 must have appeared like strong confirmation to so jealous a woman as 
 Mrs. Wesley. He says to her, " the conversing with you, either by 
 speaking or writing, is an unspeakable blessing to me. I cannot think 
 of you without thinking of God. Others often lead me to him ; but 
 it is, as it were, going round about: you bring me straight into his 
 presence. You have refreshed my bowels in the Lord : (Wesley is 
 very seldom guilty of this sort of canting and offensive language). I 
 not only excuse, but love your simplicity ; and whatever freedom you 
 use, it will be welcome. I can hardly avoid trembling for you ! upon 
 what a pinnacle do you stand ! Perhaps few persons in England have 
 been in so dangerous a situation as you are now. I know not whether 
 any other was ever so regarded, both by my brother and me, at the 
 same time." He questions her, not only about her thoughts, her ima- 
 ginations, and her reasonings, but even about her dreams. " Is there 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE, 303 
 
 papers into the hands of his enemies, in hopes 
 that they might be made use of to blast his cha- 
 racter ; and sometimes laid violent hands upon 
 him, and tore his hair. She frequently left his 
 house, and upon his earnest entreaties, returned 
 again ; till, after having thus disquieted twenty 
 years of his life, as far as it was possible for any 
 domestic vexations to disquiet a man whose life 
 was passed in loco-motion, she seized on part of 
 his Journals, and many other papers, which were 
 never restored, and departed, leaving word that 
 she never intended to return. He simply states 
 the fact in his Journal, saying, that he knew not 
 what the cause had been ; and he briefly adds, 
 Non earn reliqui, non dimisi, non revocabo ; I did 
 not forsake her, I did not dismiss her, I will not 
 recall her. Thus,- summarily, was a most injudi- 
 cious marriage dissolved. Mrs. Wesley lived ten 
 years after the separation, and is described in her 
 epitaph as a woman of exemplary piety, a tender 
 parent, and a sincere friend ; the tomb-stone says 
 nothing of her conjugal virtues. 
 
 no vanity or folly in your dreams i no temptation that almost over- 
 comes you ? And are you then as sensible of the presence of God, and 
 as full of prayer, as when you are waking?" She replies to this cu- 
 rious interrogation, " As to my dreams, I seldom remember them ; 
 but, when I do, I find in general they are harmless." This Sarah 
 Ryan was at one time housekeeper at the school at Kingswood. Her 
 account of herself, which is printed in the second volume of the Armi- 
 nian Magazine, is highly enthusiastic, and shows her to have been a 
 woman of heated fancy and strong natural talents. It appears, how- 
 ever, incidentally, in Wesley's letter, that though she professed to 
 have " a direct witness" of being saved from sin, she afterwards " fell 
 from that salvation." And, in another place, he notices her " littleness 
 of understandiii2." 
 
304 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 But even if John Wesley's marriage had proved 
 as happy in all other respects as Charles's, it would 
 not have produced upon him the same sedative 
 effect. Entirely as these two brothers agreed in 
 opinions and principles, and cordially as they had 
 acted together during so many years, there was a 
 radical difference in their dispositions. Of Charles 
 it has been said, by those who knew him best, that 
 if ever there was a human being who disliked 
 power, avoided pre-eminence, and shrunk from 
 praise, it was he : whereas no conqueror or poet 
 was ever more ambitious than John Wesley. 
 Charles could forgive an injury j but never again 
 trusted one whom he had found treacherous. John 
 could take men a second time to his confidence, 
 after the greatest wrongs and the basest usage : 
 perhaps, because he had not so keen an insight into 
 the characters of men as his brother ; perhaps, be- 
 cause he regarded them as his instruments, and 
 thought that all other considerations must give 
 way to the interests of the spiritual dominion 
 which he had acquired. It may be suspected that 
 Charles, when he saw the mischief and the villany, 
 as well as the follies, to which Methodism gave oc- 
 casion ; and when he perceived its tendency to a 
 separation from the Church, thought that he had 
 gone too far, and looked with sorrow to the con- 
 sequences which he foresaw. John's was an as- 
 piring and a joyous spirit, free from all regret for 
 the past, or apprehension for the future : his anti- 
 cipations were always hopeful ; and, if circum- 
 stances arose contrary to his wishes, which he was 
 unable to controul, he accommodated himself to 
 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 305 
 
 them, made what advantage of them he could, 
 and insensibly learnt to expect, with complacency, 
 as the inevitable end of his career, a schism which, 
 at the commencement, he would have regarded 
 with horror, as a dutiful and conscientious minister 
 of the Church of England. 
 
 In the first Conference it was asked, '* Do you 
 not entail a schism on the Church ? Is it not pro- 
 bable that your hearers, after your death, will be 
 scattered into all sects and parties ? or that they 
 will form themselves into a distinct sect ?" The 
 answer was, " We are persuaded the body of our 
 hearers will, even after our death, remain in the 
 Church, unless they be thrust out. We believe, 
 notwithstanding, either that they will be thrust 
 out, or that they will leaven the whole Church. 
 We do, and will do, all we can to prevent those 
 consequences which are supposed likely to happen 
 after our death ; but we cannot with a good con- 
 science, neglect the present opportunity of saving 
 souls while we live, for fear of consequences whicli 
 may possibly or probably happen after we are 
 dead." Five years afterwards the assistants were 
 charged to exhort all those who had been brought 
 up in the church constantly to attend its service, 
 to question them individually concerning this, to 
 set the example themselves, and to alter every plan 
 which interfered with it. " Is there not," it was 
 said, " a cause for this ? Are we not, unawares, 
 by little and little, tending to a separation from 
 the Church ? Oh, remove every tendency thereto 
 with all diligence ! Let all our preachers go to 
 
 VOL. II. x 
 
306 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 church. Let all our people go constantly. Receive 
 the sacrament at every opportunity. Warn all 
 against niceness in hearing, — a great and prevail- 
 ing evil. Warn them likewise against despising 
 the prayers of the Church ; against calling our So- 
 ciety a Church, or the Church ; against calling our 
 preachers ministers, our houses meeting-houses (call 
 them plain preaching-houses). Do not license 
 them as such. The proper form of a petition to 
 the judges is, ' A. B. desires to have his house in C. 
 licensed for public worship.' Do not license your- 
 self till you are constrained, and then not as a 
 Dissenter, but a Methodist preacher. It is time 
 enough when you are prosecuted to take the oaths ; 
 thereby you are licensed." 
 
 The leaven of ill-will towards the Church was 
 introduced among the Methodists by those dis- 
 senters who joined them. Wesley saw whence it 
 proceeded, and was prepared to resist its effect by 
 the feelings which he had imbibed from his* father, 
 as well as by his sense of duty. But there were 
 other causes which increased and strengthened the 
 tendency that had thus been given. It is likely 
 that, when the Non-jurors disappeared as a separate 
 party, many of them would unite with the Me- 
 thodists, being a middle course between the Church 
 and the dissenters, which required no sacrifice 
 either of principle or of pride. Having joined 
 
 * " A thousand times," says he, " have I found my father's words 
 true. ' You may have peace with the Dissenters, if you do not so 
 humour them as to dispute with them. But if you do, they will out. 
 face, and out-lung you ; and, at the end, you will be where you were 
 at the beginning.' " 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. S07 
 
 them, their leaning would naturally be toward a 
 separation from the establishment. But the main 
 cause is to be found in the temper of the lay- 
 preachers, who, by an easy and obvious process, 
 were led to conclude, that they were as much 
 authorized to exercise one part of the ministerial 
 functions as another. They had been taught to 
 consider, and were accustomed to represent the 
 clergy in the most unfavourable light. Wesley 
 sometimes reprehended this in strong terms ; but, 
 upon this point, he was not consistent : and when- 
 ever he had to justify the appointment of lay- 
 preachers, he was apt, in self-defence, to commit 
 the fault which, at other times, he condemned. 
 " I am far," says he, in one of his sermons, " from 
 desiring to aggravate the defects of my brethren, 
 or to paint them in the strongest colours. Far be 
 it from me to treat others as I have been treated 
 myself; to return evil for evil, or railing for rail- 
 ing. But, to speak the naked truth, not with anger 
 or contempt, as too many have done, I acknow- 
 ledge that many, if not most of those that were 
 appointed to minister in holy things, with whom 
 it has been my lot to converse, in almost every 
 part of England or Ireland, for forty or fifty years 
 last past, have not been eminent either for know- 
 ledge or piety. It has been loudly affirmed, that 
 most of those persons now in connection with me, 
 who believe it their duty to call sinners to repent- 
 ance, having been taken immediately from low 
 trades, tailors, shoemakers, and the like, are a set 
 of poor, stupid, illiterate men, that scarcely know 
 
 x2 
 
$08 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 their right hand from their left ; yet I cannot but 
 say, that I would sooner cut off my right hand than, 
 suffer one of them to speak a word in any of our 
 chapels, if I had not reasonable proof that he had 
 more knowledge in the Holy Scriptures, more 
 knowledge of himself, more knowledge of God, 
 and of the things of God, than nine in ten of the 
 clergymen 1 have conversed with, either at the 
 universities or elsewhere." 
 
 The situation in which Wesley stood led him to- 
 make this comparison, and not to make it fairly. 
 It induced him also to listen to those who argued 
 in favour of a separation from the Church, and to 
 sum up their reasonings, with a bias in their fa- 
 vour. " They who plead for it," said he, tf have 
 weighed the point long and deeply, and considered 
 it with earnest and continued prayer. They admit, 
 if it be lawful to abide therein, then it is not lawful 
 to separate : but they aver it is not lawful to abide 
 therein ; for, though they allow the liturgy to be, 
 in general, one of the most excellent of all human 
 compositions, they yet think it both absurd and 
 sinful to declare such an assent and consent as 
 is required, to any merely human composition. 
 Though they do not object to the use of forms^ 
 they dare not confine themselves to them ; and, in 
 this form, there are several things which they ap- 
 prehend to be contrary to Scripture. As to the 
 laws of the Church, if they include the canons and 
 decretals (both which are received as such in our 
 courts,) they think the latter are the very dregs of 
 popery, and that many of the former (the canons 
 
Lesley in middle age, 30J) 
 
 t>£ 1603) are as grossly wicked as absurd ; that the 
 Spirit which they breathe is, throughout, truly 
 popish and an ti- christian ; that nothing can be 
 more diabolical than the ipso facto excommunica- 
 tion so often denounced therein ; and that the 
 whole method of executing these canons, the pro- 
 cess used in our spiritual courts > is too bad to be 
 tolerated, not in a Christian, but in a Mahom- 
 medan or Pagan nation. With regard to the mi- 
 nisters, they doubt whether there are not many of 
 them whom God hath not sent, inasmuch as they 
 neither live the Gospel nor teach it ; neither, in- 
 deed, can they, since they do not know it. They 
 doubt the more, because these ministers themselves 
 disclaim that inward call to the ministry, which is 
 at least as necessary as the outward ; and they are 
 not clear whether it be lawful to attend the minis- 
 trations of those whom God has not sent to mi- 
 nister. They think also, that the doctrines actually 
 taught, by a great majority of the church mi* 
 nisters, are not only wrong, but fundamentally 
 so, and subversive of the whole Gospel ; therefore, 
 they doubt whether it be lawful to bid them God 
 speed, or to have any fellowship with them. " I 
 will freely acknowledge," he adds, " that I can- 
 not answer these arguments to my own satisfaction. 
 As yet/* he pursued* " we have not taken one 
 step farther than we were convinced was our 
 bounden duty. It is from a full conviction of this 
 that we have preached abroad., prayed extempore, 
 formed societies, and permitted preachers who 
 were not episcopally ordained. And were we 
 
 x 3 
 
310 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 pushed on this side, were there no alternative al- 
 lowed, we should judge it our bounden duty, rather 
 wholly to separate from the Church, than to give 
 up any one of these points ; therefore, if we can- 
 not stop a separation without stopping lay-preach- 
 ers, the case is clear, we cannot stop it at all. 
 But, if we permit them, should we not do more ? 
 Should we not appoint them rather? since the 
 bare 1 permission puts the matter quite out of our 
 hands, and deprives us of all our influence. In 
 great measure, it does ;, therefore to appoint them 
 is far more expedient, if it be lawful : but is it 
 lawful for presbyters, circumstanced as we are, to 
 appoint other ministers ? This is the very point 
 wherein we desire advice, being afraid of leaning 
 to our own understanding." 
 
 An inclination to episcopize was evidently shown 
 in this language y but Wesley did not yet venture 
 upon the act, in deference, perhaps, to his brother's 
 determined and principled opposition. Many of 
 his preachers, however, were discontented with 
 the rank which they held in public opinion, think- 
 ing that they were esteemed inferior to the dissent- 
 ing ministers, because they did not assume so 
 much ; they, therefore, urged him to take upon 
 himself the episcopal office and ordain them, that 
 they might administer the ordinances ; and, as he 
 could not be persuaded to this, they charged him 
 with inconsistency, for tolerating lay-preaching, 
 and not lay-administering. This charge he re- 
 pelled : " My principle," said he, " is this ; I sub- 
 mit to every ordinance of man, wherever I do not 
 
 3 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 311 
 
 conceive there is an absolute necessity for acting 
 contrary to it. Consistently with this I do to- 
 lerate lay-preaching, because I conceive there is 
 an absolute necessity for it, inasmuch as, were it 
 not, thousands of souls would perish everlastingly. 
 Yet I do not tolerate lay-administering ; because I 
 do not conceive there is any such necessity for it, 
 seeing it does not appear that one soul will perish 
 for want of it." This was, of course, called per- 
 secution, by those whom his determination disap- 
 pointed; and they accused him of injustice in 
 denying them the liberty of acting according to 
 their own conscience. They thought it quite right 
 that they should administer the Lord's Supper, and 
 believed it would do much good : he thought it 
 quite wrong, and believed it would do much hurt. 
 " I have no right over your consciences," he said, 
 " nor you over mine ; therefore, both you and I 
 must follow our own conscience. You believe it is a 
 duty to administer : do so, and therein follow your 
 own conscience. I verily believe it is a sin which, 
 consequently, I dare not tolerate, and herein I 
 follow mine." And he argued, that it was no 
 persecution to separate from his society those who 
 practised what he believed was contrary to the will 
 and destructive of the word of God. 
 
 It does not appear that any of his preachers with- 
 drew from him on this account ; the question was 
 not one upon which, at that time, a discontented 
 man could hope to divide the society; and, if 
 they did not assent to Mr. Wesley's arguments, 
 they acquiesced in his will. Secessions, however, 
 
 x 4f 
 
312 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE, 
 
 and expulsions from other causes, not unfrequentfy 
 -took place : and once he found it necessary to in- 
 stitute an examination of his preachers, because of 
 certain scandals which had arisen. The person 
 with whom the offence began was one James 
 Wheatley. At first he made himself remarkable, 
 by introducing a luscious manner of preaching, 
 which, as it was new among the Methodists, and 
 at once stimulant and flattering, sdon became po- 
 pular, and obtained imitators. They who adopted 
 it assumed to themselves the appellation of Gospel 
 preachers, and called their brethren, in contempt, 
 legalists, legal wretches, and doctors in divinity. 
 Wesley presently perceived the mischief that was 
 done by these men, whose secret was, to speak much 
 of the promises, and little of the commands. " They 
 corrupt their hearers," said he : " they feed them 
 with sweetmeats, till the genuine wine of the king- 
 dom seems quite insipid to them. They give them 
 cordial upon cordial, which makes them all life and 
 spirits for the present ; but, meantime their appe- 
 tite is destroyed, so that they can neither re- 
 tain nor digest the pure milk of the word. As 
 soon as that flow of spirits goes off, they are with- 
 out life, without power, without any strength or 
 vigour of soul ; and it is extremely difficult to re- 
 cover them, because they still cry out cordials! 
 cordials! of which they have had too much al- 
 ready, and have no taste for the food which is 
 convenient for them. Nay, they have an utter 
 aversion to it, and this confirmed by principle, 
 having been taught to call it husks, if not poison, 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 31$ 
 
 jHow much more to those bitters, which are pre^ 
 viously needful to restore their decayed appetite I" 
 Wheatley was a quack in physic as well as in 
 divinity, and he was soon detected in fouler prac- 
 tices. Complaint being at length made of his in- 
 famous licentiousness, the two brothers enquired 
 into it, and obtained complete proof of his guilt. 
 Upon this they delivered into his hands a written 
 sentence of suspension in these terms : " Because 
 you have wrought folly in Israel, grieved the Holy 
 Spirit of God, betrayed your own soul into tempt- 
 ation and sin, and the souls of many others whom 
 you ought, even at the peril of your own life, to 
 have guarded against all sin ; because you have 
 given occasion to the enemies of God, wherever 
 they shall know these things, to blaspheme the 
 ways and truth of God ; we can in no wise receive 
 you as a fellow labourer, till we see clear proofs of 
 your real and deep repentance : the least and 
 lowest proof of such repentance which we can re- 
 ceive is this, — that, till our next Conference, you 
 abstain both from preaching and from practising 
 physic. If you do not, we are clear i we cannot 
 answer for the consequences." They were not 
 aware at the time of the extent of this hypocrite's 
 criminality ; but enough was soon discovered to 
 make it necessary for them to disclaim him by 
 public advertisements. The matter became so no- 
 torious at Norwich, that the affidavits of the women 
 whom he had endeavoured to corrupt, were printed 
 and hawked about the streets. The people were 
 ready to tear him to pieces, as he deserved ; and 
 
314 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 the cry against the Methodists was such, in con- 
 sequence, that Charles Wesley said Satan, or his 
 apostles, could not have done more to shut the 
 door , against the Gospel in that place for ever. 
 
 This was a case of individual villainy, and pro- 
 duced no other injury to Methodism than an im- 
 mediate scandal, which was soon blown over. But 
 it is the nature of mental, as well as of corporeal 
 diseases, to propagate themselves, and schism is 
 one of the most prolific of all errors. One sepa- 
 ration had already taken place between the Me- 
 thodists and the Moravians, — the Calvinistic 
 question had made a second. A minor schism was 
 now made, by a certain James Relly, who having 
 commenced his career under the patronage of 
 Whitefield, ended in forming a heresy of his own, 
 which had the merit, at least, of being a humaner 
 scheme than that of his master, however untenable 
 in other respects. Shocked at the intolerable no- 
 tion of reprobation, and yet desirous of holding 
 the tenet of election, he fancied that sin was to be 
 considered as a disease, for which the death of our 
 Redeemer was the remedy ; and that, as evil had 
 been introduced into human nature by the first 
 Adam, who was of the earth, earthly, so must it 
 be expelled by the second, who is from heaven, 
 and therefore heavenly. Pursuing this notion, he 
 taught that Christ, as a Mediator, was united to 
 mankind, and, by his obedience and sufferings, 
 had as fully restored the whole human race to the 
 divine favour, as if all had obeyed or suffered in 
 their own persons. So he preached a finished sal- 
 
 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 316 
 
 vation, which included the final restitution of all 
 fallen intelligences. Sin being only # a disease, 
 could not deserve punishment : it was in itself, 
 and in its consequences, a sufficient evil; for, 
 while it existed, darkness and unbelief accom- 
 panied it, and occasioned a privation of that hap- 
 piness which the Almighty designed for all his 
 creatures ; but, in the end, all would be delivered, 
 and the elect were only chosen to be the first 
 fruits, — the pledges and earnest of the general 
 harvest. Relly had, for his co-adjutor, one Wil- 
 liam Cudworth, of whom Wesley observed, after 
 an interview with him, " that his opinions were 
 all his own, quite new, and his phrases as new as 
 his opinions : that all these opinions, yea, and 
 phrases too, he affirmed to be necessary to sal- 
 vation ; maintaining, that all who did not receive 
 them worshipped another God ; and that he was as 
 incapable as a brute beast of being convinced, even 
 in the smallest point." On another occasion he 
 remarks, that Cudworth, Relly, and their asso- 
 ciates abhorred him as much as they did the pope, 
 and ten times more than they did the devil. The 
 devil, indeed, was no object of abhorrence with 
 them : like Uncle Toby they were sorry for him ; 
 and, like Origen, they expected his reformation. 
 They formed a sect which continues to exist in 
 America, as well as in England, by the name of 
 the Rellyan Universalists ; and, it is said, that 
 
 ..... v 
 
 * James Relly should have read an old treatise upon the Sinfulness 
 of Sin, which, notwithstanding its odd title, is the work of a sound 
 andpowerful intellect. If I remember rightly, it is by Bishop Reynolds. 
 
316 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 Washington's chaplain was a preacher of thi& 
 denomination* 
 
 The tendency of these opinions Was to an easy 
 and quiet Jatitudinarianism. Antinomianism, with 
 which they were connected, was far more mis- 
 chievous, when combined with enthusiasm, — and 
 this was the evil to which Methodism always 
 perilously inclined* There is in the antinomian 
 scheme, and indeed, in all predestinarian schemes, 
 an audacity which is congenial to certain minds. 
 They feel a pride in daring to profess doctrines 
 which are so revolting to the common sense and 
 feelings of mankind. Minds of a similar temper, 
 but in a far worse state, maintain the notion of the 
 necessity * of human actions, but reject a first 
 cause. It is from a like effrontery of spirit that 
 this last and worst corruption proceeds ; and, as 
 the causes are alike, so also the practical conse- 
 quences of antinomianism and atheism would be 
 the same, if men were always as bad as their opi*- 
 nions ; for the professors of both have emancipated 
 themselves from any other restraint than what may 
 be imposed by the fear of human laws. 
 
 Wesley was mistaken in supposing the doc- 
 trine, that there is no sin in believers, was never 
 heard of till the time of Count Zinzendorff. It 
 is as old in England as the t Reformation, and 
 
 * Archbishop Saneroft says well of the fatalist : " he uses necessity 
 as the old philosophers did an occult quality, though to a different 
 purpose : that was their refuge for ignorance ; this is his sanctuary 
 for sin." 
 
 f Burnet speaks of certain " corrupt Gospellers, who thought, If 
 *hey magnified Christ much, and depended on his merits and inter* 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 317 
 
 might undoubtedly be traced in many an early 
 heresy. The Moravians had the rare merit of 
 sometimes acknowledging their errors, and correct- 
 ing them ; on this point, they modified their lan- 
 guage till it became reasonable ; but the Me- 
 thodists had caught the error, and did not so easily 
 rid themselves of it. " God thrust us out," say* 
 Wesley, speaking of himself and his brother, "ut- 
 terly against our will, to raise a holy people. 
 When Satan could no otherwise prevent this, he 
 threw Calvinism in our way, and then * Antino- 
 mianism, which struck at the root both of inward 
 and outward holiness." He acknowledged that 
 they had, unawares, leaned too much toward both ; 
 and that the truth of the Gospel lies within a hair's 
 breadth of them : "So," said he, " that it is al- 
 together foolish and sinful, because we do not 
 quite agree either with one or the other, to run 
 
 cession, they could not perish, which way soever they led their lives. 
 And special care was taken in the Homilies to rectify this error." 
 
 * This pernicious doctrine was well explained in the first Conference : 
 " Q. What is Antinomianism ? 
 
 A. The doctrine which makes void the law through faith. 
 
 Q. What are the main pillars thereof? 
 
 A. I. That Christ abolished the moral law : 
 
 2. That therefore Christians are not obliged to observe it : 
 
 3. That one branch of Christian liberty is liberty from obeying the 
 commandments of Ged : 
 
 4. That it is bondage to do a thing, because it is commanded; or 
 forbear it, because it is forbidden : 
 
 5. That a believer is not obliged to use the ordinances of God, or 
 to do good works : 
 
 6. That a preacher ought not to exhort to good works ; not un- 
 believers, because it is hurtful ; not believers, because it is 
 jiseless." 
 
318 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 from them as far as ever we can." The question, 
 " Wherein may we come to the very edge of Cal- 
 vinism ?" was proposed in the second Conference ; 
 and the answer was, " In ascribing all good to the 
 free-grace of God; in denying all natural free- 
 will and all power antecedent to grace; and in 
 excluding all merit from man, even for what he 
 has or does by the grace of God." This was en- 
 deavouring to split the hair. " Wherein may we 
 come to the edge of Antinomianism ?" was asked 
 likewise ; and the answer was less objectionable, 
 " In exalting the merits and love of Christ ; in 
 rejoicing evermore." 
 
 In endeavouring to approach the edge of this 
 perilous notion, Wesley went sometimes too near. 
 But his general opinion could not be mistaken ; 
 and when any of his followers fell into the error, 
 he contended against it zealously. It was a 
 greater hindrance, he said, to the word of God, 
 than any, or all others put together : and he some- 
 times complains, that most of the seed which had 
 been sown during so many years, had been rooted 
 up and destroyed by " the wild boars, the fierce, un- 
 clean, brutish, blasphemous * Antinomians." From 
 
 * The annexed extract from Wesley's Journal will show that this 
 language is not too strong : " I came to Wensbury. The Antinomian 
 teachers had laboured hard to destroy this poor people. I talked an 
 hour with the chief of them, Stephen Timmins. I was in doubt 
 whether pride had not made him mad. An uncommon wildness and 
 fierceness in his air, his words, and the whole manner of his behaviour, 
 almost induced me to think God had, for a season, given him up 
 into the hands of Satan. In the evening I preached at Birmingham. 
 Here another of their pillars, J — — W , came to me, and look- 
 ing over his shoulder, said, « Don't think I want to be in your society ; 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 319 
 
 this reproach, indeed, which attaches to many of 
 his Calvinistic opponents, he was entirely clear, 
 and the great body of his society has continued 
 so. But his disposition to believe in miraculous 
 manifestations of divine favours, led him some- 
 times to encourage an enthusiasm which impeached 
 his oWn judgment, and brought a scandal upon 
 Methodism. 
 
 Among the converts to Methodism at this time 
 were Mr. Berridge, vicar of Everton, in Bedford- 
 shire, and Mr. Hickes, vicar of Wrestlingworth, 
 in the same neighbourhood. These persons, by 
 their preaching, produced the same contagious 
 convulsions in their hearers, as had formerly pre- 
 vailed at Bristol ; and though time had sobered 
 Mr. Wesley's feelings, and matured his judgment, 
 he was so far deceived, that he recorded the things 
 which occurred, not as psychological, but as reli- 
 gious cases. They were of the most frightful and 
 
 but if you are free to speak to me, you may.' I will set clown the con- 
 versation, dreadful as it was, in the very manner wherein it passed, 
 that every serious person may see the true picture of Antinomianism 
 full grown ; and may know what these men mean by their favourite 
 phrase of being perfect in Christ, not in themselves. ' Do you believe 
 you have nothing to do with the law of God ?' J I have not. I am 
 not under the law. I live by faith.' — 'Have you, as living by faith, 
 a right to every thing in the world ?' ' I have. All is mine, since 
 Christ is mine.'—' May you then take any thing you will, any where ? 
 Suppose, out of a shop, without the consent or knowledge of the 
 owner?' ' I may, if I want it; for it is mine; only I will not give 
 offence.' — ' Have you also a right to all the women in the world ?' 
 'Yes, if they consent.' — 'And is not that a sin?' 'Yes, to. him 
 that thinks it a sin ; but not to those whose hearts are free.' The 
 same thing that wretch, Roger Ball, affirmed in Dublin. Surely these 
 are the first-born children of Satan !" 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 extraordinary kind. An eye-witness described the 
 church at Everton as crowded with persons from 
 all the country round ; " the windows," he says, 
 " being, filled, within and without, and even the 
 outside of the pulpit, to the very top, so that Mr. 
 Berridge seemed almost stifled with their breath ; 
 yet," the relator continues, " feeble and sickly as 
 he is, he was continually strengthened, and his 
 voice, for the most part, distinguishable in the 
 midst of all the outcries. When the power of re- 
 ligion begun to be spoke of, the presence of God 
 really filled the place ; and while poor sinners felt 
 the sentence of death in their souls, what sounds 
 of distress did I hear ! The greatest number of 
 them who cried, or fell, were men ; but some wo- 
 men, and several children, felt the power of the 
 same Almighty Spirit, and seemed just sinking 
 into hell. This occasioned a mixture of various 
 sounds ; some shrieking, some roaring aloud. The 
 most general was a loud breathing, like that of 
 people half-strangled, and gasping for life j and, 
 indeed, almost all the cries were like those of hu- 
 man creatures dying in bitter anguish. Great 
 numbers wept without any noise ; others fell down 
 as dead ; some sinking in silence, some with ex- 
 treme noise and violent agitation. I stood on the 
 pew seat, as did a young man in the opposite pew, 
 an able-bodied, fresh, healthy countryman ; but, 
 in a moment, while he seemed to think of nothing 
 less, down he dropt, with a violence inconceiv- 
 able. The adjoining pews seemed shook with his 
 fall: I heard afterwards the stamping of his feet, 
 
 9 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 321 
 
 ready to break the boards, as he lay in strong con- 
 vulsions at the bottom of the pew. When he fell, 
 
 Mr. B 11 and I felt our souls thrilled with a 
 
 momentary dread ; as, when one man is killed by 
 a cannon-ball, another often feels the wind of it. 
 Among the children who felt the arrows of the 
 Almighty, I saw a sturdy boy, about eight years 
 old, who roared above his fellows, and seemed, in 
 his agony, to struggle with the strength of a grown 
 man. His face was red as scarlet ; and almost all 
 on whom God laid his hand, turned either very 
 red, or almost black." 
 
 The congregation adjourned to Mr. Berridge's 
 house, whither those who were still in the fit were 
 carried : the maddened people were eager for more 
 stimulants, and the insane vicar was as willing to 
 administer more, as they were to receive it. "I 
 stayed in the next room," says the relator, " and 
 saw a girl, whom I had observed peculiarly dis- 
 tressed in the church, lying on the floor as one 
 dead, but without any ghastliness in her face. In 
 a few minutes we were informed of a woman rilled 
 with peace and joy, who was crying out just be- 
 fore. She had come thirteen miles, and is the 
 same person who dreamed Mr. Berridge would 
 come to his village on that very day whereon he 
 did come, though without either knowing the 
 place or the way to it. She was convinced at that 
 time. Just as we heard of her deliverance, the 
 girl on the floor began to stir. She was then set in 
 a chair, and, after sighing a while, suddenly rose 
 up, rejoicing in God. Her face was covered with 
 
 VOL. II. y 
 
'322 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 the most beautiful smile I ever saw. She fre- 
 quently fell on her knees, but was generally run- 
 ning to and fro, speaking these and the like 
 words : " Oh, what can Jesus do for lost sinners ! 
 He has forgiven all my sins ! I am in Heaven ! I 
 am in Heaven ! Oh, how he loves me, and how I 
 love him!" Meantime I saw a thin pale girl, 
 weeping with sorrow for herself, and joy for her 
 companion. Quickly the smiles of Heaven came 
 likewise on her, and her praises joined with those 
 of the other. I also then laughed with extreme 
 
 joy; so did Mr. B 11, who said it was more 
 
 than he could well bear ; so did all who knew the 
 Lord, and some of those who were waiting for sal- 
 vation, till the cries of them who were struck with 
 the arrows of conviction, were almost lost in the 
 sounds of joy. — Mr. Berridge about this time re- 
 tired; we continued., praising God with all our 
 might, and his work went on. I had for some 
 time observed a young woman all in tears, but now 
 her countenance changed: the unspeakable joy ap- 
 peared in her face, which, quick as lightning, was 
 filled with smiles, and became a crimson colour. 
 About the same time John Keeling, of Potton, 
 fell into an agony ; but he grew calm in about a 
 quarter of an hour, though without a clear sense 
 of pardon. Immediately after, a stranger, well 
 dressed, who stood facing me, fell backward to the 
 wall, then forward on his knees, wringing his 
 hands, and roaring like a bull. His face at first 
 turned quite red, then almost black. He rose and 
 aan against the wall, till Mr. Keeling and another 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 828 
 
 held him. He screamed out, ' Oh, what shall I 
 do ! what shall 1 do ! Oh, for one drop of the blood 
 of Christ!' As he spoke, God set his soul at 
 liberty : he knew his sins were blotted out ; and 
 the rapture he was in seemed too great for human 
 nature to bear. He had come forty miles to hear 
 Mr. Berridge. 
 
 " I observed, about the time that Mr. Coe (that 
 was his name) began to rejoice, a girl eleven or 
 twelve years old, exceedingly poorly dressed, who 
 appeared to be as deeply wounded, and as desirous 
 of salvation, as any. But I lost sight of her, till 
 I heard the joyful sound of another born in Sion, 
 and found, upon enquiry, it was her, the poor, 
 disconsolate, gipsey-looking child. And now did 
 I see such a sight as I do not expect again on this 
 side eternity. The faces of the three justified 
 children, and, I think, of all the believers present, 
 did really shine ; and such a beauty, such a look 
 of extreme happiness, and, at the same time, of 
 divine love and simplicity, did I never see in hu- 
 man faces till now. The newly justified eagerly 
 embraced one another, weeping on each other's 
 necks for joy, and besought both men and women 
 to help them in praising God." The same fits 
 were produced by Mr. Hickes's preaching at 
 Wrestlingworth, whither this relator proceeded; and 
 there also the poor creatures, who were under the 
 paroxysm, were carried into the parsonage, where 
 some lay as if they were dead, and others lay 
 struggling. In both churches several pews and 
 benches were broken by the violent struggling of 
 
 y2 
 
324 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 the sufferers ; " yet," says the narrator, " it is 
 common for people to remain unaffected there, and 
 afterward drop down in their way home. Some 
 have been found lying as dead in the road ; others 
 in Mr. Berridge's garden, not being able to walk 
 from the church to his house, though it is not two 
 hundred yards." The person who thus minutely 
 described the progress of this powerful contagion, 
 observes, that few old people experienced any 
 thing of what he called the work of God, and 
 scarce any of the rich ; and, with that uncharitable 
 spirit, which is one of the surest and worst effects 
 of such superstition, he remarks, that three farm- 
 ers, in three several villages, who set themselves to 
 oppose it, all died within a month. 
 
 Such success made Berridge glorious in his own 
 eyes, as well as in those of all the fanatics round 
 about. He travelled about the countiy, making 
 Everton still the centre of his excursions ; and he 
 confesses that, on one occasion, when he mounted 
 a table upon a common near Cambridge, and saw 
 nearly ten thousand people assembled, and many 
 gownsmen among them, he paused after he had 
 given out his text, thinking of " something pretty 
 to set off with ; but," says he, " the Lord so con- 
 founded me, (as indeed it was meet, for I was 
 seeking not his glory, but my own,) that I was in 
 a perfect labyrinth, and found that, if I did not 
 begin immediately, I must go down without speak- 
 ing ; so I broke out with the first word that oc- 
 curred, not knowing whether I should be able to 
 add any more. Then the Lord opened my mouth, 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 325 
 
 enabling me to speak near an hour, without any- 
 kind of perplexity, and so loud, that every one 
 might hear." For a season this man produced a 
 more violent influenza of fanaticism, than had ever 
 followed upon either Whitefield's or Wesley's 
 preaching. The people flocked to hear him in 
 such numbers, that his church could not contain 
 them, and they adjourned into a field. " Some 
 of them," says an eye-witness, " who were here 
 pricked to the heart, were affected in an astonish- 
 ing manner. The first man I saw wounded would 
 have dropped, but others, catching him in their 
 arms, did indeed prop him up ; but were so far 
 from keeping him still, that he caused all of them 
 to totter and tremble. His own shaking exceeded 
 that of a cloth in the wind. It seemed as if the 
 Lord came upon him like a giant, taking him by 
 the neck, and shaking all his bones in pieces. One 
 woman tore up the ground with her hands, filling 
 them with dust, and with the hard-trodden grass, 
 on which I saw her lie with her hands clinched, as 
 one dead, when the multitude dispersed : another 
 roared and screamed in a more dreadful agony 
 than ever I heard before. I omit the rejoicing of 
 believers, because of their number, and the fre- 
 quency thereof; though the manner was strange, 
 lome of them being quite overpowered with divine 
 ove, and only showing enough of natural life to 
 et us know they were overwhelmed with joy and 
 ife eternal. Some continued long as if they were 
 ead, but with a calm sweetness in their looks. I 
 saw one who lay two or three hours in the opei*. 
 
 y 3 
 
326 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 air, and being then carried into the house, con- 
 tinued insensible another hour, as if actually dead. 
 The first sign of life she showed was a rapture of 
 praise, intermixed with a small joyous laughter." 
 It may excite astonishment in other countries, and 
 reasonable regret in this, that there should be no 
 authority capable of restraining extravagancies 
 and indecencies like these. 
 
 v 
 
 Berridge had been curate of Stapleford, near 
 Cambridge, several years, and now, after what he 
 called his conversion, his heart was set upon 
 preaching a " gospel-sermon" there, which, he 
 said, he had never done before. Some fifteen 
 hundred persons assembled in a field to hear him. 
 The contagion soon began to show itself among 
 those who were pre-disposed for it : others, of a 
 different temper, mocked and mimicked these poor 
 creatures in their convulsions ; and some persons, 
 who were in a better state of mind than either, in- 
 dignant at the extravagance and indecency of the 
 scene, called aloud to have those wretches horse- 
 whipped out of the field. " Well (says the fana- 
 tical writer) may Satan be enraged at the cries of 
 the people, and the prayers they make in the bit- 
 terness of their souls, seeing we know these are 
 the chief times at which Satan is cast out." — " I 
 heard a dreadful noise, on the farther side of the 
 congregation (says this writer), and turning thither, 
 saw one Thomas Skinner coming forward, the 
 most horrible human figure I ever saw. His large 
 wig and hair were coal-black; his face distorted 
 beyond all description. He roared incessantly, 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 327 
 
 throwing and clapping his hands together with hi$ 
 whole force. Several were terrified, and hastened 
 out of his way. I was glad to hear him, after a 
 while, pray aloud. Not a few of the triflers grew 
 serious, while his kindred and acquaintance were 
 very unwilling to believe even their own eyes and 
 ears. They would fain have got him away ; but 
 he fell to the earth, crying, ' My burden ! my 
 burden ! I cannot bear it !' Some of his brother 
 scoffers were calling for horsewhips, till they saw 
 him extended on his back at full length : they 
 then said he was dead ; and indeed the only sign 
 of life was the working of his breast, and the dis- 
 tortions of his face, while the veins of his neck 
 were swelled as if ready to burst. He was, just 
 before, the chief captain of Satan's forces : none 
 was by nature more fitted for mockery; none 
 could swear more heroically to whip out of the 
 close all who were affected by the preaching." — 
 Berridge bade the people take warning by him, 
 while he lay roaring and tormented on the ground. 
 " His agonies lasted some hours; then his body 
 and soul were eased." 
 
 It is to be regretted that, of the many persons- 
 who have gone through this disease, no one should 
 have recorded his case who was capable of describ- 
 ing his sensations accurately, if not of analyzing 
 them. Berridge and Hickes are said to have 
 " awakened" about four thousand souls in the 
 course of twelve months. Imposture in all de- 
 grees, from the first natural exaggeration to down- 
 right fraud, kept pace with enthusiasm. A child,. 
 
 y 4 
 
328 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 seven years old, saw visions, and " astonished the 
 neighbours with her innocent awful manner of re- 
 lating them." A young man, whose mother af- 
 firmed that he had had fits, once a-day at least, 
 for the last two years, began to pray in those fits ; 
 protesting afterwards, that he knew not a word of 
 what he had spoken, but was as ignorant of the 
 matter as if he had been dead all the while. This 
 impostor, when he was about to exhibit, stiffened 
 himself like a statue ; "his very neck seemed made 
 of iron." After he had finished, his body grew 
 flexible by degrees, but seemed to be convulsed 
 from head to foot ; and when he thought proper to 
 recover, he said, " he was quite resigned to the 
 will of God, who gave him such strength in the 
 inner man, that he did not find it grievous, neither 
 could ask to be delivered from it." — " I dis- 
 coursed," says the credulous relater of these things, 
 " with Anne Thorn, who told me of much heavi- 
 ness following the visions with which she had been 
 favoured; but said she was, at intervals, visited 
 still with so much overpowering love and joy, espe- 
 cially at the Lord's supper, that she often lay in a 
 trance for many hours. She is twenty- one years 
 old. We were soon after called into the garden, 
 where Patty Jenkins, one of the same age, was so 
 overwhelmed with the love of God, that she sunk 
 down, and appeared as one in a pleasant sleep, 
 only with her eyes open. Yet she had often just 
 strength to utter, with a low voice, ejaculations 
 of joy and praise ; but no words coming up to 
 what she felt, she frequently laughed while she 
 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 329 
 
 saw his glory, This is quite unintelligible to 
 many, for a stranger interraeddleth not with our 
 joy. So it was to Mr. M. who doubted whether 
 God or the devil had filled her with love and 
 praise. Oh, the depth of human wisdom ! Mr. R., 
 in the mean time, was filled with a solemn awe. I 
 no sooner sate down by her, than the Spirit of God 
 poured the same blessedness into my soul." 
 
 Whether this were folly or fraud, the conse- 
 quences that were likely to result did not escape 
 the apprehension of persons who, though them- 
 selves affected strongly by the disease, still retained 
 some command of reason. They began to doubt 
 whether such trances were not the work of Satan ; 
 with the majority, however, they passed for effects 
 of grace. Wesley, who believed and recorded them 
 as such, enquired of the patients, when he came to 
 JEverton, concerning their state of feeling in these 
 trances. The persons, who appear to have been 
 all young women and girls, agreed, " that when 
 they went away, as they termed it, it was al- 
 ways at the time they were fullest of the love of 
 God : that it came upon them in a moment, with- 
 out any previous notice, and took away all their 
 senses and strength : that there were some excep- 
 tions, but, generally, from that moment they were 
 in another world, knowing nothing of what was 
 done or said by all that were round about them." 
 He had now an opportunity of observing a case. 
 Some persons were singing hymns in Berridge's 
 house, about five in the afternoon, and presently 
 Wesley was summoned by Berridge himself, with 
 
830 WESLEY Ifc MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 information that one of them, a girl of fifteen, was 
 fallen into a trance. " I went down immediately," 
 says Mr. Wesley, " and found her sitting on a 
 stool, and leaning against the wall, with her eyes 
 open and fixed upward. I made a motion, as if 
 going to strike ; but they continued immoveable. 
 Her face shewed an unspeakable mixture of re- 
 verence and love, while silent tears stole down 
 her cheek. Her lips were a little open, and some- 
 times moved, but not enough to cause any sound. 
 I do not know whether I ever saw a human face 
 look so beautiful. Sometimes it was covered with 
 a smile, as from joy mixing with love and reve- 
 rence ; but the tears fell still, though not so fast. 
 Her pulse was quite regular. In about half an 
 hour I observed her countenance change into the 
 form of fear, pity, and distress. Then she burst 
 into a flood of tears, and cried out, * Dear Lord I 
 they .will be damned ! they will all be damned If 
 But, in about five minutes, her smiles returned, 
 and only love and joy appeared in her face. About 
 half an hour after six, I observed distress take 
 place again, and soon after she wept bitterly, and 
 cried, * Dear Lord, they will go to hell! the 
 world will go to hell !' Soon after she said, * Cry 
 aloud ! spare not !! and in a few moments her look 
 was composed again, and spoke a mixture of re- 
 verence, joy, and love. Then she said aloud, 
 * Give God the glory !' About seven her senses 
 returned. I asked, 6 Where have you been ?' — * I 
 have been with my Saviour.' — * In heaven, or on 
 earth ?' — \ I cannot tell ; but I was in glory I'— 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. S3 1 
 
 * Why, then, did you cry ?* — * Not for myself, but 
 for the world ; for I saw they were on the brink of 
 hell.' — •' Whom did you desire to give the glory to 
 God V — * Ministers that cry aloud to the world ; 
 else they will be proud ? and then God will leave 
 them, and they will lose their own souls. 5 " 
 
 With all his knowledge of the human heart, (and 
 few persons have had such opportunities of exten- 
 sive and intimate observation,) Wesley had not 
 discovered, that when occasion is afforded for im- 
 posture of this kind, the propensity to it is a vice 
 to which children and young persons are especially 
 addicted. If there be any natural obliquity of 
 mind, sufficient motives are found in the pride of 
 deceiving their elders, and the pleasure which they 
 feel in exercising the monkey-like instinct of imi- 
 tation. This is abundantly proved by the recorded 
 tales of witchcraft in this country, in New-Eng- 
 land, and in Sweden ; and it is from subjects like 
 this girl, whose acting Wesley beheld with reve- 
 rential credulity, instead of reasonable suspicion, 
 that the friars have made regular-bred saints, such 
 as Rosa of Peru, and Catharine of Sienna. With 
 regard to the bodily effects that ensued, when- 
 ever the spiritual influenza began, there could be 
 no doubt of their reality; but it had so much the 
 appearance of an influenza raging for awhile, af- 
 fecting those within its sphere, and then dying away, 
 that Wesley could not be so fully satisfied con- 
 cerning the divine and supernatural exciting cause, 
 as he had been when first the disease manifested 
 itself at Bristol, and as he still desired to be, " I 
 
33°2 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 have generally observed," said he, *f more or less 
 of these outward symptoms to attend the begin- 
 ning of a general work of God. So it was in New- 
 England, Scotland, Holland, Ireland, and many 
 parts of England ; but, after a time, they gradually 
 decrease, and the work goes on more quietly and 
 silently. Those whom it pleases God to employ 
 in his work, ought to be quite passive in this re- 
 spect : they should choose nothing, but leave en- 
 tirely to him all the circumstances of his own 
 work." t . 
 
 Returning to Everton, about four months after- 
 wards, he found " a remarkable difference as to 
 the manner of the work. None now were in 
 trances, none cried out, none fell down, or were 
 convulsed. Only some trembled exceedingly ; a 
 low murmur was heard, and many were refreshed 
 with the multitude of peace." The disease had spent 
 itself, and the reflections which he makes upon 
 this change, show that others had begun to sus- 
 pect its real nature, and that he himself was en- 
 deavouring to quiet his own suspicions. " The 
 danger was," says he, 1' to regard extraordinary 
 circumstances too much, — such as outcries, con- 
 vulsions, visions, trances, as if these were essen- 
 tial to the inward work, so that it could not go on 
 without them. Perhaps the danger is, to regard 
 them too little ; to condemn them altogether ; to 
 imagine they had nothing of God in them, and 
 were a hindrance to his work ; whereas the truth 
 is, 1 . God suddenly and strongly convinced many 
 that they were lost sinners, the natural conse- 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 333 
 
 quences whereof were sudden outcries, and strong 
 bodily convulsions. 2. To strengthen and en- 
 courage them that believed, and to make his work 
 more apparent, he favoured several of them with 
 divine dreams ; others with trances and visions. 
 3. In some of these instances, after a time, nature 
 mixed with grace. 4. Satan likewise mimicked 
 this work of God, in order to discredit the whole 
 work ; and yet it is not wise to give up this part, 
 any more than to give up the whole. At first it 
 was, doubtless, wholly from God : it is partly so 
 at this day ; and He will enable us to discern how 
 far, in every case, the work is pure, and when it 
 mixes or degenerates. Let us even suppose that, 
 in some few cases, there was a mixture of dissi- 
 mulation ; that persons pretended to see or feel 
 what they did not, and imitated the cries or con- 
 vulsive motions of those who were really over- 
 powered by the Spirit of God ; yet even this 
 should not make us either deny or undervalue the 
 real work of the Spirit. The shadow is no dispa- 
 ragement of the substance, nor the counterfeit of 
 the real diamond." 
 
 His tone, perhaps, was thus moderated, because, 
 by recording former extravagancies of this kind in 
 full triumph, he had laid himself open to attacks 
 which he had not been able to repel. Warburton 
 had censured these things with his strong sense 
 and powers of indignant sarcasm ; and they had 
 been exposed still more effectually by Bishop La- 
 vington, of Exeter, in " A Comparison between the 
 Enthusiasm of Methodists and of Papists." Here 
 
334t LESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 Wesley, who was armed and proof at other points, 
 was vulnerable. He could advance plausible ar- 
 guments, even for the least defensible of his 
 doctrines; and for his irregularities, some that 
 were valid and incontestable. On that score he 
 was justified by the positive good which Methodism 
 had done, and was doing ; but here he stood con- 
 victed of a credulity discreditable to himself, and 
 dangerous in its consequences ; the whole evil of 
 scenes so disorderly, so scandalous, and so fright- 
 ful, was distinctly seen by ^his opponents; and 
 perhaps they did not make a sufficient allowance 
 for the phenomena of actual disease, and the man- 
 ner in which, upon their first appearance, they 
 were likely to affect a mind, heated as his had been 
 at the commencement of his career. In all his 
 other controversies, Wesley preserved that urbane 
 and gentle tone, which arose from the genuine 
 benignity of his disposition and manners ; but he 
 replied to Bishop Lavington with asperity ; the 
 attack had galled him ; he could not but feel that 
 his opponent stood upon the vantage ground, and, 
 evading the main charge, he contented himself in 
 his reply * with explaining away certain passages, 
 which were less obnoxious than they had been 
 made to appear, and disproving some personal 
 
 * His Journal shows that he undertook the task with no alacrity. 
 e ' I began writing a letter to the Comparer of the Papists and Me- 
 thodists. Heavy work ; such as I should never choose ; but sometimes 
 it must be done. Well might the ancient say, * God made practical 
 divinity necessary ; the devil, controversial.' But it is necessary. We 
 jnust resist the devil, or he will not flee from us." 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 335 
 
 charges* which the Bishop had repeated upon evi- 
 dence that appeared, upon enquiry, not worthy 
 of the credit he had given to it. But Wesley's 
 resentments were never lasting : of this a passage 
 in his Journal, written a few years afterwards, af- 
 fords a pleasing proof. Having attended service 
 at Exeter Cathedral, he says, " I was well pleased 
 to partake of the Lord's supper with my old op- 
 ponent, Bishop Lavington. Oh may we sit down 
 together in the kingdom of our Father !" He un- 
 derstood the happiness of his temper in this re- 
 spect, and says of it, "I cannot but stand amazed 
 at the goodness of God. Others are most assaulted 
 on the weak side of their soul ; but with me it is 
 quite otherwise. If I have any strength at all, 
 (and I have none but what I received,*) it is in for- 
 giving injuries ; and on this very side am I as- 
 saulted more frequently than on any other. Yet 
 leave me not here one hour to myself, or I shall 
 betray myself and Thee !" 
 
 Warburton, though a more powerful opponent, 
 assailed him with less effect. Wesley replied to 
 him in a respectful tone, and met the attack fairly. 
 He entered upon the question of Grace, main- 
 tained his own view of that subject, and repeated, 
 in the most explicit terms, his full belief, that the 
 course which he and his coadjutors had taken, was 
 
 * On this point it is proper to state, that he does justice to the 
 Bishop in his Journal. For when he notices that, calling upon the 
 person who was named as the accuser, she told him readily and re- 
 peatedly, that she " never saw or knew any harm hy him," he adds, 
 " yet I am not sure that she has not said just the contrary to others* 
 If so, she, not I, must give account for it to God." 
 
336 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 approved by miracles. "I have seen with my 
 eyes," said he, " and heard with my ears, several 
 things which, to the best of my judgement, cannot 
 be accounted for by the ordinary course of natural 
 causes, and which, I therefore believe, ought to 
 be ascribed to the extraordinary interposition of 
 God. If any man choose to call these miracles, I 
 reclaim not. I have weighed the preceding and 
 following circumstances ; I have strove to account 
 for them in a natural way ; but could not, without 
 doing violence to my reason." He instanced the 
 case of John Hay don, and the manner in which 
 he himself, by an effort of faith, had thrown off a 
 fever. The truth of these facts, he said, was 
 supported by the testimony of competent witnesses, 
 in as high a degree as any reasonable man could 
 desire : the witnesses were many in number, and 
 could not be deceived themselves ; for they saw 
 with their own eyes, and heard with their own 
 ears. He disclaimed for himself any part in these 
 and the other cases, which might appear to re- 
 dound to his praise : his will, or choice, or desire, 
 he said, had no place in them ; and this, he argued, 
 had always been the case with true miracles ; for 
 God interposed his miraculous powers always 
 according to his own sovereign will; not accord- 
 ing to the will of man, neither of him by whom 
 he wrought, nor of any other man whatsoever. 
 So many such interpositions, he affirmed, had 
 taken place, as would soon leave no excuse either 
 for denying or despising them. " We desire no 
 favour" said he, "but the Justice, that diligent 
 
 4 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 337 
 
 inquiry may be made concerning them. We are 
 ready to name the persons on whom the power was 
 shown, which belongeth to none but God, (not 
 one, or two, or ten or twelve only,)-— to point out 
 their places of abode ; and we engage they shall 
 answer every pertinent question fairly and di- 
 rectly; and, if required, shall give all their an- 
 swers upon oath, before any who are empowered 
 to receive them. It is our particular request, that 
 the circumstances which went before, which ac- 
 companied, and, which followed after the facts 
 under consideration, may be thoroughly examined, 
 and punctually noted down. Let but this be done, 
 (and is it not highly needful it should, at least by 
 those who would form an exact judgment?) and 
 we have no fear that any reasonable man should 
 scruple to say, " this hath God wrought." 
 
 It had never entered into Wesley's thoughts, 
 when he thus appealed to what were called the 
 outward signs, as certainly miraculous, that they 
 were the manifestations of a violent and specific 
 disease, produced by excessive excitement of the 
 mind, communicable by sympathy, and highly 
 contagious. We are yet far from understanding 
 the whole power of the mind over the body ; nor, 
 perhaps, will it ever be fully understood. It was 
 very little regarded in Wesley's time ; these pheno- 
 mena therefore were considered by the Methodists, 
 and by those who beheld them, as wholly mira- 
 culous ; by all other persons, as mere exhibitions 
 of imposture. Even Charles Wesley, when he dis- 
 covered that much was voluntary, had no suspicion 
 
 VOL. II. z 
 
338 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 that the rest might be natural; and John, in all 
 cases where any thing supernatural was pretended, 
 was, of all men, the most credulous. In the ex- 
 cesses at Everton, he had, however reluctantly, 
 perceived something which savoured of fraud ; and, 
 a few years afterward, circumstances of much 
 greater notoriety occurred, when, from the weak- 
 ness of his mind, he encouraged at first a danger- 
 ous enthusiasm, which soon broke out into open 
 madness. 
 
 Among his lay-preachers, there was a certain 
 George Bell, who had formerly been a life-guards- 
 man. Mr. Wesley published, as plainly miraculous, 
 an account of an instantaneous cure wrought by 
 this man : it was a surgical * case, and must, there- 
 
 * " Dec. 26. 1760. I made a particular enquiry into the case of 
 Mary Special, a young woman then in Tottenham-court Road. She 
 said, ' Four years since, I found much pain in my breasts, and after- 
 wards hard lumps. Four months ago my left breast broke, and kept 
 running continually. Growing worse and worse, after some time I 
 was recommended to St. George's Hospital. I was let blood many 
 times, and took hemlock thrice a day ; but I was no better, the pain 
 tmd the lumps were the same, and both my breasts were quite hard, 
 and black as soot ; when, yesterday se'nnight, I went to Mr. Owen's, 
 where there was a meeting for prayer. Mr. Bell saw me, and asked, 
 Have you faith to be healed? I said, yes. He prayed for me, and, 
 in a moment, all my pain was gone. But the next day I felt a little 
 pain again ; I clapped my hands on my breasts, and cried out Lord, if 
 thou wilt, thou canst make me whole ! It was gone; and, from that 
 hour, I have had no pain, no soreness, no lumps or swelling, but both 
 my breasts were perfectly well, and I have been so ever since.' " Now," 
 says Mr. Wesley, " here are plain facts : 1. she was ill ; 2. she is well ; 
 5. she became so in a moment. Which of these can, with any mo- 
 desty, be denied ?" It is not a little remarkable, that, after Bell had 
 become decidedly crazy, recovered his wits, forsaken the Methodists, 
 and professed himself a thorough unbeliever, Mr. Wesley should still 
 have believed this story, and have persisted in asking the same question, 
 without suspecting any deceit in either party. The fraud lay in the 
 woman, Bell being a thorough enthusiast at that time. 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 339 
 
 fore, either have been miracle or fraud. A judi* 
 cious enquiry would have shown that Bell, who 
 was not in a sane mind, had been a dupe in this 
 business ; but Wesley contented himself with the 
 patient's own relation, accredited it without scruple, 
 and recorded it in a tone of exultation, Bell was 
 at that time crazy, and any doubt which he might 
 have entertained of his own supernatural gifts, was 
 removed by this apparent miracle, the truth of which 
 was thus attested. Others who listened to him be^ 
 came as crazy as himself; and Wesley was persuaded 
 that, "being full of love," they were actually "far 
 voured with extraordinary revelations and mani-r 
 festations from God. But by this very thing," 
 says he, " Satan beguiled them from the simplu 
 city that is in Christ. By insensible degrees, they 
 were led to value these extraordinary gifts, more 
 than the ordinary grace of God ; and I could not 
 convince them, that a grain of humble Jove was 
 better than all these gifts put together," 
 
 In the height of George Bell's extravagance, he 
 attempted to restore a blind man to sight, touched 
 his eyes with spittle, and pronounced the word 
 Ephphatha. The ecclesiastical authorities ought 
 to have a power of sending such persons to Bed- 
 lam, for the sake of religion and of decency, and 
 for the general good ; but such madmen in England 
 are suffered to go abroad, and bite whom they 
 please with impunity. The failure of the blasr 
 phemous experiment neither undeceived him nor 
 his believers ; and they accounted for it by say- 
 ing, that the patient had not faith to be healed* 
 
 z 2 
 
340 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 Wesley had begun to suspect the sanity of these 
 enthusiasts, because they had taken up a notion, 
 from a text in the Revelations, that they should 
 live for ever. As, however, one of the most en- 
 thusiastic happened to go raving mad, and die, he 
 thought the delusion would be checked ; as if a 
 disease of the reason could be cured by the right 
 exercise of the deceased faculty itself! Moreover, 
 with their enthusiasm personal feelings were mixed 
 up, of dislike towards him and his brother, arising 
 from an impatience of their superiority ; and this 
 feeling induced Maxfield to stand forward as the 
 leader of the innovators, though he was not the 
 dupe of their delusions. Mr. Wesley desired the 
 parties to meet him, that all misunderstandings 
 might be removed. Maxfield alone refused to 
 come. " Is this," said Wesley, " the first step 
 towards a separation ! Alas for the man, alas for 
 the people!" It is said that no other event ever 
 grieved him so deeply as the conduct of Maxfield ; 
 for it at once impeached his judgment, and 
 wounded him as an act of ingratitude. Maxfield 
 was the first person whom he had consented to 
 hear as a lay-preacher, and the first whom he 
 authorized to co-operate with him in that cha- 
 racter : and so highly did he value him, that he 
 had obtained ordination for him from the Bishop 
 of Londonderry* This prelate was one of the 
 clergy who encouraged Mr. Wesley in Ireland ; 
 and when he performed the ceremony, he said to 
 Maxfield, " Sir, I ordain you to assist that good 
 man, that he may not work himself to death 1" 
 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 341 
 
 But of all the lessons which he learnt from Wesley, 
 it now appeared that that of insubordination was 
 the one in which he was most perfect. 
 
 The breach, however, was not immediate : some 
 concessions were made by Maxfield, and Wesley, 
 after a while, addressed a letter to him and his 
 associates, especially George Bell, telling them what 
 he disliked in their doctrines, spirit, and outward 
 behaviour. He objected to their teaching that man 
 might be as perfect as an angel ; that he can be 
 absolutely perfect ; that he can be infallible, or 
 above being tempted ; or, that the moment he is 
 pure in heart, he cannot fall from it. To this, 
 however, his own language had given occasion ; 
 for the doctrine which he taught of " a free, full, 
 and present salvation from all the guilt, all the. 
 power, and all the in-being of sin," differs but a 
 hair's breadth from the tenet which he now justly 
 condemned. He objected to their saying, " that 
 one saved from sin needs nothing more than look- 
 ing to Jesus, — needs not to hear or think of any 
 thing else ; believe, believe, is enough : that he 
 needs no self-examination, no times of private 
 prayer ; needs not mind little or outward things ; 
 and that he cannot be taught by any person who 
 is not in the same state." He disliked, he said, 
 " something that had the appearance of enthu- 
 siasm, overvaluing feelings, and inward impres- 
 sions ; mistaking the mere work of imagination 
 for the voice of the Spirit ; expecting the end with- 
 out the means, and undervaluing reason, know- 
 ledge, and wisdom in general." He disliked 
 
 z3 
 
342 "WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 " something that had the appearance of Ahtind- 
 mianism ; not magnifying the law and making it 
 honourable ; not enough valuing tenderness of 
 conscience, and exact watchfulness in order thereto, 
 and using faith rather as contra-distinguished from 
 holiness, than as productive of it." He blamed them 
 for slighting any, the very least rules of the Bands, 
 Or Society; for the disorder and extravagances 
 which they introduced in their public meetings ; 
 and, above all, for the bitter and uncharitable 
 spirit which they manifested toward all who differed 
 from them. And he bade them read this letter of 
 mild reproof, calmly and impartially before the 
 Lord, in prayer; so, he said, should the evil 
 cease, and the good remain, and they would then 
 be more than ever united to him. 
 
 Wesley was riot then aware of Maxfield's intention 
 to set up for himself, and hardly yet suspected the 
 insanity of Bell, his colleague. Upon hearing the 
 latter hold forth, he believed that part of what he 
 said was from God, (so willing was Wesley to be 
 deceived in such things i) and part from an heated 
 imagination; and seeing, he says, nothing dan- 
 gerously wrong, he did not think it necessary to 
 hinder him. The next trial, however, convinced 
 him that Bell must not be suffered to pray at the 
 Foundry : " the reproach of Christ," said he, " I 
 am willing to bear, but not the reproach of en^ 
 thusiasm, if I can help it." That nothing might 
 be done hastily, he suffered him to speak twice 
 more ; «' but," says he, " it was worse and worse. 
 He now spoke, as from God, what I knew God 
 
 9 
 

 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE* 343 
 
 had not spoken ; I therefore desired that he would 
 come thither no more." The excommunication, 
 indeed, could no longer be * delayed, for George 
 Bell had commenced prophet, and proclaimed 
 every where that the world was to be at an end on 
 the 28th of February following. This, however, 
 was the signal for separation : several hundreds of 
 the Society in London threw up their tickets, and 
 withdrew from their connection with Wesley, say- 
 ing, " Blind John is not capable of teaching us, — 
 we will keep to Mr. Maxfield !" for Maxfield was 
 I the leader of the separatists, and Bell, notwith- 
 standing his prophetic pretensions, appeared only 
 as one of his followers. He, indeed, was at this 
 time a downright honest madman. The part which 
 Maxfield acted was more suspicious ; he neither 
 declared a belief or disbelief in the prediction, but 
 he took advantage of the prophet's popularity, to 
 collect a flock among his believers, and form an 
 establishment for himself. 
 
 * Wesley was evidently conscious that he had delayed it too long, and 
 that he had lost credit, by being, or appearing to be, for a time deceived 
 by this madman. The apology which he makes is any thing but in- 
 genuous. " Perhaps," he says, •' reason (unenlightened) makes me 
 simple. If I knew less of human nature, I should be more apt to stumble 
 at the weakness of it ; and if I had not too, by nature or by grace, some 
 clearness of apprehension. It is owing to this (under God) that I never 
 staggered at all at the reveries of George Bell. I saw instantly from 
 the beginning, and at the beginning, what was right, and what was 
 wrong ; but I saw, withal, ' I have many things to speak, but ye cannot 
 bear them now.' Hence many imagine I was imposed upon, and ap- 
 plauded themselves on their own greater perspicuity, as they do at this 
 day. But if you knew it, said his friend to Gregorio Lopez, why did 
 you not tell me ? I answer with him, ' I do not speak all I know, 
 •feut what I judge needful.' " 
 
 Z 4" 
 
344 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 
 
 Often as the end of the world has been pro- 
 phesied by madmen, such a prediction has never 
 failed to excite considerable agitation. Wesley 
 exerted himself to counteract the panic which had 
 been raised; and, on the day appointed, he ex- 
 posed, in a sermon, the utter absurdity of the 
 supposition that the world would be at an end that 
 night. But he says that, notwithstanding all he 
 could say, many were afraid to go to bed, and 
 some wandered about the fields, being persuaded 
 that, if the world did not end, at least London 
 would be swallowed up by an earthquake. He 
 had the prudence, before the day arrived, to in- 
 sert an advertisement in the provincial newspapers, 
 disclaiming all connection with the prophet or the 
 prophecy ; a precaution which was of great ser- 
 vice to poor George Story ; for, in the course of 
 itinerating, he arrived at Darlington on the day 
 appointed. The people in that neighbourhood 
 had been sorely frightened ; but fear had given 
 place to indignation, and in their wrath, they 
 threatened to pull down the Methodist preaching 
 house, and burn the first preacher who should dare 
 to show his face among them. Little as Story was 
 of an enthusiast, he told the mistress of the house, 
 if she would venture the house, he would venture 
 himself; and, upon producing the advertisement 
 in the Newcastle paper, and reading it to the 
 people, they were satisfied, and made no further 
 disturbance. George Bell recovered his senses, to 
 make a deplorable use of them : passing from one 
 extreme to another, the ignorant enthusiast be- 
 
WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE. 345 
 
 came an ignorant infidel ; turned fanatic in politics 
 as he had done in religion; and having gone 
 through all the degrees of disaffection and dis- 
 loyalty, died, at a great age, a radical reformer. 
 
 This affair, if it made Wesley more cautious for 
 awhile, did not lessen his habitual credulity. His 
 disposition to believe whatever he was told, how- 
 ever improbable the fact, or insufficient the evi- 
 dence, was not confined to preternatural tales. 
 He listened to every old woman's nostrum for a 
 disease, and collected so many of them, that he 
 thought himself qualified at last to commence prac- 
 titioner in medicine. Accordingly he announced 
 in London his intention of giving physic to the 
 poor, and they came for many years in great 
 numbers, till the expence of distributing medicines 
 to them was greater than the Society could sup- 
 port. At the same time, for the purpose of en- 
 abling people to cure themselves, he published his 
 collection of receipts, under the title of Primitive 
 Physic : or, an easy and natural Method of curing 
 most Diseases. In his preface he showed, that 
 the art of healing was originally founded on expe- 
 riments, and so became traditional : enquiring men, 
 in process of time, began to reason upon the facts 
 which they knew, and formed theories of physic 
 which, when thus made theoretical, was soon con- 
 verted into a mystery and a craft. Some lovers of 
 lankind, however, had still, from time to time, 
 mdeavouredto bring it back to its ancient footing, 
 md make it, as it was at the beginning, a plain 
 
346 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AG£; 
 
 intelligible thing ; professing to know nothing mofeV 
 than that certain maladies might be removed by 
 certain medicines ; and his mean hand, he said, 
 had made a like attempt, in which he had only 
 consulted experience, common sense, and the 
 common interest of mankind* 
 
 The previous directions which he gave for pre- 
 venting disease, were in general judicious. He 
 advised early hours, regular exercise, plain diet, 
 and temperance : and he pointed out, not without 
 effect, the physical benefits which resulted from a 
 moral and religious life. " All violent and sudden 
 passions," he said, " dispose to, or actually throw 
 people into acute diseases. The slow and lasting 
 passions, such as grief, and hopeless love, bring od 
 chronical diseases. Till the passion which caused 
 the disease is calmed, medicine is applied in vain. 
 The love of God, as it is the sovereign remedy of 
 all miseries, so, in particular, it effectually pre- 
 vents all the bodily disorders the passions intro- 
 duce, by keeping the passions themselves within 
 due bounds ; and, by the unspeakable joy, and 
 perfect calm serenity and tranquillity it gives the 
 mind, it becomes the most powerful of all the 
 means of health and long life.' * In his directions 
 to the sick, he recommends them to " add to the 
 rest (for it is not labour lost) that old unfashionable 
 medicine, prayer ; and to have faith in God, who 
 4 killeth and maketh alive, who bringeth down to 
 the grave and bringeth up/ " The book itself 
 must have done great mischief, and probably may 
 
WESLEY ifc MIDDLE A6E. 347 
 
 still continue so to do ; for it has been most * ex- 
 tensively circulated, and it evinces throughout 
 a lamentable want of judgment, and a perilous 
 rashness, advising sometimes means of ridiculous 
 inefficacy in the most dangerous cases, and some- 
 times remedies so rude, that it would be mar- 
 vellous if they did not destroy the patient. He 
 believed, however, that he had cured himself of 
 What was pronounced to be a confirmed consump- 
 tion, and had every symptom of it, by his favourite 
 prescription for pleurisy, a plaister of brimstone 
 and white of egg, spread upon brown paper. Upon 
 applying this, the pain in his side, he says, was 
 removed in a few minutes, the fever in half an 
 hour, and, from that hour, he began to recover 
 strength. His death had been so fully expected, 
 that Whitefield wrote him a farewell letter, in the 
 most affectionate terms, and a consolatory one to 
 his brother Charles. And he himself, not know- 
 ing, he says, how it might please God to dispose 
 of him, and to prevent vile panegyric, wrote his 
 own epitaph, in these words : 
 
 * The current edition, which is now before me, is the twenty-eighth. 
 The cold-bath is prescribed for ague, just before the cold fit; for pre- 
 venting apoplexy ; for weak infants, every day ; and for cancer. For 
 films in the sight, the eyes are to be touched with lunar caustic every 
 day ; or zibethum occidentale, dried slowly, and finely pulverized, is to 
 be blown into them. For siphylis, an ounce of quicksilver every morn- 
 ing ; and for the twisting of the intestines, qui ksilver, ounce by ounces 
 to the amount of one, two, or three pounds ! Toasted cheese is re- 
 commended for a cut ; and, for a rupture in children, " boil a spoonful 
 of egg-shells, dried in an oven, and powdered, in a pint of milk, and 
 feed the child constantly with bread boiled in this milk 1" 
 
348 WESLEY IN MIDDLE AGE, 
 
 HERE LIETH 
 
 THE BODY OF JOHN WESLEY, 
 
 A BRAND PLUCKED OUT? OF THE BURNING: 
 
 WHO DIED OF A CONSUMPTION IN THE FIFTY-FIRST YEAR 
 
 OF HIS AGE, 
 NOT LEAVING, AFTER HIS DEBTS ARE PAID, TEN POUNDS 
 BEHIND HIM ; 
 PRAYING 
 GOD BE MERCIFUL TO ME AN UNPROFITABLE SERVANT ! 
 
 
 " He ordered that this (if any) inscription should be placed 
 on his tomb-stone.'' 
 
S49 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 PROGRESS OF CALVINISTIC METHODISM. DEATH OF 
 
 WHITEFIELD. — -FINAL BREACH BETWEEN WESLEY 
 AND THE CALVINISTS. 
 
 Whitefield had not continued long at enmity 
 with Wesley. He was sensible that he had given 
 him great and just offence by publishing the story 
 of the lots, and he acknowledged this, and asked 
 his pardon. Wesley's was a heart in which re- 
 sentment never could strike root : the difference 
 between them, therefore, as far as it was personal, 
 was made up ; but, upon the doctrines in dispute, 
 they remained as widely separate as ever, and 
 their respective followers were less charitable than 
 themselves. 
 
 Whitefield also had become a married man. He 
 had determined upon this in America, and opened 
 his intentions in a characteristic letter to the pa- 
 rents of the lady whom he was disposed to chuse. 
 He told them, that he found a mistress was neces- 
 sary for the management of his increasing family 
 at the Orphan-house, and it had therefore been 
 much impressed upon his heart that he should marry, 
 in order to have a help meet for him in the work 
 whereunto he was called. " This," he proceeded, 
 " comes (like Abraham's servant to Rebekah's re- 
 lations) to know whether you think your daughter, 
 
350 PROGRESS OF CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 
 
 Miss E., is a proper person to engage in such an 
 undertaking ? If so, whether you will be pleased to 
 give me leave to propose marriage unto her ? You 
 need not be afraid of sending me a refusal ; for, I 
 bless God, if I know any thing of my own heart, 
 I am free from that foolish passion which the world 
 calls love. I write, only because I believe it is 
 the will of God that I should alter my state ; but 
 your denial will fully convince me, that your 
 daughter is not the person appointed by God for 
 me. But I have sometimes thought Miss E. would 
 be my help-mate, for she has often been impressed 
 upon my heart. After strong crying and tears at 
 the throne of grace for direction, and after un- 
 speakable trouble with my own heart, I write this. 
 Be pleased to spread the letter before the Lord ; 
 and if you think this motion to be of Him, be 
 pleased to deliver the inclosed to your daughter. 
 If not, say nothing ; only let me know you disap- 
 prove of it, and that shall satisfy your obliged 
 friend and servant in Christ." The letter to the 
 lady was written in the same temper. It invited 
 her to partake of a way of life, which nothing but 
 devotion and enthusiasm like his could render en- 
 durable. He told her he had great reason to be- 
 lieve it was the divine will that he should alter his 
 condition, and had often thought she was the per- 
 son appointed for him ; but he should still wait on 
 the Lord for direction, and heartily entreat him, 
 that, if this motion were not of Him, it might come 
 to nought. " I much like," said he, " the manner 
 ©f Isaac's marrying with Bebekah j and think no 
 
PROGRESS OF CALVINrSTIC METHODISM. 351 
 
 marriage can succeed well, unless both parties 
 concerned are like-minded with Tobias and his 
 wife. I make no great profession to you, because 
 I believe you think me sincere. The passionate 
 expressions which carnal courtiers use, I think, 
 ought to be avoided by those that would marry in 
 the Lord. I can only promise, by the help of 
 God, to keep my matrimonial vow, and to do 
 what I can towards helping you forward in the 
 great work of your salvation. If you think mar- 
 riage will be any way prejudicial to your better 
 part, be so kind as to send me a denial." The 
 Moravian arrangement for pairing their members 
 would have been very convenient for a person of 
 this temper. 
 
 The reply which he received informed him, that 
 the lady was in a seeking state only, and surely, 
 he said, that would not do: he must have one 
 that was full of faith and the Holy Ghost. Such 
 an one he thought he had found in a widow at 
 Abergavenny, by name James, who was between 
 thirty and forty, and, by his own account, neither 
 rich nor beautiful, but having once been gay, was 
 now " a despised follower of the Lamb." He 
 spoke of his marriage in language which would 
 seem profane, unless large allowances were made 
 for the indiscreet and offensive phraseology of those 
 who call themselves religious professors. The 
 success of his preaching appears at this time to 
 have intoxicated him ; he fancied that something 
 like a gift of prophecy had been imparted to him ; 
 and, when his wife became pregnant, he announced 
 
35% PROGRESS OF CALVTOISTIC METHODISM. 
 
 that the child would be a boy, and become a 
 preacher of the gospel. It proved a boy, and the 
 father publicly baptized him in the Tabernacle, 
 and, in the presence of a crowded congregation, 
 solemnly devoted him to the service of God. At 
 the end of four months the child died, and White- 
 field then acknowledged that he had been under a 
 delusion : " Satan," he said, "had been permitted 
 to give him some wrong impressions, whereby he 
 had misapplied several texts of scripture." The 
 lesson was severe, but not in vain, for it saved 
 him from any future extravagances of that kind. 
 His marriage was not* a happy one; and the 
 death of his wife is said, by one of his friends, to 
 have " set his mind much at liberty." It is as- 
 serted that she did not behave in all respects as 
 she ought ; but it is admitted, that their disagree- 
 ment was increased by some persons who made 
 pretensions to more holiness than they possessed. 
 Whitefield was irritable, and impatient of contra- 
 diction : and, even if his temper had been as hap- 
 pily constituted as Wesley's, his habits of life must 
 have made him, like Wesley, a most uncomfort- 
 able husband. 
 
 His popularity, however, was greatly on the in- 
 crease. So great, indeed, was his confidence in 
 his powers over the rudest of mankind, that he 
 ventured upon preaching to the rabble in Moor- 
 
 * It was not likely to be so, as may be judged from what he says to 
 one of his married friends ; " I hope you are not nimis uxorius. Take 
 heed, my dear B., take heed ! Time is short. It remains that those who 
 have wives, be as though they had none. Let nothing intercept or 
 interrupt your communion with the bridegroom of the Church." 
 
PROGRESS OF CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 353 
 
 fields during the Whitsun holy days, when, as he* 
 said, Satan's children kept up their annual ren* 
 dezvous there. This was a sort of pitched battle 
 with Satan, and Whitefield displayed some general- 
 ship upon the occasion. He took the field betimes* 
 with a large congregation of " praying people" to 
 attend him, and began at six in the morning* be- 
 fore the enemy had mustered in strength. Not 
 above ten thousand persons were assembled wah> 
 ing for the sports ; and, having nothing else to do, 
 they, for mere pastime, presently flocked round 
 his field-pulpit. " Glad was I to find," says he, 
 " that I had, for once, as it were, got the start of 
 the devil." Encouraged by the success of his morn j 
 ing preaching, he ventured there again at noon* 
 when, in his own words, " the fields, the whole 
 fields, seemed, in a bad sense of the word, all 
 white, ready, not for the Redeemer's* but Beel- 
 zebub's -harvest. All his agents were in full mo- 
 tion 4 drummers, trumpeters, merry-andrews, mas- 
 ters of puppet-shows, exhibitors of wild beasts, 
 players, &c. &c. all busy in entertaining their re- 
 spective auditories." He estimated the crowd to 
 comsist of from twenty to thirty thousand persons ; 
 arid thinking that, like St. Paul, he should now, in 
 a metaphorical sense, be called to fight with wild 
 beasts, he took for his text, "Great is Diana of 
 tltie Ephesians." — " You may easily guess," says 
 be, " that there was some noise among the crafts- 
 men, and that I was honoured with having a few 
 stones, dirt, rotten eggs, and pieces of dead cats 
 thrown at me while engaged in calling them from 
 
 VOL. II. A A 
 
354} PROGRESS OF CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 
 
 their favourite but lying vanities. My soul was, 
 indeed, among lions ; but far the greatest part of 
 my congregation, which was very large, seemed 
 for a while to be turned into lambs." He then 
 gave notice that he would preach again at six in 
 the evening. " I came," he says, " I saw, — but 
 what? — thousands and thousands more than be- 
 fore, if possible, still more deeply engaged in their 
 unhappy diversions, but some thousands amongst 
 them waiting as earnestly to hear the Gospel. This 
 Satan could not brook. One of his choicest ser- 
 vants was exhibiting, trumpeting on a large stage ; 
 but as soon as the people saw me in my black 
 robes, and my pulpit, I think all, to a man, left 
 him and ran to me. For a while I was enabled to 
 lift up my voice like a trumpet, and many heard 
 the joyful sound. God's people kept praying, and 
 the enemy's agents made a kind of roaring at some 
 distance from our camp. At length they ap- 
 proached nearer, and the merry-andrew (attended 
 by others, who complained that they had taken 
 many pounds less that day, on account of viny 
 preaching) got upon a man's shoulders, and ad- 
 vancing near the pulpit, attempted to slash me 
 with a long heavy whip several times, but always, 
 with the violence of his motion, tumbled down." 
 Soon afterwards, they got a recruiting serjeant, witjh 
 his drums, fifes, and followers, to pass through tli e 
 congregation. But Whitefield, by his tactics, baffled 
 this manoeuvre : he ordered them to make way fox 
 the king's officers ; the ranks opened, and when th<f 
 party had marched through, closed again. Whei* 
 8 
 
PROGRESS OF CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 355 
 
 the uproar became, as it sometimes did, such as to 
 overpower his single voice, he called the voices of 
 all his people to his aid, and began singing ; and 
 thus, what with singing, praying, and preaching, 
 he continued, by his own account, three hours 
 upon the ground, till the darkness made it time to 
 break up. So great was the impression which this 
 wonderful man produced in this extraordinary 
 scene, that more than a thousand notes were 
 handed up to him, from persons who, as the phrase 
 is, were brought under concern by his preaching 
 that day, and three hundred and fifty persons 
 joined his congregation. 
 
 On the Tuesday he removed to Mary-le-bone 
 fields, a place of similar resort. Here a Quaker 
 had prepared a very high pulpit for him, but not 
 having fixed the supports well in the ground, the 
 preacher found himself in some jeopardy, especially 
 when the mob endeavoured to push the circle of his 
 friends against it, and so to throw it down. But 
 he had a narrower escape after he had descended ; 
 " for as I was passing," says he, " from the pulpit 
 to the coach, I felt my wig and hat to be almost 
 off: I turned about, and observed a sword just 
 touching my temples. A young rake, as I after- 
 wards found, was determined to stab me ; but a 
 gentleman, seeing the sword thrusting near me, 
 struck it up with his cane, and so the destined 
 victim providentially escaped." The man who 
 made this atrocious attempt, probably in a fit of 
 drunken fury, was seized by the people, and 
 would have been handled as severely as he de- 
 
 a a 2 
 
356 PROGRESS OF CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 
 
 served, if one of Whitefield's friends had not shel- 
 tered him. The following day Whitefield returned 
 to the attack in Moorfields ; and here he gave a 
 striking example of that ready talent which turns 
 every thing to its purpose. A merry-andrew find- 
 ing that no common acts of buffoonery were of any 
 avail, got into a tree near the pulpit, and, as 
 much, perhaps, in despite, as in insult, exposed 
 his bare posteriors to the preacher, in the sight of 
 all the people. The more brutal mob applauded 
 him with loud laughter, while decent persons were 
 abashed ; and Whitefield himself was, for a mo- 
 ment, confounded ; but instantly recovering him- 
 self, he appealed to all, since now they had such 
 a spectacle before them, whether he had wronged 
 human nature in saying, with Bishop Hall, that 
 man, when left to himself, is half a fiend and half 
 a brute ; or, in calling him, with William Law, a 
 motley mixture of the beast and devil ! The ap- 
 peal was not lost upon the crowd, whatever it 
 might be upon the wretch by whom it was occa- 
 sioned. A circumstance at these adventurous 
 preachings is mentioned, which affected Whitefield 
 himself and must have produced considerable ef- 
 fect upon others : — several children, of both 
 sexes, used to sit round him, on the pulpit, while 
 he preached, for the purpose of handing to him the 
 notes, which were, delivered by persons upon whom 
 his exhortations had acted as he desired, iTie'se 
 poor children were exposed to all the missiles with 
 which he was assailed ; however much they were 
 terrified or hurt, they never shrunk, " but, on the 
 
 6 
 
PROGRESS OF GALVINISTIC METHODISM. 357 
 
 contrary," says he, " every time I was struck, they 
 turned up their little weeping eyes, and seemed to 
 wish they could receive the blows for me." 
 
 Shortly after his separation from Wesley, some 
 Calvinistic dissenters built a large shed for him, 
 near the Foundry, upon a piece of ground which 
 was lent for the purpose, till he should return 
 to America. From the temporary nature of the 
 structure, they called it a Tabernacle, in allusion 
 to the moveable place of worship of the Israel- 
 ites during their journey in the wilderness ; and 
 the name being in puritanical taste, became the 
 designation of all the chapels of the Calvinistic 
 Methodists. In this place Whitefield was assisted 
 by Cennick, and others, who sided with him at 
 the division ; and he employed lay-preachers with 
 less reluctance than Wesley had done, because 
 the liking which he had acquired in America for 
 the old puritans had, in some degree, alienated 
 his feelings from the church, and his predesti- 
 narian opinions brought him in contact with the 
 dissenters. But Whitefield had neither the ambi- 
 tion of founding a separate community, nor the 
 talent for it; he would have contented himself 
 with being the founder of the Orphan-house at Sa- 
 vannah, and with the effect which he produced as 
 a roving preacher ; and Calvinistic Methodism, per- 
 haps, might never have been embodied into a se- 
 parate sect, if it had not found a patroness in Selina 
 Countess of Huntingdon. 
 
 This " noble and elect lady," as her followers 
 have called her, was daughter of Washington Earl 
 
 a A3 
 
358 PROGRESS OF CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 
 
 of Ferrers, and widow of Theophilus Earl of Hunt- 
 ingdon. There was a decided insanity in her fa- 
 mily. Her sisters-in-law, Lady Betty and Lady 
 Margaret Hastings, were of a religious temper; 
 the former had been the patroness of the first 
 Methodists at Oxford; the latter had become a 
 disciple and at length married Wesley's old pupil 
 and fellow-missionary Ingham. Lady Margaret 
 communicated her opinions to the Countess ; the 
 Wesleys were called in to her, after a dangerous ill- 
 ness, which had been terminated by the new birth ; 
 and her husband's tutor, Bishop Benson, who was 
 sent for afterwards, in hopes that he might restore 
 her to a saner sense of devotion, found all his ar- 
 guments ineffectual ; instead of receiving instruc- 
 tions from him, she was disposed to be the teacher, 
 quoted the homilies against him, insisted upon her 
 own interpretation of the articles, and attacked 
 him upon the awful responsibility of his station. 
 All this is said to have irritated him ; the emotion 
 which he must needs have felt, might have been 
 more truly, as well as more charitably, inter- 
 preted; and when he left her, he lamented that 
 he had ever laid his hands upon George White- 
 field. " My lord," she replied, " mark my words! 
 when you come upon your dying bed, that will be 
 one of the few ordinations you will reflect upon 
 with complacence." 
 
 During: the Earl's life she restrained herself, in 
 deference to his wishes ; but, becoming mistress of 
 herself, and of a liberal income, at his death, she 
 took a more decided and public part, and, had 
 means permitted, would have done as much for 
 
 
PROGRESS OF CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 359 
 
 Methodism as the Countess Matilda did for the 
 Papacy. Upon Whitefield's return from America, 
 in 1748, he was invited to her house at Chelsea as 
 soon as he landed. And after he had officiated 
 there twice, she wrote to him, inviting him again, 
 that some of the nobility might hear him. " Blessed 
 be God," he says, in his reply, " that the rich and 
 great begin to have an hearing ear : I think it is a 
 good sign that our Lord intends to give, to some 
 at least, an obedient heart. How wonderfully does 
 our Redeemer deal with souls ! If they will hear 
 the gospel only under a ceiled roof, ministers shall 
 be sent to them there : if only in a church, or a 
 field, they shall have it there. A word in the 
 lesson, when I was last with your ladyship, struck 
 me, — Paul preached privately to those that "were of 
 reputation. This must be the way, I presume, of 
 dealing with the nobility, who yet know not the 
 Lord." This is characteristic ; and his answer to 
 a second note, respecting the time, is still more so. 
 " Ever since the reading your ladyship's con- 
 descending letter, my soul has been overpowered 
 with his presence, who is all in all. When your 
 ladyship stiled me your friend, I was amazed at 
 your condescension*; but when I thought that 
 Jesus was my friend, it quite overcame me, and 
 made me to lie prostrate before him, crying, Why 
 me ? why me ? I just now rose from the ground, 
 after praying the Lord of all lords to water your 
 soul, honoured madam, every moment. As there 
 seems to be a door opening for the nobility to hear 
 the Gospel, I will defer my journey, and, God 
 
 a a 4 
 
360 PROGRESS OF CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 
 
 willing, preach at your ladyship's. Oh that God 
 may be with me, and make me humble! I am 
 ashamed to think your ladyship will admit me 
 under your roof; much more am I amazed that the 
 Lord Jesus will make use of such a creature as I 
 am; — quite astonished at your ladyship's conde- 
 scension, and the unmerited superabounding grace 
 and goodness of Him who has loved me, and 
 given Himself for me." Wesley would not have 
 written in this strain, which, for its servile adu- 
 lation, and its canting vanity, might well provoke 
 disgust and indignation, were not the real genius 
 and piety of the writer beyond all doubt. Such, 
 however, as the language is, it was natural in 
 Whitefield, and not ill suited for the person to 
 whom it was addressed. 
 
 Lord Chesterfield and Bolingbroke were among 
 his auditors at Chelsea; the Countess had done 
 well in inviting those persons who stood most in 
 need of repentance. The former complimented 
 the preacher with his usual courtliness ; the latter 
 is said to have been much moved at the discourse : 
 he invited Whitefield to visit him, and seems to 
 have endeavoured to pass from infidelity to Cal- 
 vinism, if he could. Lady Huntingdon, flattered, 
 perhaps, by the applause which was bestowed upon 
 the performance, appointed Whitefield one of her 
 chaplains. He, at this time, writing to Mr. Wes- 
 ley, says, " What have you thought about an 
 union ? I am afraid an external one is impracticable. 
 I find, by your sermons, that we differ in prin- 
 ciples more than I thought, and I believe we are 
 
 
PROGRESS OF CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 36l 
 
 upon two different plans. My attachment to Ame- 
 rica will not permit me to abide very long in Eng- 
 land, consequently I should but weave a Penelope's 
 web if I formed societies ; and, if I should form 
 them, I have not proper assistants to take care of 
 them ; I intend, therefore, to go about preaching 
 the Gospel to every creature." In saying that 
 he had " no party to be at the head of," and that, 
 through God's grace, he would have none, White- 
 field only disclaimed the desire of placing him- 
 self in a situation which he was not competent 
 to fill ; at this very time he was sufficiently will- 
 ing that a party should be formed, of which he 
 might be the honorary head, while the management 
 was in other hands. For he told the Elect Lady 
 that a leader was wanting ; and that that honour 
 had been put on her ladyship by the great head of 
 the church, — an honour which had been conferred 
 on few, but which was an earnest of what she was 
 to receive before men and angels when time should 
 be no more. That honour Lady Huntingdon ac- 
 cepted. She built chapels in various places, which 
 were called hers, and procured Calvinistic clergy- 
 men to officiate in them. After a time, a suffi- 
 cient supply of ordained ministers could not be 
 found, and some began to draw back, when they 
 perceived that the course of action, in which they 
 were engaged, tended manifestly to schism. This, 
 however, did not deter her Ladyship from pro- 
 ceeding ; she followed the example of Mr. Wesley, 
 and employed laymen without scruple ; and as the 
 chapels were called Lady Huntingdon's chapels, 
 
362 PROGRESS OF CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 
 
 the persons who officiated were called Lady Hunt- 
 ingdon's preachers. At length she set up a semi- 
 nary for such preachers, at Trevecca, in South 
 Wales ; and this was called Lady Huntingdon's 
 College, and the Calvinistic Methodists went by 
 the name of Lady Huntingdon's Connection. The 
 terms of admission were, that the students should 
 be truly converted to God, and resolved to dedi- 
 cate themselves to his service. During three years 
 they were to be boarded and instructed gra- 
 tuitously, at her Ladyship's cost, and supplied 
 every year with a suit of clothes : at the end of 
 that time they were either to take orders, or enter 
 the ministry among dissenters of any denomination. 
 Sincere devotee as the Countess was, she re- 
 tained much of the pride of birth. For this reason 
 Whitefield, who talked of her amazing condescen- 
 sion in patronizing him, would have been more 
 acceptable to her than Wesley, even if he had not 
 obtained a preference in her esteem because of his 
 Calvinism; and perhaps this disposition inclined 
 her, unconsciously, to favour a doctrine which 
 makes a privileged order of souls. Wesley, there- 
 fore, who neither wanted, nor would have ad- 
 mitted, patron or patroness to be the temporal 
 head of the societies which he had formed, and 
 was as little likely to act a subordinate part under 
 Lady Huntingdon as under Count ZinzendorfF, 
 seems never to have • been cordially liked by her, 
 and gradually grew into disfavour. The reconcile 
 a^ion with Whitefield was, perhaps, produced more 
 by a regard to appearances on both sides, than by 
 
PROGRESS OF CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 365 
 
 any feeling on either. Such >a wound as had been 
 made in their friendship always leaves a scar, how- 
 ever well it may have healed. They interchanged 
 letters, not very frequently ; and they preached 
 occasionally in each other's pulpits ; but there was 
 no cordial intercourse, no hearty co-operation. 
 Whitefield saw, and disapproved in Wesley, that 
 ambition of which the other was not conscious in 
 himself, largely as it entered into the elements of 
 his character ; and Wesley, on the other hand, 
 who felt his own superiority in intellect and know- 
 ledge, regarded, probably, as a weakness, the ho- 
 mage which was paid by Whitefield to persons in 
 high life. Yet they did justice to each other's in- 
 tentions and virtues ; and old feelings sometimes 
 rose again, as from the dead, like the blossoming 
 of spring flowers in autumn, which remind us that 
 the season of hope and of joyance is gone by. It 
 is pleasant to observe, that this tenderness in- 
 creased as they advanced toward the decline of 
 life. When Whitefield returned from America to 
 England for the last time, Wesley was struck with 
 the- change in his appearance : " he seemed," says 
 he in his Journal, " to be an old man, being fairly 
 worn out in his Master's service, though he has 
 hardly seen fifty years ; and yet it pleases God 
 that I, who am now in my sixty-third year, find 
 no disorder, no weakness, no decay, no difference 
 from what I was at five*and-twenty ; only that I 
 have fewer teeth, and more grey hairs." 
 
 Lady Huntingdon had collected about her a 
 knot of Calvinistic clergy, some of them of high 
 
364} PROGRESS OF CALVINISTIC METHODISM. 
 
 birth, and abounding as much with bigotry and 
 intolerance as with zeal. Whitefield, however* at 
 this time, to use Wesley's language, breathed no- 
 thing but peace and love. " Bigotry," said he, 
 '■' cannot stand before him, but hides its head 
 wherever he comes. My brother and I conferred 
 with him every day ; and, let the honourable men 
 do what they please, we resolved, by the grace of 
 God, to go on hand in hand, through honour and 
 dishonour." Accordingly Wesley preached in the 
 Countess's chapel, where, he says, many were not 
 a little surprised at seeing him, and where, it ap- 
 pears, that he did not expect to be often invited ; 
 for he adds, that he was in no concern whether he 
 preached there again or not. Whitefield and 
 Howel Harris (a man whose genuine charity was 
 no ways corrupted by his opinions) attended at the 
 next Conference. 
 
 This union continued till Whitefield returned to 
 America, in 1769, and died there in the follow- 
 ing year, A fear of outliving his usefulness had 
 often depressed him : and one day, when giving 
 way to an irritable temper, he brought tears from 
 one who had not deserved such treatment, he burst 
 into tears himself, and exclaimed, " I shall live 
 to be a poor peevish old man, and every body will 
 be tired of me ! " He wished for a sudden death, 
 and that blessing was so far vouchsafed him, that 
 the illness which proved fatal was only of a few- 
 hours' continuance. It was a fit of asthma : when 
 it seized him first, one of his friends expressed a 
 wish that he would not preach so often j and his 
 
DEATH OF WHITEFIELD. 565 
 
 reply was, " I had rather wear out than rust out." 
 He died at Newbury-Port, in New-England, and, 
 according to his own desire, was buried before the 
 pulpit, in the Presbyterian church of that town. 
 Every mark of respect was shown to his remains : 
 all the bells in the town tolled, and the ships in 
 the harbour fired mourning guns, and hung their 
 flags half-mast high. In Georgia, all the black 
 cloth in the stores was bought up, and the church 
 was hung with black: the governor and council 
 met at the state-house in deep mourning, and went 
 in procession to hear a funeral sermon. Funeral 
 honours also were performed throughout the ta- 
 bernacles in England. He had been asked who 
 should preach his funeral sermon, in case of his 
 dying abroad : whether it should be his old friend 
 Mr. Wesley ; and had always replied, he is the 
 man. Mr. Wesley, therefore, by desire of the exe- 
 cutors, preached at the tabernacle in Tottenham- 
 court Road, (the high-church of the sect,) and in 
 many other places did the same, wishing, he said, 
 to show all possible respect to the memory of so 
 great and good a man. Upon this occasion he ex- 
 presses a hope in his Journal, that God had now 
 given a blow to that bigotry which had prevailed 
 for many years : but it broke out, ere long, with 
 more virulence than ever. 
 
 Notwithstanding Mr. Wesley's endeavours to 
 guard his followers against the Antinomian errors, 
 the stream of Methodism had set in that way. It 
 is a course which enthusiasm naturally takes, 
 wherever, from a blind spirit of antipathy to the 
 Romanists, solifidianism is preached. To correct 
 
3-66 FINAL BREACH BETWEEN 
 
 this perilous tendency, (for, of all doctrinal errors, 
 there is none of which the practical consequences 
 are so pernicious,) Wesley said, in the Conference 
 of 1771> " Take heed to your doctrine ! we have 
 leaned too much toward Calvinism. 1. With re- 
 gard to man' s faithfulness : our Lord himself taught 
 us to use the expression, and we ought never to 
 be ashamed of it. 2. With regard to working for 
 life: this also our Lord has expressly commanded 
 us. Labour, Ipyugcib, literally, work for the meat 
 that endureth to everlasting life. 3. We have re- 
 ceived it as a maxim, that a man is to do nothing 
 in order to justification. Nothing can be more 
 false. Whoever desires to find favour with God, 
 should cease from evil, and learn to do well. Who- 
 ever repents, should do works meet for repentance. 
 And if this is not in order to find favour, what 
 does he do them for? Is not this salvation by 
 works ? Not by the merit of works, but by works 
 as a condition. What have we then been dis- 
 puting about for these thirty years ? I am afraid 
 about words. As to merit itself, of which we have 
 been so dreadfully afraid, we are rewarded ac- 
 cording to our works, yea, because of our works. 
 How does this differ from for the sake of our 
 works f And how differs this from secundum me- 
 rita operum, as our works deserve? Can you split 
 this hair ? I doubt I cannot. — Does not talking of 
 a justified or sanctified state tend to mislead men ? 
 almost naturally leading them to trust in what was 
 done in one moment ; whereas we are every hour, 
 and every moment, pleasing or displeasing to God, 
 
 
WESLEY AND THE CALVINISTS. ■ 367 
 
 according to our works; according to the whole of 
 our inward tempers, and our outward behaviour." 
 
 This language, candid, frank, and reasonable as 
 it is, — in every way honourable to Mr. Wesley, 
 shocked the high-flying Calvinists. The alarm 
 was taken at Trevecca ; and, notwithstanding the 
 specious liberality which had been professed, Lady 
 Huntingdon declared, that whoever did not fully 
 disavow these minutes, must quit the college. 
 The students and masters were called upon to de- 
 liver their sentiments in writing, without reserve. 
 The superintendant, in so doing, explained, vin- 
 dicated, and approved the doctrine of Mr. Wesley, 
 though he considered the wording as unguarded, 
 and not sufficiently explicit ; and he resigned his 
 appointment accordingly, wishing that the Countess 
 might find a minister to preside there less insuffi- 
 cient than himself, and more willing-to go certain 
 lengths in party spirit. 
 
 Jean Guillaume de la Flechere, who thus with- 
 drew from Trevecca, was a man of rare talents, 
 and rarer virtue. No age or country has ever pro- 
 duced a man of more fervent piety,. or more per- 
 fect charity ; no church has ever possessed a more- 
 apostolic minister. He was born at Nyon, in the 
 Pays de Vaud, of a respectable Bernese family, 
 descended from a noble house in Savoy. Having 
 been educated for the ministry at Geneva, he 
 found himself unable to subscribe to the doctrine 
 of predestination, and resolved to seek preferment 
 as a soldier of fortune. Accordingly he went to 
 Lisbon, obtained a commission in the Portugueze 
 
368 MR. FLETCHER. 
 
 service, and was ordered to Brazil. A lucky ac- 
 cident, which confined him to his bed when the 
 ship sailed, saved him from a situation where his 
 fine intellect would have been lost, and his philan- 
 thropic piety would have had no room to display 
 itself. He left Portugal for the prospect of active 
 service in the Low Countries, and that prospect 
 also being disappointed by peace, he came over to 
 England, improved himself in the language, and 
 became tutor in the family of Mr. Hill, of Fern- 
 Hall, in Shropshire. The love of God and of man 
 abounded in his heart ; and finding, among the 
 Methodists, that sympathy which he desired, he 
 joined them, and, for a time, took to ascetic 
 courses, of which he afterwards acknowledged the 
 error. He lived on vegetables, and, for some 
 time, on milk and water, and bread; he sat up 
 two whole nights in every week, for the purpose 
 of praying, and reading and meditating on reli- 
 gious things ; and, on the other nights, never al- 
 lowed himself to sleep, as long as he could keep 
 his attention to the book before him. At length, 
 by the advice of his friends, Mr. Hill, and of 
 Mr. Wesley, whom he consulted, he took orders 
 in the English church. The ordination took 
 place in the Chapel-Royal, St. James's, and, as 
 soon as it was over, he went to the Methodist 
 chapel in West-Street, where he assisted in ad- 
 ministering the Lord's Supper. Wesley had never 
 received so seasonable an assistance. " How won- 
 derful are the ways of God!" said he, in his 
 Journal. " When my bodily strength failed, and 
 
WESLEY AND THE CALVINISTS. 369 
 
 lione in England were able and willing to assist me, 
 He sent me help from the mountains .of Switzer- 
 land, and an help meet for me in every respect. 
 Where could I have found such another!" It 
 proved a more efficient and important help than 
 Mr. Wesley could then have anticipated. 
 
 Mr. Fletcher (for so he now called himself, be- 
 ing completely anglicised,) incurred some dis- 
 pleasure, by the decided manner in which he con- 
 nected himself with the Methodists : neither his 
 talents nor his virtues were yet understood be- 
 yond the circle of his friends. By Mr. Hill's 
 means, however, he was presented to the vicarage 
 of Madely, in Shropshire, about three years after 
 his ordination. It is a populous village, in which 
 there were extensive collieries and iron works ; and 
 the character of the inhabitants was, in consequence, 
 what, to the reproach and curse of England, it 
 generally is, wherever mines or manufactures of any 
 kind have brought together a crowded population. 
 Mr. Fletcher had, at one time, officiated there 
 as curate ; he now entered upon his duty with 
 zeal proportioned to the arduous nature of the ser- 
 vice which he had pledged himself to perform. 
 That zeal made him equally disregardful of ap- 
 pearances and of danger. The whole rents of his 
 small patrimonial estate in the Pays de Vaud were 
 set apart for charitable uses, and he drew so li- 
 berally from his other funds for the same purpose, 
 that his furniture and wardrobe were not spared. 
 Because some of his remoter parishioners excused 
 themselves for not attending the morning service, 
 
 vol. ir. c B 
 
S70 FINAL BREADS BETWEEN 
 
 by pleading that they did not wake early enough 
 to get their families ready, for some months he set 
 out every Sunday, at five o'clock, with a bell in 
 his hand, and went round the most distant parts of 
 the parish, to call up the people. And wherever 
 hearers could be collected in the surrounding 
 country, within ten or fifteen miles, thither he went 
 to preach to them on week days, though he seldom 
 got home before one or two in the morning. At 
 first, the rabble of his parishioners resented the 
 manner in which he ventured to reprove and ex- 
 hort them in the midst of their lewd revels and 
 riotous meetings ; for he would frequently burst 
 in upon them, without any fear of the consequence 
 to himself. The publicans and maltmen were his 
 especial enemies. A mob of colliers, who were 
 one day baiting a bull, determined to pull him off 
 his horse as he went to preach, set the dogs upon 
 him, and, in their own phrase, bait the parson ; 
 but the bull broke loose, and dispersed them be- 
 fore he arrived. In spite, however, of the oppo- 
 sition which his eccentricities excited, not from 
 the ignorant only, but from some of the neighbour- 
 ing clergy and magistrates, he won upon the 
 people, rude and brutal as they were, by the in- 
 vincible benevolence which was manifested in his 
 whole manner of life ; till at length his church, 
 which at first had been so scantily attended, that 
 he was discouraged as well as mortified by the 
 smallness of the congregation, began to overflow. 
 
 Such was the person who, without any emolu- 
 ment, had undertaken the charge of superintending, 
 
WESLEY AND THE CALVINISTS. 371 
 
 in occasional visits, the college at Trevecka, and 
 who withdrew from that charge when Lady Hunt- 
 ingdon called upon all persons in that seminary to 
 disavow the doctrines of Mr. Wesley's minutes, 
 or leave the place. He had at that time no inten- 
 tion or apprehension of taking any farther part in 
 the dispute. Shortly afterwards the Honourable 
 Walter Shirley, one of her Ladyship's chaplains, 
 and of the Calvinistic clergy who had formed a 
 party under her patronage, sent forth a circular 
 letter, stating, that whereas Mr. Wesley's next 
 Conference was to be held at Bristol, it was pro- 
 posed by Lady Huntingdon, and many other 
 Christian friends, to have a meeting in that city 
 at the same time, of such principal persons, both 
 clergy and laity, who disapproved of the obnoxious 
 minutes ; and, as the doctrines therein avowed 
 were thought injurious to the very fundamental 
 principles of Christianity, it was farther proposed, 
 that these persons should go in a body to the Con- 
 ference, and insist upon a formal recantation of 
 the said minutes, and, in case of a refusal, sign 
 and publish their protest against them. " Your 
 presence, Sir," the letter proceeded, " is particu- 
 larly requested ; but if it should not suit your con- 
 venience to be there, it is desired that you will 
 transmit your sentiments on the subject to such 
 person as you think proper to produce them. It 
 is submitted to you, whether it would not be right, 
 in the opposition to be made to such a dreadful 
 leresy, to recommend it to as many of your 
 Christian friends, as well of the Dissenters as of 
 
 bb2 
 
372 FINAL BREACH BETWEEN 
 
 the established Church, as you can prevail on, to 
 be there, the cause being of so public a nature." 
 Lodgings were to be provided for the persons who 
 attended. 
 
 The proceedings were not so furious as might 
 have been expected from a declaration of war 
 like this. The heat of the Calvinistic party 
 seemed to have spent itself in the first explosion. 
 Mr. Wesley was truly a man of peace ; and when 
 the Conference and the anti-council met, the re- 
 sult, unlike that of most other pitched disputations 
 upon points of theology, was something like an 
 accommodation. The meeting was managed with 
 perfect temper on both sides, and with a con- 
 ciliatory spirit on the part of Shirley himself j a 
 man whose intentions were better than his judge- 
 ment. Mr. Wesley and the Conference declared, 
 that, in framing the obnoxious minutes, no such 
 meaning was intended as was imputed to them. 
 " We abhor," they said, " the doctrine of justi- 
 fication by works, as a most perilous and abomi- 
 nable doctrine ; and as the said minutes are not 
 sufficiently guarded in the way they are expressed, 
 we hereby solemnly declare, in the sight of God, 
 that we have no trust or confidence but in the 
 alone merits of our Lord Jesus Christ, for justifi- 
 cation or salvation, either in life, death, or the 
 day of judgement ; and though no one is a real 
 Christian believer (and consequently cannot be 
 saved) who doth not good works, where there is 
 time and opportunity, yet our works have no part 
 in meriting or purchasing our justification, either 
 
WESLEY AND THE CALVINISTS. 373 
 
 in whole or in part." Mr. Shirley declared himself 
 satisfied with this declaration, and the interview 
 was concluded with prayer, and professions of 
 peace and love. 
 
 These were but fallacious appearances : the 
 old question had been mooted, and the * dispute 
 broke out with greater violence than ever. On 
 the part of the Arminians, it was carried on by 
 Walter Sellon, who was originally a baker, then 
 one of Wesley's lay-preachers, and had afterwards, 
 by means of Lady Huntingdon's influence, ob- 
 tained orders : by Thomas Olivers, who, like a 
 sturdy and honest Welshman as he was, refused, at 
 the Conference, to subscribe the declaration ; and 
 by Mr. Fletcher. On the part of the Calvinists, 
 the most conspicuous writers were the brothers 
 Richard (afterwards Sir Richard) and Rowland 
 Hill, and Augustus Montague Toplady, vicar of 
 Broad Hembury, in Devonshire. Never were any 
 writings more thoroughly saturated with the essen- 
 tial acid of Calvinism, than those of the predesti- 
 narian champions. It would scarcely be credible, 
 that three persons, of good birth and education, 
 and of unquestionable goodness and piety, should 
 
 * The sort of recantation which was made in this declaration gave 
 occasion to the following verses by one of the hostile party : 
 
 Whereas the religion, and fate of three nations, 
 
 Depend on the importance of our conversations ; 
 
 Whereas some objections are thrown in our way, 
 
 And words have been construed to mean what they say ; 
 
 Be it known, from henceforth, to each friend and each brother,. 
 
 Whene'er we say one thing, we mean quite another. 
 
 bb3 
 
Sj4f FINAL BREACH BETWEEN 
 
 have carried on controversy in so vile a manner, 
 and with so detestable a spirit, — if the hatred of 
 theologians had not, unhappily, become proverbial. 
 Berridge, of Everton, also, who was buffoon as 
 well as fanatic, engaged on their side ; and even 
 Harvey's nature was so far soured by his opinions, 
 that he wrote in an acrimonious style against 
 Mr. Wesley, whose real piety he knew, and whom 
 he had once regarded as his spiritual father. 
 
 The ever-memorable Toplady, as his admirers call 
 him, and who, they say, " stands paramount in the 
 plenitude of dignity above most of his contempo- 
 raries," was bred at Westminster, and, according to 
 his own account, converted at the age of sixteen, by 
 the sermon of an ignorant lay-preacher, in a barn 
 in Ireland. He was an injudicious man, hasty in 
 forming conclusions, and intemperate in advancing 
 them ; but his intellect was quick and lively, and 
 his manner of writing, though coarse, was always 
 vigorous and sometimes fortunate. A little be- 
 fore that Conference which brought out the whole 
 Calvinistic force against Wesley, Mr. Toplady pub- 
 lished a Treatise upon absolute Predestination, 
 chiefly translated from the Latin of Zanchius. 
 Mr. Wesley set forth an analysis of this treatise, 
 for the purpose of exposing its monstrous doctrine, 
 and concluded in these words : " The sum of all 
 this : — one in twenty (suppose) of mankind are 
 elected ; nineteen in twenty are reprobated. The 
 elect shall be saved, do what they will ; the re- 
 probate shall be damned, do what they can. 
 
WESLEY AND THE CALVINISTS. 375 
 
 Reader, believe this, or be damned. Witness my 
 hand, A T ." Toplady denied the con- 
 sequences, and accused Mr. Wesley of intend- 
 ing to palm the paragraph on the world as his. 
 " In almost any other case," said he, " a similar 
 forgery would transmit the criminal to Virginia or 
 Maryland, if not to Tyburn. The satanic guilt of 
 the person who could excogitate and publish to the 
 world a position like that, baffles all power of de- 
 scription, and is only to be exceeded (if exceed- 
 able) by the satanic shamelessness which dares to 
 lay the black position at the door of other men." 
 
 Most certainly Mr. Wesley had no intention 
 that this passage should pass for Mr. Toplady's 
 writing. He gave it as the sum of his doctrine ; 
 and, stripping that doctrine of all disguise, ex- 
 posed it thus in its naked monstrosity. After vin- 
 dicating himself by stating this, he left Olivers to 
 carry on the contest with his incensed antagonist. 
 This provoked Toplady the more. " Let Mr. Wes- 
 ley," said he, " fight his own battles. I am as 
 ready as ever to meet him with the sling of reason 
 and the stone of God's word in my hand. But let 
 him not fight by proxy ; let his coblers keep to 
 their stalls ; let his tinkers mend their brazen ves- 
 sels ; let his barbers confine themselves to their 
 blocks and basons ; let his blacksmiths blow more 
 suitable coals than those of nice controversy: 
 every man in his own order." And, because Oli- 
 vers had been a shoemaker, he attacked him on 
 that score with abusive ridicule, both in prose and 
 
 bb4 
 
876 FINAL BREACH BETWEEN 
 
 in rhyme.* But when he spoke of Wesley him* 
 self, and Wesley's doctrines, it was with a bitterer 
 temper. The very titles which he affixed to his 
 writings were in the manner of Martin Marpre- 
 late, — " More Work for Mr. John Wesley f — " An 
 Old Fox tarred and feathered :" it seemed as 
 
 * He makes Wesley speak of him thus, in a doggrel dialogue : 
 
 I've Thomas Oliver, the cobler, 
 (No stall in England holds a nobler,) 
 A wight of talents universal, 
 Whereof I'll give a brief rehearsal •• 
 He wields, beyond most other men, 
 His awl, his razor, and his pen ; 
 My beard he shaves, repairs my shoe, 
 And writes my panegyric too; 
 He, with one brandish of his quill, 
 Can knock down Toplady and Hill; 
 With equal ease, whene'er there's need, 
 Can darn my stockings and my creed ; 
 Can drive a nail, or ply the needle, 
 Hem handkerchief, and scrape the fiddle ; 
 Chop logic as an ass chews thistle, 
 More skilfully than you can whistle; 
 And then, when he philosophizes, 
 No son of Crispin half so wise is. 
 Of all my ragged regiment, 
 This cobler gives me most content ; 
 My forgeries and faith's defender, 
 My barber, champion, and shoe-mender. 
 
 In private, however, Toplady did justice to this antagonist. After" 
 a chance interview with him, which, for its good humour, was credit- 
 able to both parties, he says, to a correspondent, " To say the truth, 
 I am glad I saw Mr. Olivers, for he appears to be a person of stronger 
 sense, and better behaviour, than I imagined. Had his understanding; 
 been cultivated by a liberal education, I believe he would have made 
 Some figure in life." I have never seen Olivers's pamphlet, but he? 
 had the right side of the argument ; and, if he had not maintained his> 
 cause with respectable ability, his treatise would not have been sanc- 
 tioned (on such an occasion) by Wesley, and praised by Fletcher. 
 
WESLEY AND THE CALVINISTS. 377 
 
 if he had imbibed the spirit of sectarian scurrility, 
 from the truculent libellers of the puritanical age, 
 with whom he sympathized almost as much in opi- 
 nions as in temper. Blunders and blasphemies, 
 he said, were two species of commodities in which 
 Mr. Wesley had driven a larger traffic, than any 
 other blunder-merchant this country had produced. 
 Considered as a reasoner, he called him one of the 
 most contemptible writers that ever set pen to 
 paper. And " abstracted from all warmth, and 
 from all prejudices," says he, " I believe him to 
 be the most rancorous hater of the Gospel system 
 that ever appeared in this island." The same de- 
 gree of coolness and impartiality appeared when 
 he spoke of the doctrines which he opposed. He 
 insisted that Socinus and Arminius were the two 
 necessary supporters of a free-willer's coat of arms ; 
 " for," said he, in his vigorous manner, " Armi- 
 nianism is the head, and Socinianism the tail of 
 one and the self-same serpent ; and, when the head 
 works itself in, it will soon draw the tail after it." 
 A tract of Wesley's, in which the fatal doctrine of 
 Necessity is controverted and exposed, he calls 
 " the famous Moorfields powder, whose chief in- 
 gredients are an equal portion of gross Heathenism, 
 Pelagianism, Mahometanism, Popery, Manichaeism, 
 Ranterism, and Antinomianism, culled, dried, and 
 pulverized, and mingled with as much palpable 
 Atheism as you can scrape together." And he 
 asserted, and attempted to prove, that Arminianism 
 and Atheism came to the same thing. A more un- 
 fair reasoner has seldom entered the lists of theolo- 
 
378 FINAL BREACH BETWEEN 
 
 gical controversy, and yet he was not so uncharitable 
 as his writings, nor by any means so bad as his opi- 
 nions might easily have made him. He much ques- 
 tioned whether an Arminian could go to heaven ; 
 and of course must have supposed that Wesley, as 
 the Arch- Arminian of the age, bore about him the 
 stamp of reprobation. Nevertheless, in one of his 
 letters, he says, " God is witness how earnestly I 
 wish it may consist with the Divine will, to touch 
 the heart and open the eyes of that unhappy man ! 
 I hold it as much my duty to pray for his conver- 
 sion, as to expose the futility of his railings against 
 the truths of the Gospel." And, upon a report of 
 Wesley's death, he would have stopped the pub- 
 lication of one of his bitter diatribes, for the pur- 
 pose of expunging whatever reflected with asperity 
 upon the dead. There was no affectation in this ; 
 the letters in which these redeeming feelings ap- 
 pear were not intended or expected to go abroad 
 into the world. The wise and gentle Tillotson 
 has observed, that we shall have two wonders in 
 heaven; the one, how many come to be absent 
 whom we expected to find there ; the other, how 
 many are there whom we had no hope of 
 meeting. 
 
 Toplady said of Mr. Fletcher's works, that, in 
 the very few pages which he had perused, the se- 
 rious passages were dulness double-condensed, and 
 the lighter passages impudence double-distilled: 
 " So hardened was" his own " front," to use 
 one of his own expressions, " and so thoroughly 
 was he drenched in the petrifying water of a 
 
 
WESLEY AND THE CALVINISTS. 379 
 
 party." If ever true Christian charity was mani- 
 fested in polemical writing, it was by Fletcher of 
 Madeley. Even theological controversy never, in 
 the slightest degree, irritated his heavenly temper. 
 On sending the manuscript of his first Check to 
 Antinomianism to a friend much younger than 
 himself, he says, " I beg, as upon my bended 
 knees, you would revise and correct it, and take 
 off quod durius sonat in point of works, reproof, 
 and style. I have followed my light, which is but 
 that of smoking flax ; put yours to mine. I am 
 charged hereabouts with scattering fire-brands, ar- 
 rows, and death. Quench some of my brands ; 
 blunt some of my arrows ; and take off all my 
 deaths, except that which I design for Antino- 
 mianism." — " For the sake of candour," he says, 
 in one of his prefaces, " of truth, of peace, — for 
 the Reader's sake, and, above all, for the sake of 
 Christ, and the honour of Christianity, whoever 
 ye are that shall next enter the lists against us, do 
 not wire-draw the controversy, by uncharitably at- 
 tacking our persons, and absurdly judging our 
 spirits, instead of weighing our arguments, and 
 considering the scriptures which we produce ; nor 
 pass over fifty solid reasons, and a hundred plain 
 passages, to cavil about non-essentials, and to lay 
 the stress of your answer upon mistakes, which do 
 not affect the strength of the cause, and which we 
 are ready to correct as soon as they shall be pointed 
 out. I take the Searcher of hearts, and my ju- 
 dicious unprejudiced readers to witness, that, 
 through the whole of this controversy, far from 
 
380 FINAL BREACH BETWEEN 
 
 concealing the most plausible objections, or avoid- 
 ing the strongest arguments which are or may be 
 advanced against our reconciling doctrine, I have 
 carefully searched them out, and endeavoured to 
 encounter them as openly as David did Goliah. 
 Had our opponents followed this method, I doubt 
 not but the controversy would have ended long 
 ago, in the destruction of our prejudices, and in 
 the rectifying of our mistakes. Oh ! if we pre- 
 ferred the unspeakable pleasure of rinding out the 
 truth, to the pitiful honour of pleasing a party, or 
 of vindicating our own mistakes, how soon would 
 the useful fan of scriptural, logical, and brotherly 
 controversy purge the floor of the Church ! How 
 soon would the light of truth, and the flame of 
 love, burn the chaff of error, and the thorns of 
 prejudice, with fire unquenchable !" 
 
 In such a temper did this saintly man address him- 
 self to the work of controversy ; and he carried it on 
 with correspondent candour, and with distinguished 
 ability. His manner is diffuse, and the florid 
 parts, and the unction, betray their French origin ; 
 but the reasoning is acute and clear ; the spirit of 
 his writings is beautiful, and he was master of the 
 subject in all its bearings. His great object was 
 to conciliate the two parties, and to draw the line 
 between the Solifidian and Pelagian errors. For 
 this purpose he composed a treatise, which he 
 called an " Equal Check to Pharisaism and Anti- 
 nomianism ; or, Scripture Scales to weigh the gold 
 of Gospel truth, and to balance a multitude of 
 opposite scriptures." Herein he brought together, 
 
 6 
 
WESLEY AND THE CALVINISTS. 381 
 
 -side by side, the opposite texts, and showed how 
 they qualified each other: the opinion which he 
 inferred seems to correspond more nearly with 
 that of Baxter than of any other divine. He traced, 
 historically, the growth of both the extremes 
 against which he contended. Luther, being an 
 Augustinian monk, brought with him, from his 
 convent, the favourite opinions of Augustine, to 
 which he became the more attached, because * of 
 the value which the Romanists affixed to their 
 superstitious works, and the fooleries and abomi- 
 nations which had sprung from this cause. Most 
 of the reformers, and more especially Calvin, took 
 the same ground. The Jesuits, seeing their error, 
 inclined the Romish church to the opposite ex- 
 treme ; and, after a while, Jansenius formed a Cal- 
 vinistic party among the Catholics, while Arminius 
 tempered the doctrine of the reformed churches. 
 Antinomianism was the legitimate consequence on 
 the one part, and Mr. Fletcher thought that the 
 English clergy were tending toward Pelagianism on 
 the other. His great object was to trim the ba- 
 lance, and, above all, to promote Christian cha- 
 rity and Christian union. " My regard for unity," 
 said he, " recovers my drooping spirits, and adds 
 new strength to my wasted body, (he was believed, 
 at that time, to be in the last stage of a consump- 
 tion) ; I stop at the brink of the grave, over which 
 
 * Thus the old author of Neonomianism Unmasked places " The 
 Calvinian Society in Gracious-street, at the sign of the Geneva Arms, 
 just opposite to the sign of Cardinal Bellarmine's Head, at the foot of 
 the bridge that crosses Reformation River, that divides between the 
 Protestant and Popish eantons." 
 
382 FINAL BREACH BETWEEN 
 
 
 I bend, and, as the blood oozing from my de- 
 cayed lungs does not permit me vocally to address 
 my contending brethren, by means of my pen I 
 will ask them, if they can properly receive the 
 holy communion, while they wilfully remain in dis- 
 union with their brethren, from whom controversy 
 has needlessly parted them !" He was then about 
 to leave England, for what appeared to be a for- 
 lorn hope of deriving benefit from his native air ; 
 but, before his departure, he expressed a desire 
 of seeing those persons with whom he had been 
 engaged in this controversy, that, " all doctrinal 
 differences apart, he might testify his sincere re- 
 gret for having given them the least displeasure, 
 and receive from them some condescending assur- 
 ance of reconciliation and good-will." All of 
 them had not generosity enough to accept the in- 
 vitation ; they who did were edified, as well as 
 affected, by the interview ; and some of them, who 
 had had no personal acquaintance with him before, 
 " expressed the highest satisfaction," says his bio- 
 grapher, " at being introduced to the company of 
 one whose air and countenance bespoke him fitted 
 rather for the society of angels than the conversa- 
 tion of men." Upon the score of controversial 
 offences, few men have ever had so little need to 
 ask forgiveness. ^ 
 
 When Mr. Fletcher offended his antagonists, it was 
 not by any personalities, or the slightest breathing 
 of a malicious spirit, but by the ironical manner in 
 which he displayed the real nature of their mon- 
 strous doctrine. For his talents were of the quick 
 
 3 
 
WESLEY AND THE CALV1NISTS. 383 
 
 mercurial kind ; his fancy was always active, and 
 he might have held no inconsiderable rank, both 
 as a humorous and as an empassioned writer, if he 
 had not confined himself wholly to devotional sub- 
 jects. But his happy illustrations had the effect of 
 provoking his opponents. Mr. Wesley also, by the 
 unanswerable manner in which he treated the Cal- 
 vinistic question, drew upon himself the fierce 
 resentment of a host of enemies. They were con- 
 founded, but they would not be convinced ; and 
 they assailed him with a degree of rancorous 
 hatred, which, even in theological controversy, 
 has never been exceeded. " He was as weak as he 
 was vicious," they said : " he was like a monkey, 
 an eel, or a squirrel, perpetually twisting and 
 twining all manner of ways. There was little pro- 
 bity, or common honesty, discoverable in that man 
 — that Arminian priest: — he was incapable of ap- 
 preciating real merit; and his blasphemous pro- 
 ductions were horror to the soul, and torture to 
 the ear. And for his doctrine, — the cursed doc- 
 trine of free-will, — it was the most God-dishonour- 
 ing and soul-distressing doctrine of the day ; it 
 was one of the prominent features of the Beast ; 
 it was the enemy of G od, and the offspring of the 
 wicked one ; the insolent brat of hell. Armini- 
 anism was the spiritual pestilence which had given 
 the Protestant churches the plague : like a mortal 
 scorpion, it carries a sting in its tail, that affects 
 with stupefaction, insensibility, and death, all 
 whom it strikes." 
 
 The unforgivable offence, which drew upon 
 
384 FINAL BREACH BETWEEN 
 
 Wesley and his doctrine this sort of obloquy, with 
 which volumes have been filled, was the sermon 
 upon Free Grace, that had been the occasion of 
 the breach with Whitefield. It is one of the most 
 able and eloquent of all his discourses ; a triumphant 
 specimen of empassioned argument. " Call it by 
 whatever name you please," said he, attacking the 
 Calvinistic doctrine, " Election, Pretention, Pre- 
 destination, or Reprobation, it comes to the same 
 thing. The sense is plainly this : by virtue of an 
 eternal, unchangeable, irresistible decree of God, 
 one part of mankind are infallibly saved, and the 
 rest infallibly damned ; it being impossible that 
 any of the former should be damned, or that any 
 of the latter should be saved." He proceeded to 
 show, that it made all preaching vain, as needless 
 to the elect, and useless to the reprobate; and, 
 therefore, that it could not be a doctrine of God, 
 because it makes void his ordinance : that it 
 tended to produce spiritual pride in some, absolute 
 despair in others, and to destroy our zeal for good 
 works : that it made revelation contradictory and 
 useless ; and that it was full of blasphemy, — " of 
 such blasphemy," said he, " as I should dread to 
 mention, but that the honour of our gracious God, 
 and the cause of truth, will not suffer me to be 
 silent. In the cause of God," he pursues, iC and ' 
 from a sincere concern for the glory of his great 
 name, I will mention a few of the horrible blas- 
 phemies contained in this horrible doctrine. But 
 first I must warn every one of you that hears, as 
 ye will answer it at the great day, not to charge 
 
WESLEY AND THE CALVINISTS. 385 
 
 me, as some have done, with blaspheming, be- 
 cause I mention the blasphemy of others. And 
 the more you are grieved with them that do thus 
 blaspheme, see that ye • confirm your love to- 
 wards them' the more, and that your heart's de- 
 sire, and continual prayer to God, be, ' Father, 
 forgive them, for they know not what they do !' 
 
 " This premised, let it be observed, that this 
 doctrine represents our blessed Lord, ' Jesus 
 Christ, the righteous, the only-begotten son of the 
 Father, full of grace and truth,' as an hypocrite, 
 a deceiver of the people, a man void of common 
 sincerity. For it cannot be denied that he every 
 where speaks as if he were willing that all men 
 should be saved ; therefore, to say he was not will- 
 ing that all men should be saved, is to represent 
 him as a mere hypocrite andr dissembler. It cannot 
 be denied, that the gracious words which came 
 out of his mouth are full of invitations to all sin- 
 ners ; to say, then, He did not intend to save all 
 sinners, is to represent him as a gross deceiver of 
 the people. You cannot deny that he says, * Come 
 unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden !' 
 If, then, you say He calls those that cannot come, 
 those whom he knows to be unable to come, those 
 whom he can make able to come but will not, 
 how is it possible to describe greater insincerity? 
 You represent him as mocking his helpless crea- 
 tures, by offering what he never intends to give. 
 You describe him as saying one thing and mean- 
 ing another ; as pretending the love which he had 
 not. Him, in whose mouth was no guile, you 
 
 VOL. II. c c 
 
386 FINAL BREACH BETWEEN 
 
 make full of deceit, void of common sincerity : 
 then, especially when drawing nigh the city he 
 wept over it, and said, ' O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 
 thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them 
 that are sent unto thee, how often would I have 
 gathered thy children together, and ye would not !' 
 (ji¥.\r\<ru, axl sit *)0£A?)'o-<*te). Now, if you say they 
 would, but he would not, you represent him (which 
 who could hear !) as weeping crocodile tears over 
 the prey which he had doomed to destruction ! 
 
 " Such blasphemy this, as, one would think, 
 might make the ears of a Christian to tingle ! But 
 there is yet more behind ; for, just as it honours 
 the Son, so doth this doctrine honour the Father. 
 It destroys all his attributes at once : it overturns 
 both , his justice, mercy, and truth. Yes, it re- 
 presents the Most Holy God as worse than the 
 devil; as more false, more cruel, and more unjust. 
 More false, because the devil, liar as he is, hath 
 never said he willeth all mankind to be saved : 
 more unjust, because the devil cannot, if he would, 
 be guilty of such injustice as you ascribe to God, 
 when you say, that God condemned millions of 
 souls to everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and 
 his angels, for continuing in sin, which, for want 
 of that grace he will not give them, they cannot 
 avoid : and more cruel, because that unhappy 
 spirit * seeketh rest, and findeth none,' so that his 
 own restless misery is a kind of temptation to him 
 to tempt others. But God * resteth in his high 
 and holy place ;' so that to suppose him out of his 
 mere motion, of his pure will and pleasure, happy 
 
 6 
 
 \ 
 
WESLEY AND THE CALVINISTS. 387 
 
 as he is, to doom his creatures, whether they will 
 or not, to endless misery, is to impute such cruelty 
 to him, as we cannot impute even to the great 
 enemy of God and man. It is to represent the 
 Most High God (he that hath ears to hear, let him 
 hear !) as more cruel, false, and unjust than the 
 devil! 
 
 " This is the blasphemy clearly contained in the 
 horrible decree of Predestination. And here I fix 
 my foot. On this I join issue with every assertor 
 of it. You represent God as worse than the devil ; 
 more false, more cruel, more unjust. But you 
 say, you will prove it by scripture. Hold ! What 
 will you prove by scripture ? that God is worse 
 than the devil? It cannot be. Whatever that 
 scripture proves, it never proves this: whatever 
 be its true meaning, it cannot mean this. Do you 
 ask what is its true meaning then ? If I say, I 
 know not, you have gained nothing ; for there are 
 many scriptures, the true sense whereof neither 
 you nor I shall know, till death is swallowed up 
 in victory. But this I know, better it were to say 
 it had no sense at all, than to say it had such a 
 sense as this. It cannot mean, whatever it mean 
 beside, that the God of truth is a liar. Let it 
 mean what it will, it cannot mean, that the Judge 
 of all the world is unjust. No scripture can mean 
 that God is not love, or that his mercy is not over 
 all his works : that is, whatever it prove beside, 
 no scripture can prove predestination. 
 
 " This is the blasphemy for which I abhor the 
 cc2 ' 
 
S88 PINAL BREACH BETWEEN 
 
 doctrine of Predestination ; a doctrine, upon the 
 supposition of which, if one could possibly suppose 
 it for a moment, call it election, reprobation, or 
 what you please, (for all comes to the same thing,) 
 one might say to our adversary the devil, * Thou 
 fool, why dost thou roar about any longer ? Thy 
 lying in wait for souls is as needless and useless as 
 our preaching. Hearest thou not, that God hath 
 taken thy work out of thy hands, and that he doth 
 it more effectually? Thou, with all thy princi- 
 palities and powers, canst only so assault that we 
 may resist thee, but he can irresistibly destroy 
 both body and soul in hell ! Thou canst only en- 
 tice ; but his unchangeable decree to leave thou- 
 sands of souls in death, compels them to continue 
 in sin, till they drop into everlasting burnings. 
 Thou temptest ; he forceth us to be damned, for 
 we cannot resist his will. Thou fool ! why goest 
 thou about any longer, seeking whom thou mayest 
 devour ? Hearest thou not that God is the devour- 
 ing lion, the destroyer of souls, the murderer of 
 men ? Moloch caused only children to pass through 
 the fire, and that fire was soon quenched ; or, the 
 corruptible body being consumed, its torments were 
 at an end ; but God, thou art told, by his eternal 
 decree, fixed before they had done good or evil, 
 causes not only children of a span long, but the 
 parents also, to pass through the fire of hell ; that 
 fire which never shall be quenched ; and the body 
 which is cast thereinto, being now incorruptible 
 and immortal, will be ever consuming and never 
 
WESLEY AND THE CALVINISTS. 38$ 
 
 consumed ; but the smoke of their torment, be- 
 cause it is God's good pleasure, ascendeth up for 
 ever.' 
 
 " Oh, how would the enemy of God and man 
 rejoice to hear these things were so ! How would he 
 cry aloud, and spare not ! How would he lift up 
 his voice, and say, To your tents, O Israel! flee 
 from the face of this God, or ye shall utterly 
 perish. But whither will ye flee ? Into heaven ? 
 He is there. Down to hell ? He is there also. Ye 
 cannot flee from an omnipresent, almighty tyrant. 
 And whether ye flee or stay, I call heaven, his 
 throne, and earth, his footstool, to witness against 
 you : ye shall perish, ye shall die eternally ! Sing, 
 O hell, and rejoice, ye that are under the earth ! 
 for God, even the mighty God, hath spoken, and 
 devoted to death thousands of souls, from the 
 rising of the sun unto the going down thereof. 
 Here, O death, is thy sting ! They shall not, can- 
 not escape, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken 
 it. Here, O grave, is thy victory ! Nations yet un- 
 born, or ever they have done good or evil, are 
 doomed never to see the light of life, but thou 
 shalt gnaw upon them for ever and ever. Let all 
 those morning stars sing together, who fell with 
 Lucifer, son of the morning ! Let all the sons of 
 hell shout for joy j for the decree is past, and who 
 shall annul it ? 
 
 " Yes ! the decree is past ; and so it was before 
 
 the foundation of the world. But what decree? 
 
 Even this : * I will set before the sons of men life 
 
 and death, blessing and cursing ;' and * the soul 
 
 cc 3 
 
390 FINAL BREACH BETWEEN 
 
 that chooseth life shall live, as the soul that 
 chooseth death shall die.' This decree, whereby 
 whom God * did foreknow, he did predestinate,' 
 was indeed from everlasting: this, whereby all 
 who suffer Christ to make them alive, are ' elect 
 according to the foreknowledge of God/ now 
 standeth fast, even as the moon, and the faithful 
 witness in heaven ; and when heaven and earth 
 shall pass away, yet this shall not pass away, for it 
 is as unchangeable and eternal as the being of 
 God that gave it. This decree yields the strongest 
 encouragement to abound in all good works and in 
 all holiness; and it is a well-spring of joy, of hap- 
 piness also, to our great and endless comfort. 
 This is worthy of God. It is every way consistent 
 with the perfection of his nature. It gives us the 
 noblest view both of his justice, mercy, and truth. 
 To this agrees the whole scope of the Christian 
 Revelation, as well as all the parts thereof. To 
 this Moses and all the prophets bear witness ; and 
 our blessed Lord and all his apostles. Thus 
 Moses, in the name of his Lord, ' I call heaven 
 and earth to record against you this day, that I 
 have set before you life and death, blessing and 
 cursing, therefore choose life, that thou and thy 
 seed may live.' Thus Ezekiel (to cite one prophet 
 for all), 'The soul that sinneth, it shall die; the 
 son shall not bear (eternally) the iniquity of the 
 father. The righteousness of the righteous shall 
 be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked 
 shall be upon him.' Thus our blessed Lord, ' If 
 any man thirst, let him come to me and drink ! s 
 
WESLEY AND THE CALVINISTS. 391 
 
 Thus his great apostle St. Paul, ' God commandeth 
 all men, every where, to repent.' All men, every 
 where ; every man, in every, place, without any 
 exception, either of place or person. Thus 
 St. James, ' If any of you lack wisdom, let 
 him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally, 
 and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him.' 
 Thus St. Peter, c The Lord is not willing that any 
 should perish, but that all should come to repent- 
 ance.' And thus St. John, * if any man sin, we 
 have an advocate with the Father ; and he is the 
 propitiation for our sins ; and not for ours only, 
 but for the sins of the whole world.' 
 
 " O hear ye this, ye that forget God ! ye can- 
 not charge your death upon him. ' Have I any 
 pleasure at all that the wicked should die ? saith 
 the Lord God. Repent and turn from all your 
 transgressions, so iniquity shall not be your ruin. 
 Cast away from you all your transgressions, 
 whereby ye have transgressed ; for why will ye die, 
 O house of Israel ? For I have no pleasure in the 
 death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God. 
 Wherefore, turn yourselves, and live ye.' ■ — * As I 
 live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the 
 death of the wicked. Turn ye, turn ye from 
 your evil ways ; for why will ye die, O house of 
 Israel?'" 
 
 A history of Wesley's life would be imperfect, 
 unless it contained this memorable passage, — -the 
 most remarkable and the most powerful in all his 
 works. It exasperated, beyond measure, those 
 
 who, in their own conceit, had taken out their 
 
 < - - ■• ■ • 
 
 c'c4 
 
3Q2 FINAL BREACH BETWEEN 
 
 patent of election, and considered themselves, in 
 Mr. Toplady's language, (himself one of the num- 
 ber,) as " kings incog. , travelling, disguised like 
 pilgrims, to their dominions above." Even tem- 
 perate Calvinists were shocked, and have said, 
 that Mr. Wesley's " horrid appeal to all the devils 
 in hell gave a sort of infernal tone to the contro- 
 versy." It is, indeed, in a tremendous strain of 
 eloquence, and shows with what indignation the 
 preacher, in his zeal for God, and in his love for 
 his fellow-creatures, regarded a doctrine so inju- 
 rious to both. In an evil hour did the restless 
 mind of man devise for itself the perilous question 
 of fatalism ; and, in a more unhappy one, was it 
 introduced into Christian theology. The fathers 
 of our church perceived the danger on both sides, 
 and endeavoured to keep the golden mean. " All 
 men," said they, "be to be monished, and chiefly 
 preachers, that, in this high matter, they, looking 
 on both sides, so attemper and moderate them- 
 selves, that neither they so preach the grace of 
 God, that they take away thereby free-will, nor, 
 on the other side, so extol free-will, that injury be 
 done to the grace of God." And in the directions 
 for preachers, which were set forth in the latter 
 years of James I. it was enjoined, " that no 
 preacher, of what title soever, under the degree 
 of a bishop, or dean at the least, should, from 
 thenceforth, presume to preach, in any popular 
 auditory, deep points of predestination, election, 
 reprobation, or of the universality, efficacy, re- 
 sistibility, or irresistibility of God's grace; but 
 
WESLEY AND THE CALVINISTS. 393 
 
 leave those themes rather to be handled by 
 learned men, and that moderately and modestly, 
 by way of use and application, rather than by way 
 of positive doctrines, being fitter for the schools 
 than for simple auditories. ,, The puritans ex- 
 claimed against this prohibition, whereby, they 
 said, man made that the forbidden fruit, which 
 God appointed for the tree of life. But, upon this 
 point, even the popes themselves, in the plenitude 
 of their power, were not able to impose silence. 
 
 Wesley had once a whimsical proof of the horror 
 with which the high-flying Calvinists regarded 
 him. One afternoon, on the road from Newport- 
 Pagnel to Northampton, " I overtook," says he, 
 " a serious man, with whom I immediately fell 
 into conversation. He presently gave me to know 
 what his opinions were ; therefore I said nothing 
 to contradict them. But that did not content 
 him ; he was quite uneasy to know whether I held 
 the doctrine of the decrees a$ he did : but I told 
 him, over and over, we had better keep to prac- 
 tical things, less we should be angry at one an- 
 other. And so we did for two miles, till he 
 caught me unawares, and dragged me into the 
 dispute before I knew where I was. He then 
 grew warmer and warmer, told me I was rotten at 
 heart, and supposed I was one of John Wesley's 
 followers. I told him « no, I am John Wesley 
 himself!' Upon which, 
 
 Improvisum aspris veluti qui sentibus angucm 
 Pressit, 
 
394 
 
 FINAL BREACH, &C. 
 
 he would gladly have run away outright ; but 
 being the better mounted of the two, I kept close 
 to his side, and endeavoured to shew him his heart, 
 till we came into the street of Northampton." 
 
395 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 wesley's clerical coadjutors. — mr. grimshaw. 
 
 dr. coke. — the greek bishop. wesley's 
 
 credulity. 
 
 A few years before this final and irreparable 
 breach with the Calvinists, Wesley had attempted 
 to form an open and active union between all 
 such clergymen as have more recently arrogated 
 to themselves the appellation of Evangelical, or 
 Gospel ministers. With this hope he sent round a 
 circular letter, to some fifty ministers of the Church 
 of England, wherein he proposed that, leaving 
 free the disputable points of predestination on one 
 side, and perfection on the other ; laying no stress 
 upon expressions, and binding themselves to no 
 peculiar discipline, but some remaining quite regu- 
 lar, others quite irregular ; and others, again, partly 
 the one and partly the other, they should think 
 and speak kindly of each other, form, as it were, 
 a defensive league, and each help the other on in 
 his work, and enlarge his influence by all rightful 
 means. If any thing more were meant by this 
 than that each should occasionally accommodate 
 the others with his pulpit, and that they should 
 countenance his itinerant lay-preachers, the mean- 
 ing is not obvious. On this occasion, also, 
 Mr. Wesley looked for an omen, and relates, with 
 
396 wesley's clerical coadjutors. 
 
 evident complacency, at the end of the letter, that, 
 one of his friends having objected to him the im- 
 possibility of effecting such an union, he went up 
 stairs, and, after a little prayer, opened Kempis 
 on these words : Expecta Dominum; viriliter age; 
 noli diffidere ; noli discedere ; sed corpus et aninam 
 expone constanter pro gloria Dei. 
 
 The greater part of the methodizing clergy ad- 
 hered to Lady Huntingdon's party in the dispute. 
 Among those who remained attached to Mr. Wes- 
 ley, Vincent Perronet, the vicar of Shoreham, was 
 one, who was, either by birth or extraction, a 
 Swiss, and who, in the Romish church, would 
 have been beatified or canonized, for what, in 
 mystical language, would be called his rapts, as 
 well as for the uniform piety of his life. William 
 Grimshaw, who held the perpetual curacy of 
 Haworth, in one of the wildest parts of the West- 
 Riding, was a more active associate. In his un- 
 converted state, this person was certainly insane ; 
 and, had he given utterance at that time to the 
 monstrous and horrible imaginations, which he 
 afterwards revealed to his spiritual friends, he would 
 deservedly have been sent to Bedlam. His change 
 of mind, which was not till he had been ten years 
 in holy orders, was preceded by what he supposed 
 to be a miraculous impression upon his senses, 
 and which may possibly have been an electrical * or 
 
 * Mr. Joseph Williams, of Kidderminster, relates the fact from 
 Grimshaw's own testimony. " At last the time of his deliverance 
 came. At the house of one of his friends he lays his hand on a book, 
 and opens it with his face towards a pewter shelf. Instantly his face 
 
MR. GRIMSHAW. 897 
 
 galvanic effect : and, in the course of his ministry, 
 he was favoured with a vision in a trance ; that is to 
 say, he mistook * delirium for reality. He became, 
 however, a very zealous parish priest ; and his 
 oddities, which procured him the name of Mad 
 Grimshaw, did not prevent him from being very 
 useful among a set of parishioners, who are said to 
 have been as wild as the bleak barren country 
 which they inhabited, and to have had little more 
 sense of religion than their cattle. 
 
 The parish contained four hamlets, in each of 
 which he made it a rule to preach three times a 
 month, partly for the sake of the old and infirm, 
 but chiefly for those who scarcely ever attended 
 the church because of the distance. As he found 
 that people were willing to hear him, he extended 
 his preaching into his neighbours' parishes, without 
 troubling himself to ask the consent of the minister, 
 or caring whether he liked it or not. In this way 
 he established two circuits of his own, which he 
 went round every fortnight : in the more populous, 
 he preached from four^and-twenty to thirty times 
 in the week; and, in the other, about half as 
 often, wherefore he called this his idle week. 
 
 is saluted with an uncommon flash of heat. He turns to the title-page, 
 and finds it to be Dr. Owen on Justification. Immediately he is sur- 
 prised with such another flash. He borrows the book, studies it, is led 
 into God's method of justifying the ungodly, hath a new heart given 
 him, and now, behold, he prayeth !" 
 
 * The case seems to have been an apoplectic affection of the slightest 
 kind : the detail may be seen in his life by Mr. Myles (p. 14), as given 
 by himself to Mr. Williams, of Kidderminster. A more remarkable case 
 of the same kind is noticed in the Quarterly Review, vol. x. pp. 1 17, l is. 
 
WESLEY S CLERICAL COADJUTORS. 
 
 While he was at home, he had a morning meeting 
 for prayer and exhortation at his own house, at 
 five o'clock in the summer, and at six in winter. 
 At church he would stop in the midst of the 
 prayers, if he saw any person inattentive, and re- 
 buke the offender; and, while the psalms were 
 singing before sermon, he would go out to see if 
 any persons were idling in the church-yard, or in 
 the street, or in the alehouses, and drive as many 
 as he could find into the church before him. These 
 were not the only means which he used for bring- 
 ing his parishioners into order. Having taken up 
 the dismal puritanical notion, that it is sinful to 
 walk in the fields for recreation on the Sabbath 
 day, he would set out himself, in order to reprove 
 such persons as he detected in the fact. This odd 
 humour led him also, like the Caliph Haroun Al- 
 raschid, in the Arabian Tales, to go out in dis- 
 guise, and see in what manner his instructions 
 were observed, and how far the people were, in 
 reality, what they made themselves appear to him. 
 Thus he went to the door of a great professor of 
 charity, and begged a night's lodging, in the cha- 
 racter of a poor man, and was turned away with 
 abuse. And he teased a purblind woman, by 
 touching her repeatedly with a stick, like a mis- 
 chievous boy, till, taking him for one, and finding 
 threats insufficient, she gave her tongue the reins, 
 and began to swear. Neither of these were fair 
 trials : but discretion was no part of his character. 
 Such, however, was the effect which he produced 
 by his zeal, his vigilance, and his real worth, that 
 
MR. GRIMSHAW. 399 
 
 a man who, being on his way for a midwife one 
 Sunday, wanted his horse shod in the village, 
 could not prevail upon the blacksmith to do the 
 job, till they had gone together to Mr. Grimshaw, 
 and he had granted permission, being satisfied of 
 the necessity of the case. And it was believed, 
 long after his death, that he had put a stop to the 
 races at Haworth by his prayers, because, when 
 he had often and vainly attempted to dissuade the 
 people from subscribing and promoting these meet- 
 ings, for the benefit of the publicans, he prayed 
 at length that the Lord would be pleased to put a 
 stop to the evil proceedings in his own way, a 
 heavy rain during the whole three days spoiled the 
 sport, and, after that time, the mischievous custom 
 was not revived. 
 
 Grimshaw entered entirely into Mr. Wesley's 
 views, acted as assistant in the circuit wherein he 
 resided, and attended the Conference every third 
 year, when it was held at Leeds. When Whitefield 
 or Wesley came to visit him, a scaffold was erected 
 for them in the church-yard, the church not being 
 large enough toehold the concourse that assembled. 
 Prayers, therefore, were read in the church, the 
 preaching was in the open air, and the sacrament 
 was afterwards administered to successive congre- 
 gations, one church-full after another. Whitefield 
 happened, in one of his sermons, to speak as if he 
 believed his hearers had profited much by the exer- 
 tions of the faithful pastor who had so long la- 
 boured among them : but Grimshaw stood up, and 
 interrupted him immediately, saying, with a loud 
 

 400 wesley's clerical coadjutors. 
 
 * 
 
 voice, "Oh, Sir, for God's sake do not speak 
 so ! I pray you, do not flatter them : I fear the 
 greater part of them are going to hell with their 
 eyes open." His admiration of the itinerants was 
 very great; his house was their home, they 
 preached in his kitchen, and he always gave no- 
 tice at church when this was to be; and, that 
 their flock might not be scattered after his death, 
 when a more regular and less zealous minister 
 should succeed him, he built a chapel and dwell- 
 ing-house at his own expence, and settled it upon 
 the Methodist plan. He not only received the 
 preachers as his guests, but as many visitors as his 
 house would hold; giving up his own bed, and 
 sleeping, unknown to them, in the hay-loft. No 
 office appeared to him too humble on such occa- 
 sions, — ■ no mark of respect too great for a success- 
 ful preacher of the Gospel. He was once found 
 cleaning the boots of an itinerant : once he em- 
 braced a preacher after his sermon, and said, " the 
 Lord bless thee, Ben, this is worth a hundred of 
 my sermons ! " and he fell down before another, 
 saying, he was not worthy to stand in his pre- 
 sence. The only son of this singular man was 
 educated at Kingswood, and became a drunkard, 
 " notwithstanding he had been favoured with a 
 religious education," says his father's biographer, 
 " and had been prayed for by some of the holiest 
 men in the land." The severe and injudicious 
 system under which he had suffered at school, and 
 the eccentricities which he had seen at home, may 
 easily explain the wonder. The poor fellow, how- 
 3 
 
DR. COKE. 401 
 
 ever, had a sense of his own worthlessness and de- 
 generacy ; and when he was riding home, in a 
 state of intoxication, would sometimes say to his 
 horse, the one which Grimshaw had ridden upon 
 his circuits, " Once thou carried a saint, but 
 now thou earnest a devil." Disease and strong 
 pain, the bitter consequences of his course of life, 
 brought him to repentance and to the grave ; and 
 some of his last words were, " what will my father 
 say, when he sees that I am got to heaven !" 
 
 Of the few clergymen who entered into Mr. Wes- 
 ley's views, and heartily co-operated with him, 
 Mr. Grimshaw was the most eccentric ; Mr. Fletcher 
 the most remarkable for intellectual powers; the 
 one who entered most entirely into the affairs of 
 the Society was Thomas Coke. This person, who 
 held so distinguished a place among the Metho- 
 dists, and by whose unwearied zeal, and inde- 
 fatigable exertions, that spirit, which Mr. Wesley 
 had kindled in England, was extended to the re- 
 motest parts of the world, was bom at Brecknock, 
 in the year 1747, the only child of respectable and 
 wealthy parents. The father died during his 
 childhood, and the youth, in his seventeenth year, 
 was entered as a gentleman commoner at Jesus' 
 College, Oxford. He escaped from the university 
 with fewer vices than in those days were generally 
 contracted there ; but he brought away a taint of 
 that philosophistical infidelity which was then be- 
 ginning to infect half-learned men. The works of 
 Bishop Sherlock reclaimed him : he entered into 
 holy orders, and being in expectation of some 
 
 VOL. II. D D- 
 
402 wesley's clerical coadjutors. 
 
 considerable preferment, took out his degree of 
 doctor of laws. The disappointment which he ex- 
 perienced from certain persons in power, to whom 
 he had looked as patrons, was of little conse- 
 quence to him, being possessed of a fair patrimony. 
 He accepted the curacy of South-Petherton, in 
 Somersetshire, and entered upon the duties of his 
 office with more than ordinary zeal. His preach- 
 ing soon filled the church j more room was wanting 
 for the congregation ; and, as the vestry would 
 not be persuaded to erect a gallery, he built one 
 at his own expense. This, and the style of his 
 discourses, raised a suspicion that he was inclined 
 to Methodism. The growing inclination was 
 strengthened by conversation with Maxfield, who 
 happened then to be residing in the neighbour- 
 hood, and confirmed by the perusal of* Alleine's 
 Alarum to the Unconverted. He now preached 
 extemporaneously, established evening lectures, 
 and introduced hymns into the church ; but, by 
 thus going on faster than the parishioners were 
 prepared to follow, he excited a strong spirit of 
 opposition ; complaints against him were preferred 
 to the bishop and to the rector : the former merely 
 admonished him; by the latter he was dismissed 
 in a manner which seems to have been studiously 
 
 * " A book, which multitudes will have cause for ever to be thank- 
 ful for," says Calatny. " No book in the English tongue (the Bible ex- 
 cepted) can equal it for the number that hath been dispersed ; for there 
 Jiave been 20,000 of them printed and sold under the title of the Call, 
 or Alarum to the Unconverted, in 8vo. or 12mo.; and 50,000 of the 
 same book have been sold under the title of the Sure Guide to Heaven, 
 30,000 of which were at one impression."— Account of the Ejected 
 Ministers, vol. ii. 577. 
 
tut. COKE. 403 
 
 disrespectful, before the people publicly, on the 
 Sabbath day : and his enemies had the indecency 
 to chime him out of the church. These insults 
 roused his Welsh blood, and he determined, with 
 more spirit than prudence, to take his stand near 
 the church on the two following Sundays, and 
 preach to the people when they came out, for the 
 purpose of vindicating himself, gratifying his ad- 
 herents, and exhorting his opponents to repent- 
 ance. These, who were probably the more nu- 
 merous, were so provoked at this, that they col- 
 lected stones, for the purpose of pelting him, on 
 his second exhibition ; and the Doctor would 
 hardly have escaped, without some serious injury, 
 if a young lady and her brother, whom the people 
 knew and respected, had not placed themselves one 
 on each side of him. He now took the earliest op- 
 portunity of being introduced to Wesley. The lat- 
 ter soon came into Somersetshire in his rounds, and 
 thus notices the meeting in his Journal : " Here I 
 found a clergyman, Dr. Coke, late a gentleman 
 commoner of Jesus College, in Oxford, who came 
 twenty miles on purpose to meet me. I had much 
 conversation with him ; and an union then began 
 which, I trust, shall never end." 
 
 This was in the year 177& Dr. Coke imme- 
 diately became a member of the Methodist so- 
 ciety, and was soon regarded as the most efficient 
 of all Mr. Wesley's fellow-labourers. Having 
 wholly given himself up to the Connection, the 
 second place in it was naturally assigned to him ; 
 no other of its active members was possessed of 
 equal fortune and rank in society ; and all that he 
 
 d d 2 
 
4)04) wesley's clerical coadjutors. 
 
 had, his fortune, to every shilling, and his life, to 
 every minute that could be employed in active ex- 
 ertions, were devoted to its interests. He was 
 now considered as Mr. Wesley's more immediate 
 representative ; and, instead of being stationed, like 
 the other preachers, in a circuit, he travelled, like 
 Mr. Wesley, as a general inspector, wherever his 
 presence was thought needful. In Ireland, more 
 particularly, he visited the Societies alternately 
 with Mr. Wesley, so that an annual visitation was 
 always made. Before Mr. Wesley became ac- 
 quainted with Dr. Coke, Mr. Fletcher had been 
 looked to as the fittest person to act as his coad- 
 jutor, and succeed to as much of his authority 
 as could be deputed to any successor. But 
 Mr. Fletcher shrunk from the invidious distinc- 
 tion, and from the difficulties of the task : he had 
 found his place, and knew where he could be most 
 usefully employed for others, and most happily for 
 himself. 
 
 The want of clerical assistants had been severely- 
 felt by Wesley. Notwithstanding his attachment 
 to the Church of England, and his desire not only 
 to continue in union with it himself, but to pre- 
 serve his people from forming a schism, the ten- 
 dency to separation became every year more 
 apparent* from various causes, of which some 
 were incidental, but others arose inevitably from 
 the system which he had established. A hostile 
 feeling toward the Church was retained by the 
 dissenters who united themselves to the Method- 
 ists : these proselytes were not numerous, but they 
 leavened the society. It is likely too, that, as 
 
TENDENCY TO SCHISM. 405 
 
 Methodism began to assume consistency and im- 
 portance, just at the time when the Non-jurors 
 were on the point of dissolution, a considerable 
 proportion of that party would rather ally them- 
 selves with it, than with the sectarians or the 
 Establishment ; and these persons also would bring 
 with them an unfavourable disposition toward the 
 church. But the main cause is obviously to be 
 found in the growing influence of the lay-preach- 
 ers, their jealousy of the few clergymen who 
 acted with them, their natural desire of placing 
 themselves upon a level with the ministers of other 
 denominations, and the disrespect with which the 
 Establishment began to be regarded by most of 
 those persons who preferred the preaching at the 
 chapel to that in the church. And though Wesley 
 often and earnestly warned them against this, 
 neither his language nor his conduct were at all times 
 consistent. In controversy, and in self-defence, 
 he was sometimes led to speak of the unworthy 
 ministers of the Establishment in terms of indig- 
 nation, not considering that his remarks would be 
 generally applied by many of his followers. 
 
 The growing desire of the itinerants to raise 
 themselves in rank, and of the societies to have 
 the sacrament administered by their own preachers, 
 induced Wesley, who, in the continual bustle of 
 his life, sometimes acted without due considera- 
 tion, to take the strange means of obtaining or- 
 ders for some of his lay-assistants from a Greek, 
 who called himself Erasmus, and appeared in Lon- 
 don with the title of Bishop of Arcadia. This 
 measure was, in every point of view, injudicious. 
 
 dd 3 
 
406 THE GREEK BlSHOP'r 
 
 Charles was decidedly hostile to it, and would 
 never allow the preachers who had been thus or- 
 dained to assist him at the communion table* 
 Staniforth was one ; and he found it so invidious 
 among his colleagues, that he never thought proper 
 to exercise the ministerial functions. On the other 
 hand, some, both of the local and itinerant preach- 
 ers, coveted the distinction, and prevailed upon 
 the obliging bishop to lay his hands upon them, 
 without Mr. Wesley *s consent. Displeased at this 
 disregard of his' authority, he acted with his wonted 
 decision, and at once excluded from the Connec- 
 tion those who would not forego the powers with 
 which they supposed themselves to be invested. It 
 was doubtful whether this Erasmus * was what he 
 pretended to be ; and the whole transaction gave 
 
 * Toplady saw a certificate given by this vagrant, as he calls him, to 
 the persons whom he pretended to ordain. It confirmed him in hi& 
 opinion that the man was an impostor, because it was written not in 
 the modern Greek, but in the antient, and of a very mean sort. This 
 is the translation; " Our measure from the 'grace, gift, and power of 
 the all-holy and life-giving Spirit, given by our Saviour Jesus Christ 
 to his divine and holy apostles, to ordain sub-deacons and deacons, 
 and also to advance to the dignity of a priest ! Of this grace, which 
 hath descended to our humility, I have ordained sub-deacon and 
 deacon, at Snow-fields Chapel, on the 19th day of Nov. 1764, and at 
 West-street Chapel, on the 24th of the same month, priest, the 
 Rev. Mr. W. C, according to the rules of the holy apostles and of our 
 faith. Moreover, I have given to him power to minister and teach, 
 in all the world, the gospel of Jesus Christ, no one forbidding him in 
 the church of God. Wherefore, for that very purpose, I have made 
 this present letter of recommendation from our humility, and have 
 given it to the ordained Mr. W. C. for his certificate and security. 
 " Given and written at London, in Britain, Nov. 24. 1764. 
 
 " Erasmus, Bishop of Arcadia." 
 
 Mr. Nightingale says, that enquiry concerning him was made of the 
 patriarch of Smyrna, and that it appeared he really was Bishop of Ar- 
 cadia, in Crete. 
 
THE GREEK BISHOP. 407 
 
 Wesley's enemies an opportunity of attacking him, 
 which they did not fail to use. They charged him 
 with having violated the oath of supremacy, by 
 thus inducing a foreign prelate to exercise acts of 
 ecclesiastical jurisdiction within this realm ; and 
 they alleged that he had even pressed the Greek 
 to consecrate him a bishop also, that he might 
 then ordain what Ministers he pleased. Erasmus 
 was said to have refused, because, according to 
 the canons of the Greek Church, more than one 
 bishop must be present to assist at the consecration 
 of a new one. Charles Wesley was even accused, 
 in the Gospel Magazine, of having offered the 
 Greek forty guineas if he would perform the cere- 
 mony. This is palpably false ; nothing can be so 
 incredible as that Charles Wesley would have 
 made such an offer, except that a bishop of Ar- 
 cadia in London should have refused it. The 
 charge of simony is, beyond all doubt, purely ca- 
 lumnious, in the spirit of that slander which the 
 Gospel Magazine breathed in all its numbers. But 
 there seems reason to believe that Wesley was will- 
 ing to have been episcopized upon this occasion. 
 
 Both brothers retained the fancy of baptizing 
 by immersion, after they had out-grown many other 
 eccentricities ; and Wesley followed this mode 
 sometimes in condescension to the whims of others, 
 when he had ceased to attach any importance to 
 it, and must have perceived the exceeding inconve- 
 nience of the practice. One of the charges which 
 the virulent Toplady brought against him was, 
 that of having immersed a certain Lydia Sheppard, 
 in a bathing tub, in a cheesemonger's cellar, in 
 
 d d 4 
 
408 CRAZY ENTHUSIASTS. 
 
 Spitalfields, and holding her so long under water, 
 while he deliberately pronounced the words of ad- 
 ministration, that she was almost insensible when 
 she was taken out. The story was related on her 
 own authority, which probably was not the best in 
 the world. But Wesley's course of life brought 
 him into contact with persons under every disease 
 of mind, and in all the intermediate stages between 
 madness and roguery. Crazy people, indeed, 
 found their way to him as commonly as they used 
 to do to court, though with less mischievous in- 
 tentions. They generally went in a spirit of pure 
 kindness, to enlighten him, and correct his errors. \ 
 
 Two ignorant dreamers, while the French pro- 
 phets had a party in this country, called upon 
 him at the Foundry, saying, they were sent from 
 God to inform him, that very shortly he should be 
 horrid again; and they added, that they would 
 stay in the house till it was done, unless he turned 
 them out. Wesley knew how to deal with such 
 prophets as these : he assured them that he would 
 not turn them out, showed them into the Society 
 room, and left them to themselves. " It was to- 
 lerably cold," he says, " and they had neither 
 meat nor drink." There, however, they sate from 
 morning till evening, then quietly walked off, and 
 troubled him with their company no more. 
 
 A woman came to him one day, with a message 
 from the Lord, she said, to tell him he was laying 
 up treasures on earth, taking his ease, and minding 
 only eating and drinking. " I told her/' says he, 
 " God knew me better ; and if he had sent her, 
 it would have been with a more proper message." 
 
INFIDELS. 409 
 
 The idle notion, that he was enriching himself, 
 prevailed among persons who might easily have 
 known better. He received a letter from the 
 Board of Excise, telling him the commissioners 
 could not doubt but that he had plate, for which 
 he had neglected to make an entry, and requiring 
 him immediately to make a proper return. His 
 answer was, " Sir, I have two silver tea-spoons at 
 London, and two at Bristol : this is all the plate 
 which I have at present ; and I shall not buy any 
 more, while so many round me want bread." 
 
 In the beginning of his career, Wesley perceived 
 that there was more danger of the growth of infide- 
 lity than of superstition ; and this opinion was con- 
 firmed by his after-experience. He discovered, in 
 the beautiful vale of Lorton, that Deism had found 
 its way into the heart of the Cumbrian mountains ; 
 and near Manchester he found, what he had never 
 heard of in England, a whole clan of infidel pea- 
 sants, who had been scoffed and argued out of 
 their belief, by the vulgar ribaldry , and impudent 
 ignorance of an alehouse-keeper. Of the persons 
 whom he met with in this unhappy state of mind, 
 some were contented to live without God in the 
 world, and be as the beasts that perish, as if they 
 had succeeded in annihilating their diviner part. 
 But others confessed the misery of wandering in 
 doubt and darkness. One who, having been a 
 zealous Romanist, had cast off Popery and Christi- 
 anity together, said to him, " I know there is a 
 God, and I believe him to be the soul of all, the 
 anima mundi ; if he be not rather, as I sometimes 
 think, the To n«v the whole compages of body and 
 
410 Wesley's state of doubt. 
 
 spirit every where diffused. But farther than this 
 I know not ; all is dark ; my thought is lost. 
 Whence I came, I know not ; nor what, nor why, 
 I am ; nor whither I am going. But this I know, 
 I am unhappy ; I am weary of life ; I wish it were 
 at an end." 
 
 For men in this pitiable state Wesley was an ex- 
 cellent physician, and he had not unfrequently 
 the satisfaction of knowing, that his advice was 
 not given in vain. He himself had gone through 
 this stage of doubt in early life, and has described 
 the perplexity of his mind with great force and 
 feeling. "After carefully heaping up," he says, 
 " the strongest arguments which I could find, 
 either in ancient or modern authors, for the very 
 being of a God, and (which is nearly connected 
 with it) the existence of an invisible world, I have 
 wandered up and down musing with myself, what 
 if all these things which I see around me, this 
 earth and heaven, this universal frame, have ex- 
 isted from eternity ? What if that melancholy sup- 
 position of the old poet be the real case. 
 
 What if the generation of men be exactly parallel 
 with the generation of leaves, if the earth drop 
 its successive inhabitants,' just as the tree drops its 
 leaves ? What if that saying of a great man be 
 really true, Post mortem nihil est, et ipsa mors nihil 
 Death is nothing, and nothing is after death. 
 How am I sure that this is not the case ? that I 
 have not * followed cunningly-devised fables ?' And 
 I have pursued the thought till there was no spirit 
 
Wesley's credulity. 411 
 
 in me, and I was ready to choose strangling rather 
 than life." * 
 
 On the other hand, there could not be a more 
 dangerous counsellor for persons with a certain 
 tendency to derangement, for he seems always to 
 have delighted to believe extraordinary things 
 which he ought to have doubted, and to have en- 
 couraged sallies of enthusiasm which he ought to 
 have repressed. Thus, speaking of a lady who 
 exhibited before him her gift of extempore prayer, 
 he says, " such a prayer I never heard before ; it 
 was perfectly an original ; odd and unconnected, 
 made up of disjointed fragments, and yet like a 
 flame of fire : every sentence went through my 
 heart, and I believe the heart of every one present. 
 For many months I have found nothing like it. It 
 was good for me to be here." And again, after 
 a second performance, he reasons upon the case, 
 " Is not this an instance of ten thousand, of God's 
 choosing the foolish tilings of the world to confound 
 the wise ? Here is one that has not only a weak 
 natural understanding, but an impetuosity of tem- 
 
 * Wesley introduced a remarkable passage of this kind in one of his 
 sermons. " The devil," said he, " once infused into my mind a 
 temptation that, perhaps, I did not believe what I was preaching. ' Well, 
 then,' said I, ' I will preach it till I do.' But, the devil suggested, 
 ' what if it should not be true ?' ' Still,' I replied, ' 1 will preach it, 
 because, whether true or not, it must be pleasing to God, by pre- 
 paring men better for another world.' ' But what if there should 
 be no other world ?' rejoined the Enemy. ' I will go on preaching 
 it,' said I, ' because it is the way to make them better and happier in 
 this.' " This passage is not in Mr. Wesley's works, but I relate it, with 
 perfect confidence, on the authority of the late Dr. Estlin, of Bristol, 
 who heard him preach the sermon, and whom I will not thus cursorily 
 mention, without an expression of respectful remembrance. 
 
412 wesley's credulity. 
 
 per, bordering upon madness. And hence both 
 her sentiments are confused, and her expressions 
 odd and indigested; and yet, notwithstanding this, 
 more of the real power of God attends these un- 
 couth expressions, than the sensible discourses of 
 even good men, who have twenty times her un- 
 derstanding." The wonder would have ceased, 
 if he had reflected upon the state of mind in the 
 recipients. 
 
 Here he was the dupe of his own devout emo- 
 tions, which, in a certain mood, might as well 
 have been excited by the music of an organ, or 
 the warbling of a sky-lark. But he was sometimes 
 imposed upon by relations which were worthy to 
 have figured in the Acta Sanctorum. One of his 
 preachers pretended to go through the whole ser- 
 vice of the meeting in his sleep, exhorting, sing- 
 ing, and preaching, and even discoursing with a 
 clergyman, who came in and reasoned with him 
 during his exhibition, and affecting, in the morn- 
 ing, to know nothing of what he had done during 
 the night. And Wesley could believe this, and 
 ask seriously by what principle of philosophy it was 
 to be explained ! He believed also that a young 
 woman, having received a strong impulse to call 
 sinners to repentance, was inwardly told, that if 
 she would not do it willingly, she should do it 
 whether she would or not : that from that time she 
 became subject to fits, in which she always ima- 
 gined herself to be preaching ; and that having 
 cried out at last, Lord, I will obey thee, I will 
 call sinners to repentance, and begun to preach in 
 
 6 
 
Wesley's credulity. 413 
 
 consequence, the fits left her. In the history of 
 this remarkable man, nothing is more remarkable 
 than his voracious credulity. He accredited and 
 repeated stories of apparitions, and witchcraft, and 
 possession, so silly, as well as monstrous, that they 
 might have nauseated the coarsest appetite for 
 wonder ; this, too, when the belief on his part was 
 purely gratuitous, and no motive can be assigned 
 for it, except the pleasure of believing. The state 
 of mind is more intelligible, which made him 
 ascribe a supernatural importance to the incidents 
 that befel him, whether merely accidental, or pro- 
 duced by any effort of his own. Strong fancy, and 
 strong prepossession, may explain this, without 
 ascribing too much to the sense of his own im- 
 portance. If he escaped from storms at sea, it ap- 
 peared to him that the tempest abated, and the 
 waves fell, because his prayers were heard. If he 
 was endangered in travelling, he was persuaded 
 that angels, both evil and good, had a large share 
 in the transaction. " The old murderer," he says, 
 " is restrained from hurting me, but he has power 
 over my horses." A panic seized the people, in a 
 crowded meeting, while he was preaching upon 
 the slave trade : it could not be accounted for, he 
 thought, without supposing some preternatural in- 
 fluence : " Satan fought, lest his kingdom should 
 be delivered up." If, in riding over the moun- 
 tains in Westmorland, he sees rain behind him 
 and before, and yet escapes between the showers, 
 the natural circumstance appears to him to be an 
 especial interference in his favour. Preaching in 
 
414 wesley's credulity. 
 
 the open air, he is chilled, and the sun suddenly 
 comes forth to warm him : the heat becomes too 
 powerful, and forthwith a cloud is interposed. So, 
 too, at Durham, when the sun shone with such 
 force upon his head, that he was scarcely able to 
 speak, " I paused a little," he says, " and desired 
 God would provide me a covering, if it was for his 
 glory. In a moment it was done ; a cloud covered 
 the sun, which troubled me no more. Ought vo- 
 luntary humility to conceal this palpable proof, that 
 God still heareth • the prayer ?" At another time 
 the sun, while he was officiating, shone full in his 
 face, but it was no inconvenience; nor were his 
 eyes more dazzled, than if it had been under the 
 earth. Labouring under indisposition, when he 
 was about to administer the sacrament, the thought, 
 he says, came into his mind, tf why should he not 
 apply to God at the beginning, rather than the end 
 of an illness ?" He did so, and found immediate 
 relief. By an effort of faith he could rid himself 
 of the tooth-ache : and more than once, when his 
 horse fell lame, and there was no other remedy, 
 the same application was found effectual. " Some," 
 he observes, " will esteem this a most notable in- 
 stance of enthusiasm : be it so or not, I aver the 
 plain fact." 
 
 This was Wesley's peculiar weakness, and he 
 retained it to the last. Time .and experience 
 taught him to correct some of his opinions, and 
 to moderate others, but this was rooted in his na- 
 ture. In the year 1780, he began to publish the 
 Arminian Magazine, for the double purpose of 
 ' 7 
 
 
wesley's credulity. 415 
 
 maintaining and defending those doctrines which 
 were reviled with such abominable scurrility by 
 the Calvinists in their monthly * journal, and of 
 supplying his followers, who were not in the habit 
 of reading much, with an entertaining and useful 
 miscellany. Both purposes were well answered ; 
 but having this means at his command, he in- 
 dulged his indiscriminate credulity, and inserted, 
 without scruple, and without reflection, any mar- 
 vellous tale that came to his hands. 
 
 * In the Preface to the first volume he says, " Amidst the multitude 
 of magazines which now swarm in the world, there was one, a few 
 years ago, termed The Christian Magazine, which was of great use to 
 mankind, and did honour to the publishers ; but it was soon discon- 
 tinued, to the regret of many serious and sensible persons. In the 
 room of it started up a miscreated phantom, called The Spiritual Ma- 
 gazine ; and, not long after it, its twin sister, oddly called The Gospel 
 Magazine. Both of these are intended to show, that God is not loving 
 to every man ; that his mercy is not over all his works ; and, conse- 
 quently, that Christ did not die for us all, but for one in ten, for 
 the elect only. 
 
 " This comfortable doctrine, the sum of which, proposed in plain 
 English, is, God, before the foundation of the world, absolutely and 
 irrevocably decreed, that ' some men shall be saved, do what they 
 will, and the rest damned, do what they can,' has, by these tracts, 
 been spread throughout the land with the utmost diligence. And 
 these champions of it have, from the beginning, proceeded in a man- 
 ner worthy of their cause. They have paid no more regard to good- 
 nature, decency, or good manners, than to reason or truth : all these 
 they set utterly at defiance. Without any deviation from their plan, 
 they have defended their dear decrees, with arguments worthy of 
 Bedlam, and with language worthy of Billingsgate." 
 
 These were the first religious journals which were published in Eng- 
 land. Since that time every denomination of dissenters, down to the 
 most insignificant subdivisions of schism, has had its magazine. 
 
416 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 METHODISM IN AMERICA. WESLEY'S POLITICAL 
 
 CONDUCT. 
 
 A little modification might have rendered Me- 
 thodism a most useful auxiliary to the English 
 Church. But if some such auxiliary power was 
 needed in this country, much more was it neces- 
 sary in British America, where the scattered state 
 of the population was as little favourable to the in- 
 terests of religion as of government. 
 
 In the New-England states, the Puritans had 
 established a dismal tyranny of the priesthood ; 
 time and circumstances had mitigated it ; and ec- 
 clesiastical discipline, in those provinces, seems 
 nearly to have reached its desirable mean about 
 the middle of the eighteenth century : the elders 
 no longer exercised an impertinent and vexatious 
 controul over their countrymen ; they retained, 
 however, a wholesome influence ; the means of 
 religious instruction were carefully provided, and 
 the people were well trained up in regular and 
 pious habits. Too little attention had been paid 
 to this point in the other states ; indeed it may be 
 said, that the mother-country, in this respect, had 
 grossly * neglected one of its first and most im- 
 
 * Franklin gives a curious anecdote upon this subject in one of bis 
 letters. " The reverend commissary Blair, who projected the college 
 
 • 
 
METHODISM IN AMERICA. 417 
 
 portant duties toward its colonies. There were 
 many parts in the southern states, of which the 
 frightful picture given of them by Seeker, when 
 bishop of Oxford, was not overcharged. " The 
 first European inhabitants," said that prelate, " too 
 many of them, carried but little sense of Christi- 
 anity abroad with them. A great part of the rest 
 suffered it to wear out gradually, and their children 
 grew, of course, to have yet less than they, till, in 
 some countries, there were scarce any footsteps 
 of it left beyond the mere name. No teacher was 
 known, no religious assembly was held ; the sa- 
 crament of baptism not administered for near 
 twenty years together, nor that of the Lord's Sup- 
 per for near sixty, amongst many thousands of 
 people, who did not deny the obligation of these 
 duties, but lived, nevertheless, in a stupid neglect 
 of them." To remedy this, the Society for the 
 Propagation of the Gospel sent out missionaries 
 from time to time ; but misdirecting their exer- 
 tions, for want of proper enquiry, or proper in- 
 formation, they employed most of the few labourers 
 
 in the province of Virginia, and was in England to solicit benefactions 
 and a charter, relates that the queen (Mary), in the king's absence, 
 having ordered the Attorney-General (Seymour) to draw up the char- 
 ter which was to be given, with 2000/. in money, he opposed the grant, 
 saying, that the nation was engaged in an expensive war, that the 
 money was wanted for better purposes, and he did not see the least 
 occasion for a college in Virginia. Blair represented to him, that its 
 intention was to educate and qualify young men to be ministers of the 
 Gospel, much wanted there; and begged Mr. Attorney would consider, 
 that the people of Virginia had souls to be saved as well as the people 
 of England. Souk! said he, damn your souls! make tobacco!" 
 
 Correspondence, vol. i. p. 158. 
 
 VOL. II. E E 
 
418 METHODISM IN AMERICA. 
 
 whom they could find in the states where they 
 were least wanted, and in places where they did 
 little more than interfere with what was the estab- 
 lished system. 
 
 Whitefield had contented himself with the im- 
 mediate impression which he produced. The per- 
 son who first began to organize Methodism in 
 America was an Irishman, by name Philip Em- 
 bury, who had been a local preacher in his own 
 country. Having removed to New- York, he col- 
 lected a few hearers, first in his own house, and r 
 when their number increased, in a large room, 
 which they rented for the purpose. Captain Webb 
 happened at this time to be in America. This offi- 
 cer, who had lost an eye in the battle of Quebec, 
 had been converted, not long after that event, by 
 Mr. Wesley's preaching at Bristol, and had tried 
 his own talents as a preacher at Bath, when some 
 accident prevented the itinerant from arriving, 
 whom the congregation had assembled to hear, 
 Webb hearing of Embury's beginning, paid him a 
 visit from Albany, where he then held the appoint- 
 ment of barrack-master, preached in his uniform, 
 attracted auditors by the novelty of such an ex- 
 hibition, and made proselytes by his zeal. A re- 
 gular society was formed in the year 1768, and 
 they resolved to build a preaching-house. 
 
 Wesley's attention had already been invited to 
 America. He met with a Swedish chaplain, who 
 had spent several years in Pennsylvania, and who 
 entreated that he would send out preachers to 
 help him, representing what multitudes in that 
 
METHODISM IN AMERICA. 419 
 
 country were as sheep without a shepherd. Soon 
 afterwards Captain Webb and his associates wrote 
 to Mr. Wesley, informing him that a beginning 
 had been made, and requesting that he would, at 
 the ensuing Conference, appoint some persons to 
 come over, and prosecute the work which was so 
 providentially begun. About the same time there 
 came a letter from a certain Thomas Bell, at 
 Charlestown, saying, " Mr. Wesley says, the first 
 message of the preachers is to the lost sheep of 
 England. And are there none in America ? They 
 have strayed from England into the wild woods 
 here, and they are running wild after this world. 
 They are drinking their wine in bowls, and are 
 jumping and dancing, and serving the devil, in 
 the groves and under the green trees. And are 
 not these lost sheep ? And will none of the preach- 
 ers come here ? Where is Mr. Brownfield ? Where 
 is John Pawson ? Where is Nicholas Manners ? are 
 they living, and will they not come ?" 
 
 Pawson would not go ; because, he said, he did 
 not see that it could be his duty to leave his pa- 
 rents, who were then on the brink of the grave, 
 He followed his heart in this, and was right. Paw- 
 son, indeed, was in his proper sphere ; the fire of 
 enthusiasm in him had settled into a steady vital 
 heat, and there were younger men for the work. 
 Richard Boardman and Joseph Pillmoor, volun- 
 teered at the next Conference for the service ; and 
 as the New- York Methodists had contracted a debt 
 by their building, the Connection sent them fifty 
 pounds by these preachers, as a token of brotherly 
 
 e e % 
 
4 l 2Q METHODISM IN AMERICA. 
 
 love. They landed at Philadelphia, where Captain 
 Webb had already formed a society of about an 
 hundred members. Pillmoor proceeded to Mary- 
 land and Virginia, Boardman to New- York : both 
 sent home flattering accounts of their success, and 
 of the prospect before them ; so that Wesley him- 
 self began to think of following them : " but," 
 said he, " the way is not plain ; I wait till Provi- 
 dence shall speak more clearly on one side or the 
 other." In 1771 he says, " my call to America is 
 not yet clear. I have no business there, as long as 
 they can do without me : at present I am a debtor 
 to the people of England and Ireland, and espe- 
 cially to them that believe. That year, therefore, 
 he sent Over Richard Wright and Francis Asbury, 
 the latter of whom proved not inferior to himself 
 in zeal, activity, and perseverance. Asbury per- 
 ceived that his ministry was more needed in the 
 villages and scattered plantations than in large 
 towns, and he therefore devoted himself to country- 
 service. In 1773, Thomas Rankin and George 
 Shadford were sent to assist their brethren : by 
 this time they had raised a few recruits among the 
 Americans, and, holding a Conference at Phila- 
 delphia, it appeared by their muster-rolls, that 
 there were about a thousand members in the dif- 
 ferent societies. 
 
 These preachers produced a considerable effect ; 
 and Methodism would have increased even more 
 rapidly than in England, if its progress had not 
 been interrupted by the rebellion. At the com- 
 mencement of the disputes, which led to that un- 
 
 10 
 
wesley's political conduct. 421 
 
 happy and ill-managed contest, Mr. Wesley was 
 disposed to doubt whether the measures of govern- 
 ment were defensible : but when the conduct of 
 the revolutionists became more violent, and their 
 intentions were unmasked, he saw good cause for 
 altering his opinion, and published A Calm Ad- 
 dress to the Americans, examining the question, 
 whether the English parliament had power to tax 
 the colonies. In this little pamphlet he pursued 
 the same chain of reasoning as Dr. Johnson had 
 done, and maintained, that the supreme power in 
 England had a legal right of laying any tax upon 
 them, for any end beneficial to the whole empire. 
 The right of taxation, he argued, rested upon the 
 same ground as the right of legislation : and the 
 popular argument, that every freeman consented 
 to the laws by which he was governed, was a mere 
 fallacy. A very small "part of the people [were 
 concerned in making laws ; that business could 
 only be done by delegation ; those who were not 
 electors had manifestly no part ; and of those who 
 were, when their votes were nearly equally di- 
 vided, the minority were governed, not only with- 
 out, but against their own consent. So much with 
 regard to the laws which were enacted in their 
 own times ; and how could it be said that any man 
 had consented to those which were made before he 
 was born ? In fact, consent to the laws was purely 
 passive, and no other kind of consent was allowed 
 by the condition of civil life. The Americans had 
 not forfeited the rights of their forefathers, but 
 they could no longer exercise them. They were 
 
 e e 3 
 
422 Wesley's political conduct. 
 
 the descendents of men who either had no votes, 
 or who had resigned them by emigration. They 
 had, therefore, exactly what their ancestors left 
 them ; not a vote in making laws, nor in choosing 
 legislators, but the happiness of being protected 
 by laws, and the duty of obeying them. During 
 the last war, they had been attacked by enemies 
 whom they were not able to resist ; they had been 
 largely assisted, and, by that means, wholly de- 
 livered : the mother- country, desiring to be reim- 
 bursed for some part of the great expense she had 
 incurred, laid on a small tax, and this reasonable 
 and legal measure had set all America in a flame. 
 How was it possible that such a cause should have 
 produced such an effect ? 
 
 " I will tell you," said Wesley. " I speak the 
 more freely, because I am unbiassed. I have no- 
 thing to hope or fear on either side. I gain nothing, 
 either by the government or by the Americans, 
 and probably never shall ; and I have no prejudice 
 to any man in America : I love you as my brethren 
 and countrymen. My opinion is this : we have a 
 few men in England who are determined enemies 
 to monarchy. Whether they hate his present ma- 
 jesty on any other ground than because he is a 
 king, I know not; but they cordially hate his 
 office, and have for some years been undermining 
 it with all diligence, in hopes of erecting their 
 grand idol, their - dear commonwealth, upon its 
 ruins. I believe they have let very few into their 
 design (although many forward it, without know- 
 ing any thing of the matter); but they are steadily 
 
wesley's political conduct. 423 
 
 pursuing it, as by various other means, so, in par- 
 ticular, by inflammatory papers, which are indus- 
 triously and continually dispersed throughout the 
 towns and country. By this method they have 
 already wrought thousands of the people even to 
 the pitch of madness. By the same, only varied 
 according to your circumstances, they have like- 
 wise inflamed America. I make no doubt but 
 these very men are the original cause of the pre- 
 sent breach between England and her colonies. 
 And they are still pouring oil into the flame, stu- 
 diously incensing each against the other, and op- 
 posing, under a variety of pretences, all measures 
 of accommodation. So that although the Ameri- 
 cans, in general, love the English, and the Eng- 
 lish, in general, love the Americans, (all, I mean, 
 that are not yet cheated and exasperated by these 
 artful men,) yet the rupture is growing wider 
 every day, and none can tell where it can end. 
 These good men hope it will end in the total de- 
 fection of North America from England. If this 
 were effected, they trust the English in general 
 would be so irreconcileably disgusted, that they 
 should be able, with or without foreign assistance, 
 entirely to overturn the government." 
 
 Mr. Wesley afterwards perceived, that the class 
 of persons, whom he had here supposed to be the 
 prime movers of this unhappy contest, were only 
 aiders and abettors, and that the crisis had come 
 on from natural causes. " I allow," said he, " that 
 the Americans were strongly exhorted, by letters 
 from England, * never to yield, or lay down their 
 
 ee4 
 
424 wesley's political conduct. 
 
 arms, till they had their own terms, which the 
 government would be constrained to give them in 
 a short time.' But those measures were concerted 
 long before this, — long before either the tea-act, 
 or the stamp-act, existed, only they were not di- 
 gested into form, Forty years ago, when my 
 brother was in Boston, it was the general language 
 there, f we must shake off the yoke ; we never shall 
 be a free people till we shake off the English yoke :* 
 and the late acts of parliament were not the cause 
 of what they have since done, but barely the oc- 
 casion they laid hold on. 5 ' That the American 
 revolution must, in great part, be traced to the pu- 
 ritanical origin of the New England states, is in- 
 deed certain; but colonies are naturally republican, 
 and when they are far distant, and upon a large 
 scale, they tend necessarily, as well as naturally, 
 to separation. Colonies will be formed with a 
 view to this, when colonial policy shall be better 
 understood. It will be acknowledged, that, when 
 protection is no longer needed, dependence ceases 
 to be desirable ; and that, when a people can 
 maintain and defend themselves, they are past their 
 pupilage. 
 
 This address excited no little indignation among 
 some of the English partisans of the Americans ; 
 and it produced a letter to Wesley from Mr. Caleb 
 Evans, a baptist minister at Bristol, of consider- 
 able reputation in his own community. Wesley, 
 who had neither leisure nor inclination for contro- 
 versy, left the field to Mr. Fletcher, who again, on 
 this occasion, seconded his friend with great ability 
 
wesley's political conduct. 42,5 
 
 is well as zeal. " My reverence for God's word," 
 said this good man, f,' my duty to the king, and 
 regard for my friend ; my love to injured truth, 
 and the consciousness of the sweet liberty which 
 I enjoy under the government, call for this little 
 tribute of my pen ; and I pay it so much the more 
 cheerfully, as few men in the kingdom have had 
 a better opportunity of trying which is most eli- 
 gible, a republican government, or the mild-tem- 
 pered monarchy of England. I lived more than 
 twenty years the subject of two of the mildest re- 
 publics of Europe : I have been, for above that 
 number of years, the subject of your sovereign ; 
 and, from sweet experience, I can set my seal to 
 this clause of the king's speech, at the opening of 
 this session of parliament, ? to be a subject of 
 Great Britain, with all its consequences, is to be 
 the happiest subject of any civil government in the 
 world.' " 
 
 Mr. Fletcher was no common controversialist : 
 earnest sincerity, and devout ardour, were not 
 more conspicuous in his writings, than the bene- 
 volence which appeared when he argued with most 
 force and warmth, and the pure candour, and reli- 
 gious charity, which even his. theological opponents 
 felt and acknowledged. He, as well as Mr. Wes- 
 ley, saw distinctly in what the principles of the 
 American contest began, and in what they were 
 likely to end. " If once legislation," he^aid, with 
 Baxter, " (the chief act of government) be denied 
 to be any part of government at all, and affirmed 
 to belong to the people as suck, who are no go- 
 
426 wesley's political conduct. 
 
 vernors, all government will thereby be over- 
 thrown. Give me," he truly said, " Dr. Price's 
 political principles, and I will move all kings out 
 of their thrones, and all subjection out of the 
 world." He rested the question upon religious 
 grounds, and, on those grounds, argued against 
 civil, as he had formerly done against ecclesiastical 
 Antinomianism. The transition from one to the 
 other, he said, was easy and obvious ; for, as he 
 that reverences the law of God, will naturally re- 
 verence the just commands of the king, so he that 
 thinks himself free from the law of the Lord, will 
 hardly think himself bound by the statutes of his 
 sovereign. He traced the pestilent errors which 
 were now again * beginning to prevail, after hav- 
 ing, for more than a century, been subdued, to 
 those seeds which had sprung up with the Lollards, 
 and brought forth their full harvest at Munster. 
 
 * " All our danger at present," said he, " is from King Mob ; and 
 (pursuing Mr. Wesley's view of the subject) this danger is so much the 
 greater, as some dissenters among us, who were quiet in the late reign, 
 and thought themselves happy under the protection of the toleration- 
 act, grow restless, begin openly to countenance their dissatisfied 
 brethren in America, and make it a point of conscience to foment di- 
 visions in the kingdom. Whether they do it merely from a brotherly 
 regard to the colonists, who chiefly worship God according to the dis- 
 senting plan, or whether they hope that a revolution on the continent 
 would be naturally productive of a revolution in England ; that a re- 
 volution in the state here would draw after it a revolution in the 
 church; and that if the church of England were once shaken, the dis- 
 senting churches among us might raise themselves upon her ruins ; — 
 whether, I say, there is something of this under the cry of slavery 
 and robbery which you set up, is a question (addressing himself to 
 Mr.Caleb Evans) which, I said, in the preceding editions, you could 
 determine far better than I : but now I recall it, because, though I 
 may consider that part of the controversy in that unfavourable light, 
 as apolitickm, yet, as a Christian, I ought to think and hope the best." 
 
Wesley's political conduct. 427 
 
 He prest upon his opponent, as a Christian, those 
 texts of Scripture which enjoin the duty of sub- 
 mission to established authorities ; and, as a Cal- 
 vinist, the articles of Calvin's confession of faith, 
 wherein that duty is expressly recognized. " We 
 believe that God will have the world to be governed 
 by laws and civil powers, that the lawless inclin- 
 ations of men may be curbed; and therefore he 
 has established kingdoms and republics, and other 
 sorts of governments, (some hereditary, and some 
 otherwise,) together with whatsoever belongs to 
 judicature ; and He will be acknowledged the au- 
 thor of government. We ought, then, not only to 
 bear, for his sake, that rulers should have dominion 
 over us, but it is also our bounden duty to honour 
 them, and to esteem them worthy of all reverence, 
 considering them as God's lieutenants and officers, 
 which He has commissioned to execute a lawful 
 and holy commission. We maintain, therefore, 
 that we are bound to obey their laws and statutes, 
 to pay tribute, taxes, and other duties, and to 
 bear the yoke of subjection freely and with good 
 will ; and, therefore, we detest the men who re- 
 ject superiorities, introduce community and con- 
 fusion of property, and overthrow the order of 
 justice. — Sir," he continued, applying the argu- 
 mentum ad hominem to his opponent, " you are a 
 Calvinist ; you follow the French reformer, when 
 he teaches the absolute reprobation, and unavoid- 
 able damnation of myriads of poor creatures yet 
 unborn. Oh, forsake him not when he follows 
 Christ, and teaches that God (not the people) is 
 
428 wesley's political conduct. 
 
 to be acknowledged the author of power and go- 
 vernment, and that we are bound to bear cheer- 
 fully, for his sake, the yoke of scriptural subjection 
 to our governors! Be entreated, Sir, to rectify 
 your false notions of liberty* The liberty of 
 Christians and Britons does not consist in bearing 
 no yoke, but in bearing a yoke made easy by a 
 gracious Saviour and a gracious sovereign. A 
 John of Leyden may promise to make us first law- 
 less, then legislators and kings ; and, by his de- 
 lusive promises, he may raise us to — a, fool's 
 paradise, if not to — the gallows. But a true de- 
 liverer, and a good governor, says to our restless 
 Antinomian spirits, Come unto me, and I "will give 
 you rest! For my yoke is easy* and my burden is 
 light. We can have no rest in the church but 
 under Christ's easy yoke ; no rest in the state, but 
 under the easy yoke of our rightful sovereign." 
 
 The political part which Wesley took at this 
 time made him as many enemies as his decided 
 opposition to Calvinism had done ; and even some 
 of his adherents and admirers, who, in all other 
 things, have justified him through thick and thin, 
 have censured him as if he had gone out of the 
 line of his duty, acted unwisely in meddling with 
 political disputes, and taken the wrong side. To 
 the question, why he had written upon such sub- 
 jects, he made answer, " Not to get money : not 
 to get preferment for myself or my brother's chil- 
 dren : not to please any man living, high or ldw. 
 I know mankind too well. 1 know they that love 
 you for political service, love you less than their 
 
wesley's political conduct. 429 
 
 dinners ; and they who hate you, hate you worse 
 than the devil." It was from the clear and strong 
 sense of duty that he acted, and it is not the least 
 of his merits, that he was one of the first persons 
 to expose the fallacy, and foresee the conse- 
 quences of those political principles which were 
 then beginning to convulse the world. Their 
 natural tendency, he said, was to unhinge all go- 
 vernment, and to plunge every nation into total 
 anarchy. In his Observations on Liberty, addressed 
 to Dr. Price, in answer to a pamphlet of the 
 Doctor's, which did its share of mischief in its 
 day, he contradicted, upon, his own sure * observ- 
 ation, the Doctor's absurd assertion, that the po- 
 pulation of the country had greatly decreased ; he 
 commented upon the encouragement which was 
 
 * " I knew the contrary," said Wesley, " having an opportunity of 
 seeing ten times more of England every year than most men in the 
 nation. All our manufacturing towns, as Birmingham, Sheffield, Man- 
 chester, Liverpool, increase daily. So do very many villages all over 
 the kingdom, even in the mountains of Derbyshire; and, in the mean- 
 time, exceeding few, either towns or villages, decrease." 
 
 " Dr. Price," says Mr. Coleridge, in his Friend, " almost succeeded 
 in persuading the English nation— (for it is a curious fact, that the 
 fancy of our calamitous situation is a sort of necessary sauce, without 
 which our real prosperity would become insipid to us) — Dr. Price, I 
 say, alarmed the country with pretended proofs that the island was in 
 a rapid state of depopulation ; that England at the Revolution had been 
 Heaven knows how much more populous ; and that, in queen Elizabeth's 
 time, or about the Reformation (! ! !), the number of inhabitants in 
 England might have been greater than even at the Revolution. My old 
 mathematical master, a man of an uncommonly clear head, answered 
 this blundering book of the worthy Doctor's, and left not a stone un- 
 turned of the pompous cenotaph, in which the effigy of the still living 
 and bustling English prosperity lay interred. And yet so much more 
 suitable was the Doctor's book to the purposes of faction, and to the 
 November mood of (what is called) the Public, that Mr. Wales's 
 pamphlet, though a master-piece of perspicacity as well as perspicuity, 
 was scarcely heard of." Vol. ii. p. 72. 
 
430 wesley's political conduct. 
 
 held out to the Americans in that pamphlet, 
 and upon the accusations which were there ad- 
 vanced, that the British government had secured 
 to the Canadians the enjoyment of their own laws 
 and their own religion, for the purpose of bringing 
 up from thence an army of French Papists, — for 
 Dr. Price had not been ashamed to bring this 
 charge against his country ! In opposition to the 
 Doctor's position, that liberty is more or less com- 
 plete, according as the people have more or less 
 share in the government, he contended, and ap- 
 pealed to history for the fact, that the greater 
 share the people have in the government, the less 
 liberty, either civil or religious, does the nation in 
 general enjoy. " Accordingly," said he, " there 
 is most liberty of all, civil and religious, under a 
 limited monarchy, there is usually less under an 
 aristocracy, and least of all under a democracy. 
 The plain melancholy truth," said he, " is this ; 
 there is a general infatuation, which spreads, like 
 an overflowing stream, from one end of the land 
 to the other. The people of England have, for 
 some years past, been continually fed with poison : 
 dose after dose has been administered to them, 
 for fear the first, or second, or tenth should not 
 suffice, of a poison, whose natural effect is to drive 
 men out of their senses. Is the Centaur not fa- 
 bulous ? neither is Circe's cup. Papers and pamph- 
 lets, representing one of the best of princes as if 
 he had been one of the worst, — and all aiming at 
 the same point, to make the king appear odious, 
 as well as contemptible, in the eyes of his subjects, 
 
 14 
 
wesley's political conduct. 431 
 
 are conveyed, week after week, through all Lon- 
 don, and all the nation. Can any man wonder at 
 the effect ? What can be expected, but that they 
 who drink in these papers and letters, with all 
 greediness, will be thoroughly embittered and in- 
 flamed thereby ; will first despise, and then abhor 
 the king ? What can be expected but that, by the 
 repeated doses of this poison, they will be perfectly 
 intoxicated, and only wait for a convenient season 
 to tear in pieces the royal monster, as they think 
 him, and all his adherents ! Can any thing be done 
 to open the eyes, to restore the senses of an infa- 
 tuated nation? Not unless the still renewed, still 
 operating cause of that infatuation can be removed. 
 But how is it possible to be removed, unless by 
 restraining the licentiousness of the press ?" — " I am 
 in great earnest," he says, in another place : " so I 
 have need to be ; for I am pleading the cause of 
 my king and country, yea, of every country under 
 heaven where there is any regular government. I 
 am pleading against those principles that naturally 
 tend to anarchy and confusion, that directly tend 
 to unhinge all government, and overturn it from 
 the foundation." 
 
 Forty thousand copies of the Calm Address were 
 printed in three weeks; it was written before th^ 
 war had actually begun, and excited so much 
 anger among the English friends of the American 
 cause, that, as he said, they would willingly have 
 burnt him and it together. But though Wesley 
 maintained that, when the principles of order and 
 legitimate government were seditiously attacked, 
 
432 wesley's political conduct. 
 
 it was the duty of every Christian minister to exert 
 himself in opposing the evil spirit of the times, he 
 saw how imprudent it would be for his preachers 
 in America to engage in political matters. " It is 
 your part," said he, " to be peace-makers ; to be 
 loving and tender to all, but to addict yourselves 
 to no party. In spite of all solicitations, of rough 
 or smooth words, say not one word against one or 
 the other side ; keep yourselves pure ; do all you 
 can to help and soften all ; but * beware how you 
 adopt another's jar.* " In the same spirit Charles 
 Wesley wrote to them, saying, " As to the public 
 affairs, I wish you to be like-minded with me. I 
 am of neither side, and yet of both : on the side 
 of New England, and of Old. Private Christians 
 are excused, exempted, privileged to take no part 
 in civil troubles. We love all, and pray for all, 
 with a sincere and impartial love. Faults there 
 may be 6n both sides, but such as neither you nor 
 1 can remedy ; therefore let us, and all our chil- 
 dren, give ourselves unto prayer, and so stand still 
 and see the salvation of God." It was scarcely 
 possible for the preachers to follow this advice ; it 
 was scarcely possible that they could refrain from 
 expressing their opinions upon the one subject by 
 which all minds were possessed and inflamed, ex- 
 cited, as they constantly were, by sympathy or pro- 
 vocation. Such, indeed, was the temper of the 
 Americans, that a friend to the Methodists got 
 possession of all the copies of the Calm Address 
 which were sent to New- York, and destroyed 
 them, foreseeing the imminent danger to which 
 
METHODISM IN AMERICA. 4>33 
 
 the preachers would be exposed, if a pamphlet so 
 unpopular in its doctrines should get abroad. But 
 the part which Wesley had taken could not be 
 kept secret ; the Methodists, in consequence, be- 
 came objects of suspicion, and the personal safety 
 of the preachers was oftentimes endangered. Tar- 
 ring and feathering was not the only cruelty to 
 which they were exposed in those days of brutal 
 violence. The English missionaries were at length 
 glad to escape as they could : Asbury alone re- 
 mained : he was less obnoxious than his colleagues, 
 because, having chosen the less frequented parts 
 of the country for the scene of his. exertions, he 
 had been less conspicuous, and less exposed to 
 provocation and to danger. Yet even he found it 
 necessary to withdraw from public view, and con- 
 ceal himself in the house of a friend, till, after 
 two years of this confinement, he obtained creden- 
 tials from the governor of Pennsylvania, which 
 enabled him to appear abroad again with safety. 
 
 Methodism, meantime, had been kept alive by 
 a few native preachers, of whom Freeborn Garret- 
 son, and Benjamin Abbot, a strange half-madman, 
 were two of the most remarkable. It even in- 
 creased, notwithstanding all difficulties, and some- 
 thing much more like persecution than it had 
 ever undergone in England. In the year 1777, 
 there were forty preachers, and about 7000 mem- 
 bers, exclusive of negroes. The Society, how- 
 ever, as the war continued, was in danger of being 
 broken up, by a curious species of intolerance, 
 which could not have been foreseen. The prevail- 
 
 VOL. Tfar. F F 
 
434. METHODISM IN AMERICA. 
 
 mg religion in the southern states had been that 
 of the Church of England ; but the clergy were 
 driven away during the troubles, the whole of the 
 Church property was confiscated ; and, when af- 
 fairs were settled, none of it was restored, and 
 no attempt made, either by the general or provin- 
 cial governments, to substitute any kind of reli- 
 gious instruction, in place of the Establishment 
 which had been destroyed! The Methodists had 
 hitherto been members of the English Church, but, 
 Upon the compulsory emigration of the clergy, 
 they found themselves deprived of the sacraments, 
 and could obtain no baptism for their children; 
 for neither the Presbyterians, the Independents, or 
 Baptists, would administer these ordinances to 
 them, unless they would renounce their connection 
 with Mr. Wesley, and join with their respective 
 sects. 
 
 Before the dispute between the mother country 
 and the colonies assumed a serious character, and be- 
 fore any apprehension of separation was entertained 
 on the one side, or any intention to that effect was 
 avowed on the other, the heads of the Church in 
 England had represented to government, how 
 greatly it would conduce to the interest of religion 
 in America, if a bishop were appointed there. 
 This judicious representation was unsuccessful ; for 
 the ministers, who were but too bold in trying ex- 
 periments of another kind with the colonists, 
 thought it better to let religious affairs remain ais 
 they were, than to introduce any innovation. If 
 this had been .done half a century earlier, as soon 
 
METHODISM IN AMERICA. 433 
 
 as the population of the country required it, it 
 would have bden highly beneficial to America; 
 part of the hierarchy would have submitted to, or 
 taken part in the revolution, and thus a religious 
 establishment might have been preserved in those 
 parts of the United States, where the want of re" 
 ligious instruction is severely * felt. The ill con- 
 sequences of an omission, which, whether morally 
 or politically considered, is equally to be con- 
 demned, were now experienced. Two American 
 youths, after the peace, came to England, for the 
 purpose of obtaining episcopal ordination : but the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury was of opinion, that no 
 English bishop could ordain them, unless they 
 took the oath of allegiance, which it was impos- 
 sible for them to do. They then applied for ad- 
 vice and assistance to Dr. Franklin, who was at 
 that time in France. Upon consulting a French 
 clergyman, he ifound that they could not be or- 
 dained in France, unless they vowed obedience to 
 the Archbishop of Paris ; and the nuncio, whom 
 he consulted also, informed him that the Romish 
 bishop in America could not lay hands on them 
 unless they turned Catholics. The advice, there- 
 fore, which they received from a man like Franklin 
 
 * I have somewhere seen it stated, that, in the large town of Rich- 
 mond, there was no place of worship, till the theatre took fire, and 
 some fourscore persons perished in the flames. Then the people 
 took fright, and builtfft church upon the ruins. A lady, who published 
 no account, in verse, of her residence in the southern stages, describes, 
 with, much feeling, her emotion at hearing a church clock when sne 
 returned to her own country: " A sound," she says 5 " I had not 
 heard for years." 
 
 F F 2 
 
436 METHODISM IN AMERICA. 
 
 may easily be conjectured ; — it was, that the Epis* 
 copalian clergy in America should become Pres^ 
 byterians; or, if they would not consent to this, 
 that they should elect a bishop for themselves* 
 
 This latter course some of the American Me- 
 thodists had already adopted. Finding themselves 
 deprived of communion, and their children of bap- 
 tism, they applied to Asbury, whom they regarded 
 as their head, to adopt Some means of providing 
 for these ordinances. Asbury knew not how to 
 act, and advised them to wait till circumstances 
 should prepare the way for what they wished. It 
 was not likely that they should follow this advice. 
 Breaking off their connection with him, and thereby 
 with Mr. Wesley, they elected three of their elder 
 brethren to ordain others by imposition of hands. 
 Asbury, however, retained so much influence, that, 
 at a subsequent conference, this ordination was 
 declared to be unscriptural. The schism was 
 healed just as the peace was made ; and, as soon 
 as a communication was opened with England, he 
 sent a representation of the case to , Wesley.*— 
 Mr. Wesley had been convinced, by the perusal of 
 Lord King's Account of the Primitive Church, 
 that bishops and presbyters are the same orderv 
 Men are sometimes easily convinced of what they 
 find it convenient or agreeable to believe. Re- 
 garding the apostolical succession as a fable, he 
 thought, when this application from America ar*- 
 rived, that the best thing which he could do would 
 be to secure the Wesleyan succession for the United 
 States. 
 
METHODISM IN AMERICA. 437 
 
 This' step, however, was not taken without some 
 demur, and a feeling that it required some justifi- 
 cation to himself, as well as to the world. It 
 appears that some of his friends advised an appli- 
 cation to the bishops, requesting them to ordain 
 preachers for America. Wesley was not aware of 
 the legal impediment to this ; but he replied, that, 
 on a former application to the Bishop of London, 
 his request had been unsuccessful : that, if the 
 bishops would donsent, their proceedings were no- 
 toriously slow, *and this matter admitted of no de- 
 lay. " If they would ordain them now," he 
 continued, " they would expect to govern them ; 
 and how grievously would this entangle us! As 
 our American brethren are now totally disentangled, 
 both from the state and the English hierarchy, we 
 dare not entangle them again, either with the one 
 or the other. They are now at full liberty simply 
 to follow the scriptures and the primitive church ; 
 and we judge it best that they should stand fast in 
 that liberty wherewith God has so strangely made 
 them free." Having, therefore, determined how 
 to act, he communicated his determination to 
 Dr. Coke, and proposed, in his character of presr 
 byter, which, he said, was the same as bishop, to 
 invest him with the same presbytero-episcopal 
 powers, that, in that character, he might proceed 
 to America, and superintend the societies in the 
 United States. The doubts which Dr. Coke enter- 
 tained as to the validity of Mr. Wesley's authority, 
 were removed by the same treatise which had con r 
 vinced Mr. Wesley; and it seems not to have oc* 
 
 ff3 
 
458 METHODISM IN AMESJCA. 
 
 curred, to either the one or the other, that> if 
 presbyter and bishop were the same order, the pro- 
 posed consecration was useless ; for,. Dr. Coke hav- 
 ing been regularly ordained, was as good a bishop 
 as Mr. Wesley himself. 
 
 Having, however, taken his part, he stated the 
 reasons upon which he had acted with his wonted 
 perspicuity. " By a very uncommon train of Pro- 
 vidences," he said, " many of the provinces of 
 North America are totally disjoined from the mo- 
 ther-country, and erected into independent states. 
 The English government has no authority over them, 
 either civil Ci ecclesiastical, any more than over the 
 States of Holland. A civil authority is exercised 
 over them, partly by the congress, partly by the 
 provincial assemblies ; but no one either exer- 
 cises or claims any ecclesiastical authority at all. 
 In this peculiar situation, some thousands of the 
 inhabitants of these states desire my advice." Then 
 asserting his opinion, that bishops and presbyters 
 were the same order, and, consequently, had the 
 same right to ordain, he said that, for many years, 
 he had been importuned, from time to time, to 
 exercise this right, by ordaining part of the travel- 
 ling preachers, and that he had still refused, for 
 peace-sake, and because he was determined, as 
 little as possible, to violate the established order of 
 the national church to which he belonged. " But 
 the case," he pursued, " is widely different be- 
 tween England and North America. Here there 
 are bishops who have a legal jurisdiction. In 
 America there are none, neither any parish mi- 
 
METHODISM IN AMERICA- 439 
 
 nisters ; so that, for some hundreds of miles to- 
 gether, there is none either to baptize, or to .ad- 
 minister the Lord's Supper. Here, therefore, my 
 scruples are at an end ; and I conceive myself at full 
 liberty, as I violate no order, and invade no man's 
 right, by appointing and sending labourers into 
 the harvest." 
 
 Accordingly, he summoned Dr. Coke to Bristol, 
 and Mr. Creighton with him, a clergyman who 
 had become a regular member of the Methodist 
 Connection. With their assistance he ordained 
 Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey, presbyters 
 for America ; and afterwards he ordained Dr. Coke 
 superintendent. Some reason might have been 
 expected why he thought this second ordination 
 necessary, superintendent being but another word 
 for bishop ; and why he thus practically contra- 
 dicted the very principle upon which he professed 
 to act. Not stopping to discuss such niceties, he 
 gave the Doctor letters of ordination, under his 
 hand and seal, in these words : " To all to whom 
 these presents shall come, John Wesley, late Fellow 
 of Lincoln College, in Oxford, Presbyter of the 
 Church of England, sendeth greeting: Whereas 
 many of the people in the southern provinces of 
 North America, who desire to continue under my 
 care, and still adhere to the doctrine and discipline 
 of the Church of England, are greatly distressed 
 for want of ministers to administer the Sacraments; 
 of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, according to 
 the usage of the same church ; and whereas there 
 does not appear to be any other way of supplying 
 
 F F 4 
 
440 METHODISM IN AMERICA. 
 
 them with ministers, — Know all men, that I, John 
 Wesley, think myself to be providentially called, 
 at this time, to set apart some persons for the 
 work of the ministry in America. And therefore, 
 under the protection of Almighty God, and with 
 a single eye to his glory, I have this day set apart, 
 as a Superintendent, by the imposition of my hands 
 and prayer, (being assisted by other ordained mi- 
 nisters,) Thomas Coke, Doctor of Civil Law, a 
 Presbyter of the Church of England, and a man 
 whom I judge to be well qualified for that great 
 work : and I do hereby recommend him, to all 
 whom it may concern, as a fit person to preside 
 over the flock of Christ. — In testimony whereof, 
 I have hereunto set my hand and seal, this second 
 day of September, in the year of our Lord one 
 thousand seven hundred and eighty four. John 
 Wesley." 
 
 ^Wesley had long deceived himself respecting 
 the part which he was acting toward the Church 
 of England. At the outset of his career he had 
 no intention of setting himself up in opposition to 
 it ; and when, in his progress towards schism, he 
 disregarded its forms, and set its discipline at 
 nought, he still repeatedly disclaimed all views of 
 separation. Nor did he ever . avow the wish, or 
 refer to it as a likely event, with complacency, 
 even when he must have perceived that the course 
 of his conduct, and the temper of his followers, 
 rendered it inevitable. On this occasion his ac- 
 tions spoke for him ; by arrogating the episcopal 
 authority, he took the only step which was wanting 
 
 4 
 
METHODISM IN AMERICA. 441 
 
 to form the Methodists into a distinct body of se- 
 paratists from the Church. Nevertheless, this was 
 not done without reluctance, arising from old and 
 rooted feelings ; nor without some degree of shame, 
 perhaps, for the inconsistencies in which he had 
 involved himself. From the part which he now 
 took, and the manner in which he attempted to 
 justify it, it may be presumed that the story of his 
 applying to the Greek bishop for consecration is 
 well founded, notwithstanding the falsehoods which 
 his enemies had added to the simple fact. Mr. Wes- 
 ley's declared opinion respecting the identity of 
 the episcopal and priestly orders, was contradicted 
 by his own conduct ; and it may be suspected, 
 that his opinion upon the apostolical succession 
 rested on no better ground than its convenience 
 to his immediate purpose. Undoubtedly, as he 
 says, it is not possible to prove the apostolical 
 succession ; but, short of that absolute proof, 
 which, in this case, cannot be obtained, and there- 
 fore ought not to be demanded, there is every 
 reason for believing it. No person who. fairly con- 
 siders the question can doubt this, whatever value 
 he may attach to it. But Wesley knew its value. 
 He was neither so deficient in feeling, or in sa- 
 gacity, as not to know, that the sentiment which 
 connects us with other ages, and by which we are 
 carried back, is scarcely less useful in its influences 
 than the hopes by which we are carried forward. 
 He would rather have been a link of the golden 
 chain, than the ring from whence a new one of 
 inferior metal was to proceed. 
 
442 METHODISM IN AMERICA. 
 
 Charles Wesley disapproved his brother's con- 
 duct on this occasion, as an unwarrantable assump- 
 tion of authority, and as inconsistent with his pro- 
 fessed adherence to the Church of England. His 
 approbation could never be indifferent to John, 
 whose fortunes he had, during so many years, 
 faithfully shared, for honour and for dishonour, 
 for better, for worse. But Dr. Coke had now 
 succeeded to the place in Methodism from which 
 Charles had retired, and in him Mr. Wesley found 
 that willing and implicit obedience, which is the 
 first qualification that the founders of a sect, an 
 order, or a religion, require from their immediate 
 disciples. The new superintendent, with his com- 
 panions, sailed from Bristol for New York. Among 
 the books which he read on the voyage, was the 
 Life of St. Francis Xavier. Through all the exag- 
 gerations and fables with which that life is larded, 
 Coke perceived the spirit of the man, and ex- 
 claimed with kindred feeling, " Oh for a soul like 
 his ! But, glory be to God, there is nothing im- 
 possible with Him. I seem to want the wings of 
 an eagle, and the voice of a trumpet, that I may 
 proclaim the Gospel through the east and the west, 
 and the north and the south." 
 
 Asbury was . not at New York when they ar- 
 rived. Dr. Coke explained the plan which 
 had been arranged in England, to the travelling 
 preachers who were stationed in that city, and had 
 the satisfaction of hearing, not only that such a 
 plan would be highly approved by all the preach- 
 ers, but of being desired to make it public at once, 
 
METHODISM IN AMERICA. 448 
 
 " because Mr. Wesley had determined the point, 
 and therefore it was not to be investigated, but com- 
 plied with." This, however, was not done, because 
 it would have been disrespectful to Mr. Asbury, 
 with whom he was instructed to consult, and act in 
 concert. On his way southward to meet him, 
 Dr. Coke found that Methodism was in good odour 
 in America. He was introduced to the governor 
 of Pennsylvania ; and, at an inn in the state of 
 Delaware, the landlady, though not a Methodist 
 herself, entertained him and his companion sump- 
 tuously, and would not receive their money ; 
 esteeming it an honour to have harboured such 
 guests. When he had finished preaching one 
 day, at a chapel in this state, in the midst of the 
 woods, to a large congregation, a plain robust 
 man came up to him in the pulpit, and kissed 
 him, pronouncing, at the same time, a primitive' 
 salutation. This person, as he readily supposed, 
 proved to be his colleague. Dr. Coke was pre- 
 pared to esteem him, and a personal acquaintance 
 confirmed this opinion. " I exceedingly reverence 
 Mr. Asbury," he says, " he has so much wisdom 
 and consideration, so much meekness and love, 
 and, under all this, though hardly to be perceived, 
 so much command and authority." 
 
 Asbury, expecting to meet Dr. Coke in this 
 part of the country, had collected as many preach- 
 ers as he could to hold a council. They agreed to 
 convoke a Conference of all the preachers at Balti- 
 more, on Christmas eve, and Freeborn Garretson 
 was sent off on this errand, f lij|ce an arrow, from 
 
444 METHODISM IN AMERICA. 
 
 north to south," with directions to send messen- 
 gers to the right and left. This was in the middle 
 of November ; and, that Coke might not be idle 
 in the meantime, Asbury drew up for him a route 
 of about a thousand miles, borrowed a good horse, 
 and gave him, for a guide and assistant, his black, 
 Harry, of whom the Doctor says, " I really be- 
 lieve he is one of the best preachers in the world, 
 there is such an amazing power attends his preach- 
 ing, though he cannot read ; and he is one of the 
 humblest creatures I ever saw." Of eighty-one 
 American preachers, sixty assembled at the Con- 
 ference ; and, at their meeting, the form of church- 
 government, and the manner of worship for the 
 Methodists in America, which Mr. Wesley had 
 arranged, was accepted and established. The 
 name of Superintendent, and the notion that 
 bishops and presbyters were the same order, were 
 now laid aside ; they were mere pretexts, and had 
 served the purpose for which they were intended. 
 Methodism was constituted in America as an Epis- 
 copal Church. The clergy were to consist of 
 three orders, bishops, elders, and deacons. The 
 deacons were to be ordained by a bishop, after a 
 probation similar to that of the travelling preachers 
 in England. The elders were of two orders : the 
 presiding elders were to be unanimously elected by 
 the General Conference ; they were to be assist- 
 ants to the bishops, to represent them in their ab- 
 sence, and to act under their direction. The 
 travelling elders were to administer the ordinances, 
 and to perform the office of marrying j they 
 
METHODISM IN AMERICA. 445 
 
 "were to be elected by a majority of the annual 
 Conference, and ordained by a bishop and the 
 elders present, by imposition of hands. A deacon 
 might not be chosen elder, till he had officiated 
 two years in his inferior degree. A bishop was to 
 be elected by the General Conference, and con- 
 secrated by two or three bishops : but in case the 
 whole order should be extinct, the ceremony might 
 then be performed by three elders. The business 
 of the bishop was to preside in the Conferences, 
 station the preachers, admit or suspend them during 
 the interval of the Conferences, travel through the 
 Connection at large, and inspect the concerns, 
 temporal and spiritual, of the societies. Besides 
 the General Conference, in which the supreme 
 authority was lodged, and which had power of 
 Suspending, judging, and expelling the bishops, 
 as well as electing them, there were to be six 
 -yearly Conferences : — the extent of the country 
 rendered this necessary. The circuits, during the 
 time of the Conference, were to be supplied by 
 local preachers, engaged for the purpose, and paid 
 -in the same proportion and manner as the travel- 
 ling preachers for whom they acted. A local 
 preacher was not eligible to the office of deacon, 
 -till after four years' probation ; nor might he 
 .preach, till he had obtained a certificate of appro- 
 bation from his quarterly meeting. The discipline 
 ^differed little from that of the English Methodists ; 
 Ihe ritual more. In condescension to the puritanic 
 notions which might be expected among the old 
 Americans, the sacrament might be administered 
 
446 METHODISM IN AMERICA. 
 
 to communicants sitting or standing, if they ob- 
 jected to kneel ; and baptism might be performed 
 either by sprinkling, affusion, or immersion, at the 
 option of the parents ; or, in adult cases, of the/ 
 person. 
 
 At this Conference, in pursuance of Mr. Wes- 
 ley's instructions, and by virtue of the authority 
 derived from him, Dr. Coke consecrated Mr. As- 
 bury bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 
 America. In the name of that church, an address 
 to General Washington was drawn up, congratu- 
 lating him on his appointment to the office of pre- 
 sident, and professing the loyalty of the members, 
 and their readiness, on all lawful occasions, to sup- 
 port the government then established. This was; 
 signed by Coke and Asbury, as heads of the Con- 
 nection: the former, upon this occasion, in his 
 capacity of American bishop, performing an act 
 inconsistent with his allegiance as a British sub- 
 ject. He, who was always more ready to act than 
 to think, did not, perhaps, at the time, perceive 
 the dilemma in which he was placed ; nor, if he 
 had, would he have acted otherwise ; for when- 
 ever a national and a sectarian duty come in com- 
 petition with each other, the national one is that 
 which goes to the wall. It exposed him to some 
 severe animadversion in England, and to a sem- 
 blance of displeasure from Mr. Wesley, which was 
 merely intended to save appearances. General 
 Washington returned a written reply, addressed to 
 the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 
 the United States.—" It should be his endeavour," 
 
METHODISM IN AMERICA. 447 
 
 he said, " to manifest the purity of his inclinations 
 for promoting the happiness of mankind, as well 
 as the sincerity of his desires to contribute what- 
 ever might be in his power towards the civil and 
 religious liberties of the American people. It al- 
 ways afforded him satisfaction, when he found a 
 concurrence and practice between all conscientious 
 men, in acknowledgements of homage to the Great 
 Governor of the Universe, and in professions of 
 support to a just civil government. He woidd al- 
 ways strive to prove a faithful and impartial patron 
 of genuine vital religion ; and he assured them m 
 particular, that he took in the kindest part their 
 promise of presenting their prayers for him at the 
 throne of heaven ; and that he likewise implored 
 the divine benediction on them, and their religious 
 community." 
 
 At their first interview, the two bishops agreed 
 to use their joint endeavours for establishing a 
 sehool, or college, on the plan of Kingswood, and, 
 before they met at the Conference, they had got 
 above a thousand pounds subscribed for it. Rely- 
 ing, therefore, upon that bank of faith, which, 
 when religious interests, real or imaginary, are 
 concerned, may safely be drawn upon to a sur- 
 prising amount, Dr. Coke gave orders to begin 
 the work. Four acres of ground were purchased, 
 at the' price of sixty pounds sterling, ^eight-and- 
 twenty miles from Baltimore : the spot commanded 
 a view of the Chesapeak and of the Susquehanna 
 flowing towards it, through a greats extent of 
 country, the sight extending from twenty to fifty 
 
448 METHODISM IN AMERICA. 
 
 miles in different parts of the splendid panorama* 
 The students were to rise at five, summer and 
 winter ; upon this rule the masters were to insist 
 inflexibly, the founders being convinced, they 
 said, by constant observation and experience, that 
 it was of vast importance, both to body and mind ; 
 for it was of admirable use in preserving a good, 
 or improving a bad constitution ; and by thus 
 strengthening the various organs of the body, it 
 enabled the mind to put forth its utmost energies. 
 At six they were to assemble to prayer, and the 
 interval till seven was allowed for recreation ; 
 the recreations being gardening, walking, riding, 
 and bathing ; and, within doors, the carpenters', 
 joiners', cabinet-makers', and turners' business. 
 Nothing which the world calls play was to be per- 
 mitted. Dr. Coke had brought with him Wesley's 
 sour precept, that those who play when they are 
 young, will play when they are old ; and he sup- 
 ported it by the authority of Locke and Rousseau, 
 saying, " that though the latter was essentially 
 mistaken in his religious system, yet his wisdom, 
 in other respects, was indisputably acknowledged!" 
 He judged well, however, in recommending agri- 
 culture and architecture as studies especially use- 
 ful in a new country, and therefore to be preferred 
 for the recreation of the students. The permission 
 of bathing was restricted to a plunge into a cold 
 bath : bathing in the river was forbidden ; a pro- 
 hibition apparently so absurd, that some valid local 
 reason for it must be presumed. The hours of 
 study were from eight till twelve, and from three 
 
METHODISM IN AMERICA. 449 
 
 till six ; breakfast at eight, dinner at one, supper 
 at six, prayers at seven, and bed at nine. The 
 punishments were, private reproof for a first offence, 
 public reproof for a second, and, for the third, 
 confinement in a room set apart for the purpose. 
 
 The establishment was named Cokesbury * Col- 
 lege, after its two founders. An able president 
 was found, a good master, and, in the course of 
 a few years, the institution acquired so much re- 
 pute, that young men, from the Southern States, 
 came there, to finish their education ; and the 
 founders were apprized, that the legislature was 
 willing to grant them an act of incorporation, and 
 enable them to confer degrees. The reputation 
 of this college gratified the American Methodists, 
 
 * In the year 1792 the college was set on fire, and burnt to the 
 ground, the whole of its apparatus and library being destroyed. The 
 state offered a reward of one thousand dollars for the discovery of 
 the incendiary, but without effect. Dr. Coke was not deterred from 
 a second attempt, and seventeen of his friends, in the Baltimore So- 
 ciety, immediately subscribed among themselves more than one thou- 
 sand pounds toward the establishment of another college. A large 
 building in the city of Baltimore, which had been intended for balls and 
 assemblies, was purchased, with all the premises belonging to it, for 
 five thousand three hundred pounds. The Society subscribed seven 
 hundred of this, and collected six hundred more from house to house ; 
 the seventeen original subscribers made themselves responsible for the 
 rest. There was room for a church upon the ground, and a church 
 accordingly was built. This college was even more successful than 
 Cokesbury while it lasted; but it came to the same fate in 1797. Some 
 boys made a bonfire in an adjoining house, and college, church, and 
 several dwellings and warehouses were consumed. By the two fires 
 the Methodists sustained a loss of ten thousand pounds. Dr. Coke 
 then agreed with Asbury, who, after the first catastrophe, was con- 
 vinced " that it was not the will of God for them to undertake such 
 expensive buildings, nor to attempt such popular establishments." As 
 these events did not occur till after the death of Mr. Wesley, they 
 are noticed here, rather than in the text. 
 
 VOL. II. G G 
 
450 METHODISM IN AMERICA. 
 
 and disposed them to found others. The people 
 in Kentucky requested to have one in their coun- 
 try, and offered to give three or four thousand 
 acres of good land for its support. The reply to 
 this application was, that Conference would under- 
 take to complete one within ten years, if the 
 people would provide five thousand acres of fertile 
 ground, and settle it on trustees under its direc- 
 tion. In Georgia, a few leading persons engaged 
 to give two thousand acres ; and one congregation 
 subscribed twelve thousand five hundred pounds 
 weight of tobacco towards the building. Institu- 
 tions of this kind are endowed at so small a cost 
 in new countries, that, with a little foresight on 
 the part of government, provision might easily be 
 made for the wants, and palliatives prepared for 
 the evils, of advanced society. 
 
 Had the institution in Georgia been effected, it 
 was to have been called Wesley College, in refe- 
 rence to Mr. Wesley's early labours in that country. 
 At this time he was so popular in America, that some 
 hundreds of children were baptized by his name. 
 This was in great measure owing to the choice 
 which he had made of Dr. Coke, whose liberal 
 manners, and rank of life, obtained him access 
 among the higher classes upon equal terms, and 
 flattered those in a lower station with whom he 
 made himself familiar. The good opinion, how- 
 ever, which his representative had obtained among 
 all ranks, was lessened, and, for a time, well nigh 
 destroyed, hy the indiscretion with which he ex- 
 erted himself in behalf of a good cause. 
 
METHODISM IN AMERICA. 
 
 451 
 
 Wesley had borne an early testimony against 
 the system of negro slavery : on this point his con- 
 duct is curiously contrasted with Whiteneld's, who 
 exerted himself in * obtaining a repeal of that part 
 of the charter granted to the colony in Georgia, 
 whereby slavery was prohibited. Dr. Coke, feel- 
 ing like Mr. Wesley, took up the subject with his 
 usual ardour, preached upon it with great vehe- 
 mence, and prepared a petition to Congress for the 
 emancipation of the negroes. With this petition 
 he and Asbury went to General Washington at 
 Mount Vernon, and solicited him to sign it. 
 Washington received them courteously and hos- 
 pitably : he declined signing the petition, that 
 being inconsistent with the rank which he held j 
 but he assured them that he agreed with them, 
 and that, if the Assembly should take their petition 
 into consideration, he would signify his sentiments 
 by a letter. They proceeded so far themselves, 
 that they required the members of the society 
 to set their slaves free : and several persons were 
 found who made this sacrifice from a sense of duty. 
 One planter in Virginia emancipated twenty-two, 
 
 * " As for the lawfulness of keeping slaves," he says, " I have no doubt, 
 since I hear of some that were bought with Abraham's money, and 
 some that were born in his house. And I cannot help thinking that 
 some of those servants mentioned by the Apostles in their epistles, 
 were, or had been slaves. It is plain that the Gibeonites were doomed 
 to perpetual slavery; and, though liberty is a sweet thing to such as are 
 born free, yet, to those who never knew the sweets of it, slavery perhaps 
 may not be so irksome. However this be, it is plain to a demonstration, 
 that hot countries cannot be cultivated without negroes." So miserably 
 could Whitefield reason ! He flattered, however, his fetter feelings, by- 
 supposing thsjt the slaves who should be brought into Georgia would be 
 placed in the way of conversion. 
 
 gg2 
 
452 METHODISM IN AMERICA. 
 
 who were, at that time, worth from thirty to forty 
 pounds each. His name was Kennon, and it 
 deserves to be honourably recorded. But such 
 instances were rare ; and Dr. Coke, who had much 
 of the national ardour in his character, proceeded 
 in such an intolerant * spirit of philanthropy, that 
 he soon provoked a violent opposition, and incur- 
 red no small degree of personal danger. One 
 of his sermons upon this topic incensed some of 
 his hearers so much, that they withdrew, for the 
 purpose of way-laying him ; and a lady negro- 
 owner promised them fifty pounds, if they would 
 give " that little Doctor" an hundred lashes. But 
 the better part of his congregation protected him, 
 and that same sermon produced the emancipation 
 of twenty-four slaves. In one county the slave- 
 owners presented a bill against him, which was 
 found by the grand jury, and no less than ninety 
 persons set out in pursuit of him ; but he was got 
 beyond their reach. A more ferocious enemy 
 followed him, with an intention of shooting him : 
 this the man himself confessed, when, some »time 
 afterwards, he became a member of the Methodist 
 
 * These extracts from his journal will exemplify that spirit ; " At 
 night I lodged at the house of Captain Dillard a most hospitable man, 
 and as kind to his negroes as if they were white servants. It was quite 
 pleasing to see them so decently and comfortably clothed. And yet I 
 could not beat into the head of that poor man the evil of keeping them 
 in slavery, although he had read Mr. Wesley's Thoughts on Slavery 
 (I think he said) three times over. But his good wife is strongly on our 
 side." — " I preached the late Colonel Bedford's funeral sermon. But I 
 said nothing good of him, for he was a violent friend of slavery ; and his 
 interest being great among the Methodists in these parts, he- would have 
 been a dreadful thorn in our sides, if the Lord had not in mercy taken him 
 away." ! ! 
 
METHODISM IN AMERICA. 453 
 
 Society. On his second visit to America, Coke 
 was convinced that he had acted indiscreetly, and 
 he consented to let the question of emancipation 
 rest, rather than stir up an opposition which so 
 greatly impeded the progress of methodism. 
 
 If a course of itinerancy in England led the 
 errant preacher into picturesque scenes and wild 
 situations, much more might this be expected in 
 America. Coke was delighted with the romantic 
 way of life in which he found himself engaged; — 
 preaching in the midst of ancient forests, " with 
 scores, and sometimes hundreds of horses tied to 
 the trees." — " Sometimes," he says, " a most noble 
 vista, of half a mile or a mile in length, would 
 open between the lofty pines ; sometimes the 
 tender fawns and hinds would suddenly appear, 
 and, on seeing or hearing us, would glance through 
 the woods, or vanish away." The spring scenery of 
 these woods filled him with delight. " The oaks,** 
 says he, " have spread out their leaves, and the dog- 
 wood, whose bark is medicinal, and whose innumer- 
 able white flowers form one of the finest ornaments 
 of the forests, is in full blossom. The deep green of 
 the pines, the bright transparent green of the oaks, 
 and the fine white of the dogwood flowers, with 
 other trees and shrubs, form such a complication 
 of beauties as is indescribable to those who have 
 only lived in countries that are almost entirely 
 cultivated." — " It is one of my most delicate enter- 
 tainments, to embrace every opportunity of in- 
 gulphing myself, (if I may so express it,) in the 
 woods : I seem then to be detached from every 
 
 gg3 
 
454 METHODISM IN AMERICA. 
 
 thing but the quiet vegetable creation and my God." 
 A person always went before him to make his pub- 
 lications ; by which strange phrase is implied a 
 notice to all the country round, in what place, and 
 at what times, the itinerant was to be expected.- 
 Their mark for finding the way in these wide 
 wildernesses was the split bush. When a new 
 circuit in the woods was formed, at every 
 turning of the road or path* the preacher split 
 two or three bushes beside the right way, as a 
 direction * for those who came after him* They 
 had no cause to repent of their labour in travelling ; 
 for numerous hearers were collected, insomuch that 
 Dr. Coke was astonished at the pains which the 
 people took to hear the GospeL Idleness and 
 curiosity brought many, and many came for the 
 pleasure of being in a crowd ; but numbers were 
 undoubtedly drawn together by that desire of 
 religious instruction which is the noblest charac- 
 teristic of man, and for which, by the greatest of 
 all political errors, the American government has 
 neglected to provides " I am daily filled with sur- 
 prise," he says, " in meeting with such large con- 
 gregations as I am favoured with in the midst of 
 vast wildernesses, and Wonder from whence they 
 come !" It appears that the Spirit of riotous 
 devotion, which afterwards produced the fanatical 
 extravagancies of the camp-meetings, began to 
 manifest itself in the early days of American 
 Methodism, and that it was encouraged by the 
 
 * " In one of the circuits the wicked discovered the secret, and split 
 bushes in wrong places, on purpose to deceive the preachers." 
 
METHODISM IN AMERICA. 455 
 
 superiors when it might have been repressed. " At 
 Annapolis," says Dr. Coke, " after my last prayer, 
 the congregation began to pray and praise aloud in a 
 most astonishing manner. At first I found some 
 reluctance to enter into the business ; but soon the 
 tears began to flow, and I think I have seldom 
 found a more comforting or strengthening time. 
 This praying and praising aloud is a common thing 
 throughout Virginia and Maryland. What shall 
 we say? Souls are awakened and converted by 
 multitudes; and the work is surely a genuine 
 work, if there be a genuine work of God upon 
 earth. Whether there be wild-fire in it or not, I do 
 most ardently wish that there was such a work at 
 this present time in England." At Baltimore, after 
 the evening service was concluded, " the congre- 
 gation began to pray and praise aloud, and con- 
 tinued so to do till two o'clock in the morning. 
 Out of a congregation of two thousand people, 
 two or three hundred were engaged at the same 
 time in praising God, praying for the conviction 
 and conversion of sinners, or exhorting those 
 around them with the utmost vehemence ; and 
 hundreds more were engaged in wrestling prayer, 
 either for their own conversion, or sanctification. 
 The first noise of the people soon brought a multi- 
 tude to see what was going on. One of our elders 
 was the means that night of the conversion of 
 seven poor penitents within his little circle in 
 less than fifteen minutes. Such was the zeal of 
 many, that a tolerable company attended the 
 preaching at five the next morning, notwithstand- 
 
 66 4 
 
456 METHODISM IN AMERICA* 
 
 ing the late hour at which they parted." The 
 next evening the same uproar was renewed, and 
 the maddened congregation continued in their ex- 
 cesses as long and as loud as before. The practice 
 became common in Baltimore, though that city had 
 been one of the * calmest and most critical' upon 
 the continent. — " Many of our elders," says Coke, 
 " who were the softest, most connected, and most 
 sedate of our preachers, have entered with all their 
 hearts into this work. And gracious and wonder- 
 ful has been the change, our greatest enemies 
 themselves being the judges, that has been wrought 
 on multitudes, on whom the work began at those 
 wonderful seasons." 
 
 Plainly as it had been shown among the Me- 
 thodists themselves, that emotions of this kind were 
 like a fire of straw, soon kindled and soon spent, 
 the disposition, whenever it manifested itself, was 
 encouraged rather than checked ; so strong is the 
 tendency toward enthusiasm. But if Dr. Coke, 
 with the advantages of education, rank in life, and 
 of the lessons which he derived from Mr. Wesley, 
 when age and long experience had cooled him, 
 could be so led away by sympathy as to give his 
 sanction to these proceedings, it might be expected 
 that preachers, who had grown up in a state of 
 semi-civilization, and were in the first effervescence 
 of their devotional feelings, would go beyond all 
 bounds in their zeal. They used their utmost en- 
 deavours, (as had been advised in the third Confer- 
 ence) " to throw men into convictions, into strong 
 sorrow, and fear, — to make them inconsolable, re- 
 
METHODISM IN AMERICA. 457 
 
 fusing to be comforted ;" believing that the 
 stronger was the conviction, the speedier was the 
 deliverance. " The darkest time in the night," 
 said one, "is just before the dawning of the day; 
 so it is with a soul groaning for redemption." 
 They used, therefore, to address the unawakened 
 in the most alarming strain, teaching them that 
 " God out of Christ is a consuming fire !" and to 
 address the most enthusiastic language to those who 
 were in what they called a seeking state, in order 
 to keep them " on the full stretch for sanctifica- 
 tion." Benjamin Abbott not only threw his 
 hearers into fits, but often fainted himself through 
 the vehemence of his own prayers and preach- 
 ments. He relates such exploits with great satisfac- 
 tion, — how one person could neither eat nor drink 
 for three days after one of his drastic sermons ; 
 and how another was, for the same length of time, 
 totally deprived of the use of her limbs. A youth 
 who was standing on the hearth beside a blazing 
 fire, in the room where Abbott was holding forth, 
 overcome by the contagious emotion which was 
 excited, tottered and fell into the flames. He was in- 
 stantly rescued, " providentially," says the preach- 
 er, " or he would have been beyond the reach of 
 mercy: his body would have been burned to death, 
 and what would have become of his soul !" When 
 they preached within the house, and with closed 
 doors, the contaminated air may have contributed 
 to these deleterious effects ; for he himself notices 
 one instance, where, from the exceeding close- 
 ness of the room, and the number of persons 
 
458 METHODISM IN AMERICA. 
 
 crowded together there, the candles gradually 
 went out. But the maddening spirit of the man 
 excited his hearers almost to frenzy. 
 
 One day this itinerant went to a funeral, where 
 many hundreds were collected. " The minister," 
 he says, " being of the Church form, went through 
 the ceremonies, and then preached a short, easy, 
 smooth, soft sermon, which amounted to almost 
 nothing. By this time a gust was rising, and the 
 firmament was covered with blackness. Two 
 clouds appeared to come from different quarters, 
 and to meet over the house, which caused the 
 people to crowd into the house, up stairs and down, 
 to screen themselves from the storm. When the 
 minister had done, he asked me if I would say 
 something to the people. I arose, and with some 
 difficulty got on one of the benches, the house was 
 so greatly crowded ; and almost as soon as I began, 
 the Lord out of heaven began also. The tremen- 
 dous claps of thunder exceeded any thing I ever 
 had heard, and the streams of lightning flashed 
 through the house in a most awful manner. It 
 shook the very foundation of the house : the win- 
 dows shook with the violence thereof. I lost no 
 time, but set before them the awful coming of 
 Christ in all his splendour, with all the armies of 
 heaven, to judge the world and to take vengeance 
 on the ungodly. It may be, cried I, that he will 
 descend in the next clap of thunder ! The people 
 screamed, screeched, and fell, all through the 
 house. The lightning, thunder, and rain, con- 
 tinued for about the space of one hour in the 
 
METHODISM IN AMERICA. 459 
 
 most awful manner ever known in that country ; 
 during which time I continued to set before them 
 the coming of Christ to judge the world, warning 
 and inviting sinners to flee to Christ." He de- 
 clares that, fourteen years afterwards, when he rode 
 that circuit, he conversed with twelve living wit- 
 nesses who told him they were all converted at that 
 sermon. 
 
 One day, when Abbott was exhorting a class to 
 sanctification, and a young Quakeress was "scream- 
 ing and screeching and crying for purity of heart," 
 her father, hearing her outcries, came into the 
 room, and with a mild reproof to this director of 
 consciences, reminded him that the Lord is not in 
 the earthquake, nor in the whirlwind, but in the 
 still small voice. The passionate enthusiast readily 
 replied, " Do you know what the earthquake 
 means ? It is the mighty thunder of God's voice 
 from Mount Sinai ; it is the divine law to drive 
 us to Christ. And the whirlwind is the power 
 of conviction, like the rushing of a mighty wind, 
 tearing away every false hope, and stripping us of 
 every plea, but — Give me Christ, or else I die ! 
 On another occasion, when a young Quakeress was 
 present at a meeting, and retained a proper com- 
 mand of herself while others were fainting and 
 falling round about her, Abbott regarding this as 
 a proof of insensibility to the state of her own 
 soul, looked her full in the face, and began to pray 
 for her as an infidel, and called upon all his hearers 
 to do the same. The young woman was abashed, 
 and retired j but as she made her way slowly 
 
4>60 METHODISM IN AMERICA. 
 
 through the crowded room, " I cried to God," 
 says the fiery fanatic, " to pursue her by the 
 energy of his Spirit through the streets ; to pur- 
 sue her in the parlour, in the kitchen, and in the 
 garden ; to pursue her in the silent watches of the 
 night, and to shew her the state of the damned 
 in hell ; to give her no rest day nor night, until she 
 found rest in the wounds of a blessed Redeemer.' ' 
 He relates this himself, and adds, that in conse- 
 quence of this appeal she soon afterwards joined 
 the Methodists, in opposition to the will of her 
 parents. 
 
 " Oh," said Wesley, in one of his sermons, " the 
 depth both of the wisdom and knowledge of God ! 
 causing a total disregard of all religion to pave the 
 way for the revival of the only religion which was 
 worthy of God ! The total indifference of the 
 government in North America whether there be 
 any religion or none, leaves room for the propaga- 
 tion of true scriptural religion, without the least 
 let or hindrance." He overlooked another con- 
 sequence, which the extravagance of his own 
 preachers might have taught him. Wherever 
 the prime duty of providing religious instruc- 
 tion for the people is neglected, the greater part 
 become altogether careless of their eternal in- 
 terests, and the rest are ready to imbibe the rank- 
 est fanaticism, or embrace any superstition that may 
 be promulgated among them. A field is open for 
 impostors as well as fanatics ; some are duped and 
 plundered, and others are driven mad. Benjamin 
 Abbott seems to have been a sincere and well-mean- 
 
METHODISM IN AMERICA. 46l 
 
 ing enthusiast, upon the very verge of madness him- 
 self. From the preaching of such men an increase 
 of insanity might well be expected ; and accord- 
 ingly it is asserted, that a fourth part of the cases 
 of this malady in Philadelphia arise from enthu- 
 siastic devotion, and that this and the abuse of 
 ardent spirits are principal causes of the same dis- 
 ease in Virginia. But the fermentation of Method- 
 ism will cease in America, as it has ceased in Eng- 
 land ; and even during its effervescence, the good 
 which it produces is greater than the evil. For 
 though there must be many such fierce fanatics as 
 Abbott, there will be others of a gentler nature : 
 as the general state of the country may improve, 
 the preachers will partake of the improvement ; 
 and, meantime, they contribute to that improve- 
 ment in no slight degree, by correcting the brutal 
 vices, and keeping up a sense of religion in regions 
 where it might otherwise be extinct. At their first 
 general conference, the American preachers made 
 a rule respecting spirituous liquors, the common 
 use of which has greatly tended to brutalize the 
 people in that country. They decreed, that if 
 any thing disorderly happened under the roof of a 
 member, who either sold ardent spirits, or gave 
 them to his guests, " the preacher who had the 
 oversight of the circuit should proceed against 
 him, as in the case of other immoralities," and he 
 should be censured, suspended, or excluded, ac- 
 cording to the circumstances. The zeal with 
 which they made war against the pomps and va- 
 nities of society was less usefully directed. " Such 
 
4&°2 METH0DJ3M JN AMERICA. 
 
 days and nights as those were J" says one of the 
 early preachers. " The fine, the gay, threw off 
 their ruffles, their rings, their ear-rings, their 
 powder, their feathers. Opposition, indeed, there 
 was ; for the Devil would not be still. My life was 
 threatened ; but my friends were abundantly more 
 in number than my enemies." In attacking these 
 things, the preacher acted in entire conformity 
 with the spirit of Wesley's institutions : but in 
 America, Wesley would perhaps have modified the 
 rigour of his own rules ; for even Franklin, who 
 long maintained opinions as rigorous upon thi§ 
 point as Wesley himself, at length discovered that 
 vanities like these have their use, in giving a 
 spur to industry, and accelerating the progress of 
 civilization. 
 
 There were parts of the country where the 
 people must have remained altogether without the 
 ordinances of religion, had it not been for the 
 Methodists. Dr, Coke observes, that in his first 
 tour in America, he baptized more children and 
 adults than he should have done in his whole 
 life if stationed in an English parish. The 
 people of Delaware had scarcely ever heard preach- 
 ing of any kind, when Freeborn Garretson entered 
 that country in one of his circuits. Meeting a 
 man there one day, he asked him, in a methodist- 
 ical manner, if he knew Jesus Christ ; and the man 
 answered, that he did not know where he lived. 
 Garretson repeated the question, supposing that it 
 had not been distinctly heard ; and the reply then 
 was, that he knew no such person. Before the 
 
 9 
 
METHODISM IN AMERICA. 463 
 
 Methodists had built chapels for themselves, they 
 officiated sometimes in curious situations, either 
 because there was no place of worship, or none 
 to which they had access. The church-doors at 
 Cambridge, in Maryland, were locked upon Dr. 
 Coke, though there had been no service there for 
 some years, and though it had often been left open 
 for dogs, and pigs, and cattle. At another place, 
 the church was in so filthy a condition, that, at the 
 people's desire, he held forth in the court-house 
 instead. At Raleigh, the seat of government for 
 North Carolina, he obtained the use of the house 
 of commons : the members of both houses at- 
 tended, and the speaker's seat served for a pulpit. 
 At Annapolis, they lent him the theatre. " Pit, 
 boxes, and gallery,'' says he, " were filled with 
 people according to their ranks in life ; and I stood 
 upon the stage, and preached to them, though at 
 first, I confess, I felt it a little awkward.'-' 
 
 Itinerants in America were liable to discomforts 
 and dangers which are unknown in England. There 
 were perilous swamps to cross ; rivers to ford ; the 
 risk of going astray # in the wilderness ; and the 
 plague of ticks in the forests, which are so great 
 a torment, that Dr. Coke was almost laid up by 
 
 * Brother Ignatius Pigman was lost for sixteen days in the woods on 
 the way to Kentucky. This inhuman name reminds me of a contro- 
 versialist, who advanced the notion of the pre-existence of the human 
 soul of Christ, and fiercely supported his notion, which he called Pre- 
 existarianism, in the last series of the Gospel Magazine. His name 
 •being Newcomb, he signed himself Peigneneuve, to show his knowledge 
 of the French tongue ; and one of his adversaries, who, if peradven- 
 ture less accomplished in languages, was not less witty than himself, 
 '* wickedly detorted" this word, and called him Mr. Pig-enough. 
 
464- METHODISM IN AMERICA. 
 
 their bites. To these difficulties, and to the in- 
 conveniences of sometimes sleeping on the floor, 
 sometimes three in a bed, and sometimes bi- 
 vouacking in the woods, the native preachers were 
 less sensible than those who came from Europe j 
 but a great proportion of the itinerants settled 
 when they became fathers of families. " It is 
 most lamentable," says Coke, " to see so many of 
 our able married preachers (or rather, I might say, 
 almost all of them) become located merely for 
 want of support for their families. I am con- 
 scious it is not the fault of the people : it is the 
 fault of the preachers, who, through a false and 
 most unfortunate delicacy, have not pressed the 
 important subject as they ought, upon the con- 
 sciences of the people. I am truly astonished that 
 the work has risen to its present height on this 
 continent, when so much of the spirit of pro- 
 phecy, of the gifts of preaching, yea, of the most 
 precious gifts which God bestows on mortals, 
 should thus miserably be thrown away. I could, 
 methinks, enter into my closet, and weep tears 
 of blood upon the occasion." At another time 
 he says, " The location of so many scores of our 
 most able and experienced preachers tears my 
 very heart in pieces. Methinks, almost the whole 
 continent would have fallen before the power of 
 God, had it not been for this enormous evil." 
 Dr. Coke himself had the true spirit of an errant 
 preacher, and therefore did not consider how 
 natural it is, that men should desire to settle 
 quietly in domestic life, and how just and rea- 
 
 
METHODISM IN AMERICA. 465 
 
 sonable it is that they should be enabled and en- 
 couraged to do so after a certain length of service. 
 Mr. Wesley's original intention was, that the 
 Methodist preachers should be auxiliaries to the 
 Church of England, as the friars and the Jesuits 
 are to the Church of Rome. In America, where 
 there is no Church, it would be consistent with 
 this intention, that the Methodists should have an 
 order of settled pastors in place of the clergy. 
 
 But though the American intinerants withdrew 
 from their labours earlier than their brethren in the 
 mother-country, new adventurers were continually 
 offering themselves to supply their place, and the 
 increase of Methodism was far more rapid than in 
 England. In the year 1786, two-and-twenty chapels 
 were built in a single circuit within the State of 
 South Carolina, and the society in that same year 
 had added to its numbers in the United States, more 
 than G600 members. In 1789 when the census of the 
 Methodists in Great Britain amounted to 70,305, 
 that in America was 4f3,°265. In less than twenty 
 years afterwards, they doubled their numbers at 
 home ; but the Americans had then become the 
 more numerous body, and their comparative in- 
 crease was much greater than this statement would 
 imply, because it was made upon a much smaller 
 population. 
 
 vol. II. H H 
 
466 
 
 CHAP. XXVIII. 
 
 METHODtSM IN THE WEST-INDIES. 
 
 In the year 17*58, Wesley baptized some negroes 
 at Wandsworth, who were in the service of Na- 
 thaniel Gilbert, Speaker of the House of Assembly 
 in Antigua. Mr. Gilbert was a man of ardent 
 piety, and being desirous of promoting religion in 
 a part of the world where slavery had produced 
 the greatest possible degradation of the moral feel- 
 ing, he invited Mr. Fletcher to return with him. 
 Mr. Fletcher hesitated, and consulted Charles 
 Wesley ; " I have weighed the matter," said he ; 
 " but, on one hand, I feel that I have neither suffi- 
 cient zeal, nor grace, nor talents, to expose myself 
 to the temptations and labours of a mission to the 
 West-Indies ; and, on the other, I believe that if 
 God call me thither the time is not yet come. I 
 wish to be certain that I am converted myself, be- 
 fore I leave my converted brethren to convert 
 heathens. Pray let me know what you think of 
 this business. If you condemn me to put the sea 
 between us, the command would be a hard one ; 
 but I might possibly prevail on myself to give you 
 that proof of the deference I pay to your judicious 
 advice." That proof was not exacted. Fletcher 
 remained in England, where he rendered more 
 essential service to Methodism by his writings, 
 
METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES. 467 
 
 than he could have done as a missionary, and Mr. 
 Gilbert returned to Antigua without any minister, 
 or preacher in his company. Being, however, 
 enthusiastic by constitution, as well as devout 
 by principle, he prayed and preached in his own 
 house to such persons as would assemble to hear 
 him on Sundays ; and, encouraged by the facility 
 of which he found himself possessed, and the suc- 
 cess with which these beginnings were attended, 
 he went forth and preached to the negroes. This 
 conduct drew upon him contempt, or compas- 
 sion, according as it was imputed to folly, or to 
 insanity.* But he had his reward ; the poor 
 negroes listened willingly to the consolations of 
 Christianity, and he lived to form some two hun- 
 dred persons into a Methodist society, according 
 to Mr. Wesley's rules. 
 
 After Mr. Gilbert's death the black people were 
 kept together by two negresses, who prayed to them 
 when they assembled, and preserved among them 
 the forms of the society as far as they could, and the 
 spirit of devotion. In the year 1778, a shipwright, 
 
 * A son of Mr. Gilbert published, in the year 1796, " The Hurricane, 
 a Theosophical and Western Eclogue," and shortly afterwards pla- 
 carded the walls in London with the largest bills that had at that time 
 been seen, announcing " The Law of Fire." I knew him well, and 
 look back with a melancholy pleasure to the hours which I have past in 
 his society, when his mind was in ruins. His madness was of the most 
 incomprehensible kind, as may be seen in the notes to the Hurricane ; but 
 the poem contains passages of exquisite beauty, I have among my papers 
 some curious memorials of this interesting man. They who remember 
 him (as some of my readers will) will not be displeased at seeing him 
 thus mentioned with the respect and regret which are due to the wreck 
 of a noble mind. 
 
 H H 2 
 
468 METHODISM IN TttE WEST-JNDIESi, 
 
 by name John Baxter, who was in the king's ser- 
 vice, removed from the royal docks at Chatham, to 
 English Harbour in Antigua, and, happily for him- 
 self and the poor negroes, he survived his removal 
 to one of the most fatal places in all those islands. 
 He had been for some years a leader among the 
 Methodists, and upon his arrival, he took upon him- 
 self immediately, as far as his occupation would 
 allow, the management of the society. His Sun- 
 days he devoted entirely to them ; and on the other 
 days of the week, after his day's work was done, 
 he rode about to the different plantations, to in- 
 struct and exhort the slaves, when they also 
 were at rest from their labour. Some of them 
 would come three or four miles to hear him. He 
 found it hard to flesh and blood, he said, to work 
 all day, and then ride ten miles at night to preach j 
 but the motive supported him, and he was pro- 
 bably the happiest man upon the island. He 
 married, and thereby established himself there. 
 The contributions of his hearers, though he was 
 the only white man in the society, enabled him 
 to build a chapel. He wrote to Mr. Wesley 
 from time to time, requested his directions, and 
 expressed a hope that some one would come to his 
 assistance. "The old standers," said he, "desire 
 me to inform you that you have many children 
 in Antigua, whom you never saw." 
 
 Baxter was, after a while, assisted by an English 
 woman, who having an annuity charged upon an 
 estate in the island, had found it necessary to re- 
 side there. She opened her house for prayers every 
 
METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES. 469 
 
 day, and set apart one evening every week for 
 reading the Scriptures, to all who would hear. 
 These meetings were much frequented ; " for the 
 English," says this lady, " can scarcely conceive 
 the hunger and thirst expressed by a poor negro, 
 when he has learned that the soul is immortal, 
 and is under the operation of awakening influences." 
 Further assistance arrived in a manner remark- 
 able enough to deserve relation. An old man and 
 his wife at Waterford, being past their labour, were 
 supported by two of their sons. They were Me- 
 thodists; the children had been religiously brought 
 up, and in their old age the parents found the be- 
 nefit of having trained them in the way they 
 should go. At the close of the American war, 
 America was represented to the two sons as a land 
 flowing with milk and honey, and they were ad- 
 vised to emigrate. Go they would not, without 
 the consent of their parents ; and the old people 
 entreated them to wait a little, till they should be 
 in the grave : the youths, however, unwilling to 
 wait, and incapable of forsaking their parents, pro- 
 posed that they should go together, and succeeded 
 in persuading them. Having no means of paying 
 for their passage, the poor lads indented them- 
 selves to the captain of a ship, who was collecting 
 white slaves for the Virginia market ; and as the 
 old people could be of no use as bond-servants, 
 the boys were bound for a double term on their 
 account. How the parents, incapable as they 
 were of supporting themselves, were to be sup- 
 ported in a strange land, when their children were 
 
 h h 3 
 
470 METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES. 
 
 in bondage, was a question which never occurred 
 to any one of the family. A married son and his 
 wife came On board to take leave, and they were 
 persuaded by their relations and by the crimping 
 skipper to join the party upon the same terms. No 
 sooner had they sailed than they were made to feel 
 the bitterness of their condition : slaves they had 
 made themselves, and like slaves they were treated 
 by the white-slave-monger who had entrapped 
 them. Happily for them, after a miserable voyage, 
 the ship was driven to the West- Indies, and put 
 into Antigua like a floating wreck, almost by mi- 
 racle. The old Irishman, hearing that there were 
 Methodists on the island, enquired for the preach- 
 ing-house, and Methodism proved more advan- 
 tageous to him than free-masonry would have done. 
 It procured him real and active friends, who ran- 
 somed the whole family. Good situations were 
 procured for the three sons : the old man acted 
 under Baxter ; being well acquainted with the 
 routine of the society, he was of great use ; and by 
 the year 1786 the persons under their spiritual 
 care amounted to nearly two thousand, chiefly 
 negroes. 
 
 In that year Dr. Coke embarked upon his second 
 voyage to America. The season was stormy, and 
 the captain being one of those persons who have a 
 great deal of superstition without the slightest 
 piety, conceived that the continuance of bad wea- 
 ther was brought on by the praying and preaching 
 of the Doctor and his companions. One day, 
 therefore, in the force of the tempest, while these 
 
 7 
 
METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES. 471 
 
 passengers were fervently praying for the preserv- 
 ation of the ship and of the lives of all on board, 
 the skipper paraded the deck in great agitation, 
 muttering to himself, but so as to be distinctly 
 heard, " We have a Jonah on board ! We have a 
 Jonah on board !" till, having worked himself al- 
 most into a state of madness, he burst into Coke's 
 cabin, seized his books and writings, and tossed 
 them into the sea ; and, griping the Doctor him- 
 self, who was a man of diminutive stature, swore 
 that if ever he made another prayer on board that 
 ship he would throw him overboard, after his pa- 
 pers. At length the vessel, after imminent dan- 
 ger, succeeded in reaching Antigua. It was on 
 Christmas-day. Dr. Coke went in search of Mr. 
 Baxter, and met him on the way to officiate at 
 the chapel. To the latter this event was as joyful 
 as it was unexpected : the former performed the 
 service for him, and administered the sacrament. 
 He was delighted with the appearance of the con- 
 gregation, one of the cleanest, he said, that he had 
 ever seen. The negresses were dressed in white 
 linen gowns, petticoats, handkerchiefs, and caps; 
 and their whole dress, which was beautifully clean, 
 appeared the whiter from the contrast of their 
 skins. 
 
 Dr. Coke's arrival occasioned a considerable stir 
 in the capital of this little island. He preached 
 twice a-day, and curiosity brought such numbers 
 to hear him, that in the evenings the poor negroes, 
 who by their savings had built the chapel, could 
 find no room in it. The good effect of Methodism 
 
 h h 4 
 
472 METHODISE IN THE WEST-INDIES. 
 
 upon the slaves had been so apparent, that it was 
 no longer necessary, as it formerly had been, to 
 enforce military law during the holydays which 
 were allowed them at Christmas. They were made 
 better servants, as they were instructed in their 
 moral and religious duties. Methodism, there- 
 fore, was in high favour there, and Dr. Coke was 
 informed, that if five hundred a-year would de- 
 tain him in Antigua, it should be forthcoming. 
 " God be praised," he says, " five hundred thou* 
 sand a-year would be to me a feather, when opposed 
 to my usefulness in the church of Christ." He 
 and his companions were hospitably entertained 
 and treated, he says, rather like princes than sub- 
 jects; and the company of merchants invited them 
 to a dinner which was given to Prince William- 
 Henry. 
 
 Here Dr. Coke held what he calls an Infant- 
 Conference. Invitations for the preachers came 
 from St. Vincent's; and recommendatory letters 
 were given them to the islands of St. Eustatius 
 and St. Kitt's. " All is of God," said Coke; " I 
 have no doubt, but it would be an open resistance 
 to the clear providences of the Almighty, to re- 
 move any one of the missionaries at present from 
 this country." Of the three who had embarked 
 with him from England for America, it was 
 determined that one should remain in An- 
 tigua; and Baxter gave up the place which he 
 held under government, and which was worth 
 400/. a-year currency, that he might devote his 
 whole strength and time to the spiritual service 
 
METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES. 473 
 
 of his fellow-creatures. His wife, though a Creole, 
 well born, and delicately brought up, readily con- 
 sented to this sacrifice, and cheerfully submitted 
 to her part of the discomforts and privations inse- 
 parable from an itinerant life ; for even among the 
 islands itinerancy was considered as an essential 
 part of the Methodist economy. Leaving, there- 
 fore, Mr. Warrenner in Antigua, Coke departed, 
 with Baxter and the other two brothers, to recon- 
 noitre the neighbouring islands. They were hos- 
 pitably entertained at Dominica, at St. Vincent's, 
 Nevis, and St. Kitt's; and though the commanding 
 officer would not give permission for preaching in 
 the barracks at St. Vincent's, where some religious 
 soldiers would soon have formed a society, Dr. Coke 
 thought the general prospect so encouraging that 
 he said the will of God, in respect to the appoint- 
 ment of a Missionary there, was as clear as if it 
 had been written with a sunbeam. Mr. Clarke 
 accordingly was stationed there, and Mr. Hammet 
 at St. Kitt's. 
 
 When they arrived at St. Eustatius, they found 
 that a slave, by name Harry, who had been a mem- 
 ber of the Methodist Society in America, had taken 
 to exhorting in that island, and had been silenced 
 by the governor, because the slaves were so affect- 
 ed at hearing him, that " many fell down as if 
 they were dead, and some remained in a state of 
 stupor during several hours." Sixteen persons had 
 been thrown into these fits in one night. This was 
 a case in which the governor's interference was 
 perfectly justifiable and right. The day after this 
 
474 METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES. 
 
 event, Coke and his companions landed, and wait- 
 ed upon the persons in authority. They soon found 
 that the degree of freedom which is every where 
 enjoyed under the British government, is not to be 
 found in the dominions of any other European 
 power. They were ordered to prepare their confes- 
 sion of faith and credentials, and to present them 
 to the court, and to be private in their devotions, 
 till the court had considered whether their religion 
 should be tolerated or not. The council were 
 satisfied with the confession, and Dr. Coke was 
 desired to preach before them. But it was evident 
 that the government would not permit the esta- 
 blishment of an English mission upon that island, 
 though the inhabitants were exceedingly desirous 
 of it. Dr. Coke, during a fortnight's stay, did 
 what he could towards forming such as were 
 willing into classes, and instructing them in the 
 forms of Methodism, and was laden with pre- 
 sents of sea-stores and other refreshments, when 
 he embarked from thence to pursue his voyage 
 to America. 
 
 So fair a beginning was thus made, that from that 
 time it became as regular a part of business for the 
 Conference to provide for the West-Indies, as for 
 any part of Great Britain in which societies had been 
 raised. In the autumn of 1788, the indefatigable 
 Coke (who may properly be called the Xavier of 
 Methodism) sailed a third time for the western 
 world, taking with him three missionaries intended 
 for the Columbian Islands. They were embarked 
 in that unfortunate ship, the Hankey, which has 
 
METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES. 475 
 
 been accused of importing, in a subsequent voyage, 
 the yellow fever from Bulama to the West Indies, 
 as if that pestilence were not the growth of those 
 countries. Every thing was favourable now, and the 
 missionaries succeeded so well in conciliating the 
 good will of the crew, that when they took leave of 
 them at Barbadoes, many of the men were in tears, 
 and the sailors bade them farewell with three hearty 
 cheers as the boat dropped astern. Coke with his 
 companions landed at Bridgetown, as adventurously 
 as ever knight-errant set foot upon an island with 
 his squire and his dwarf. None of the party 
 supposed that they had a single acquaintance in 
 Barbadoes. There were, however, some soldiers 
 there, who had been quartered at Kinsale in Ire- 
 land, where Mr. Pearce, one of the missionaries, 
 had preached ; he was presently recognised by a 
 Serjeant, who embraced him without ceremony; 
 and it appeared that this Serjeant and some of 
 his comrades had kept up the forms of Method- 
 ism, and were in the habit of exhorting the people, 
 in a warehouse which a friendly merchant had lent 
 them for that purpose. Before Dr. Coke could 
 wait upon this merchant, he received an invitation 
 to breakfast with him : he proved to have been 
 one of his hearers in America, where four of his 
 negroes had been baptized by the Doctor. The 
 missionaries were immediately received into his 
 house j they were encouraged by the governor, and 
 by the merchants and planters to whom they 
 were introduced. Pearce was left upon the island j 
 and Coke, having placed every thing in as favour- 
 
476 METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES. 
 
 able a train as could be wished, proceeded to St. 
 Vincent's, whither the other two missionaries had 
 preceded him, and where he was joined by Bax- 
 ter. One of the party was stationed there to assist 
 the former preacher; and Baxter and his wife wil- 
 lingly consented to take up their abode among the 
 Caribs, and endeavour at the same time to civilize 
 and to convert them. 
 
 Continuing his circuit, Dr. Coke formed a so- 
 ciety at Dominica, and finding all prosperous at 
 Antigua and St. Kitt's, visited St. Eustatius. Here 
 he found that the aspects were different. The 
 black Harry, after the Doctor's departure from 
 his former visit, interpreting the governor's prohi- 
 bition according to the letter rather than the spirit, 
 abstained indeed from preaching to his fellow-slaves, 
 but ventured to pray with them. For this offence 
 he was publicly whipped and imprisoned, and 
 then banished from the island. And an edict was 
 issued, declaring, that if any white person should 
 be found praying with others who were not of his 
 family, he should be fined fifty pieces of eight for 
 the first offence, a hundred for the second, and 
 for the third offence he should be whipped, his goods 
 confiscated, and himself banished the island. A 
 free man of colour was to receive thirty-nine 
 stripes for the first offence, and for the second to 
 be flogged and banished ; and a slave was to be 
 flogged every time he was found offending." 
 " This, I think," says Dr. Coke, " is the first in- 
 stance, known among mankind, of a persecution 
 openly avowed against religion itself. The perse- 
 
METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES. 477 
 
 cutions among the heathens were supported under 
 the pretence that the Christians brought in strange 
 gods ; those among the Roman Catholics were 
 under the pretext of the Protestants introducing 
 heresies into the church ; but this is openly and 
 avowedly against prayer, the great key to every 
 blessing." Notwithstanding this edict, and the 
 rigour with which it was enforced, so strong was 
 the desire of the poor people on this island for re- 
 ligious instruction and religious sympathy, that 
 Dr. Coke found above two hundred and fifty per- 
 sons there classed as Methodists, and baptized 
 a hundred and forty of them. He remained 
 there only one night ; but the sloop which he 
 had hired to carry him and his companions to St. 
 Kitt's, having received much damage by striking 
 against a ship, they were obliged to return ; and 
 Coke, who interpreted this accident as a plain 
 declaration of Providence, whereby he was called 
 on to bear a public testimony for Christ, imme- 
 diately hired a large room for a month. Whatever 
 danger might be incurred would fall upon himself, 
 he thought, by this proceeding ; whereas his 
 friends would have been amenable to the laws if he 
 had preached in their houses. The next day, there- 
 fore, he boldly performed service, and gave notice 
 that he intended to officiate again on the morrow. 
 But Dutch governors are not persons who will 
 suffer their authority to be set at nought with im- 
 punity ; and on the ensuing morning the Doctor 
 received a message from the governor, requiring 
 him, and two of his companions, who were specified 
 
478 METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES. 
 
 by name, to engage that they would not, publicly 
 or privately, by day or by night, preach either to 
 whites or blacks, during their stay in that island, 
 on pain of prosecution, arbitrary punishment, and 
 banishment. " We withdrew to consult," says he ; 
 " and after considering that we were favoured by 
 Providence with an open door in other islands, for 
 as many missionaries as we could spare, and that 
 God was carrying on his blessed work even in this 
 island by means of secret class-meetings ; and that 
 Divine Providence may in future redress these 
 grievances by a change of the governor, or by the 
 interference of the superior powers in Holland in 
 some other way, we gave for answer, that we 
 would obey the government ; and, having nothing 
 more at present to do in that place of tyranny, 
 oppression, and wrong, we returned to St. Kitt's, 
 blessing God for a British constitution and a 
 British government.' ' 
 
 There was in Dr. Coke's company a third mis- 
 sionary, by name Brazier, whom the governor had 
 not heard of, and who therefore was not included 
 in the mandate. He thought himself perfectly 
 justified in leaving this missionary upon the island. 
 There were times in which such an experiment 
 might have cost the contraband preacher his life ; 
 and if the governor had been as eager to persecute 
 as Coke supposed him to be, Brazier would cer- 
 tainly not have got off with a whole skin. The 
 truth seems to be, that the governor's interference 
 had in the first instance been necessary. Harry's 
 preaching was of that kind which ought not to be 
 
METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES. 479 
 
 tolerated, because it threw his hearers into fits. 
 If Dr. Coke, on his first landing, had distinctly ex- 
 pressed his disapprobation of such excesses, things 
 might possibly have taken a different turn. But 
 he had learned to regard them as the outward signs 
 and manifestations of inward grace ; and the go- 
 vernor, seeing that the black preacher was ac- 
 knowledged by him as a fellow-labourer, regarded 
 him and his companions as troublesome fanatics, 
 and treated them accordingly. And when he dis- 
 covered that Brazier had been clandestinely left 
 behind, he behaved with more temper than might 
 have been expected, in merely ordering him to 
 leave the island. A man , in power, who retained 
 something of the religious part of the old Dutch 
 character, removed the banished missionary to the 
 little island of Saba, a dependency upon St. Eus- 
 tatius, containing about three thousand inhabitants, 
 of whom one-third were whites. There was a respect- 
 able church there; but the people had been seven- 
 teen years without a minister. They received 
 Brazier with the greatest joy, and governor, 
 council, and people entreated him to take up his 
 abode among them, offering him the church, the 
 parsonage, and a sufficient maintenance. Coke 
 went there, and was delighted with the kindness 
 and simplicity of the people. He informed them 
 what the economy of the Methodists was, and 
 particularly explained to them what he called the 
 " grand and indispensable custom of changing 
 their ministers." They were willing to comply 
 with every thing; and though Brazier had been 
 
480 METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES. 
 
 ordered by the Conference to Jamaica, Dr. Coke 
 consented to leave him at Saba. But when the 
 governor of St. Eustatius knew where he was, he 
 compelled the government to dismiss him, though 
 with sorrow and reluctance on their part. 
 
 Two missionaries had been appointed to Jamaica; 
 but Coke having thus disposed of the one, left the 
 other to divide his labours between Tortola and 
 Santa Cruz, (on which little island the Danish go- 
 vernor promised him all the encouragement in his 
 power,) and proceeded to Jamaica alone, merely to 
 prepare the way. Some of the higher orders, being 
 drunk atthetime, insulted him whilehewaspreaching 
 at Kingston, and would have offered some personal 
 indignities to him, if they had not been controuled 
 by the great majority of the congregation ; but 
 on the whole he was so well received and hos- 
 pitably entertained, that he says, in honour of 
 the island, he never visited any place, either in 
 Europe or America, where Methodism had not 
 taken root, in which he received so many civilities 
 as in Jamaica. He went therefrom to America, 
 and from thence returned to England, in full per- 
 suasion that the prospects of the society, both in 
 Jamaica and the Leeward Islands, were as favour- 
 able as could be desired. 
 
 The cost of this spiritual colonization now became 
 serious; for the resources of the Connection did 
 not keep pace with its progress, and its necessarily 
 increased expenditure. The missions could not 
 be supported unless separate funds were raised for 
 the purpose ; and those funds could only be drawn 
 
 
METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES. 481 
 
 from voluntary contributions. By the request of 
 the Conference, Dr. Coke (never so happy as when 
 he was most actively employed in such service) made 
 a tour of sixteen months in the United Kingdoms, 
 preaching in behalf of the Negroes, for whom 
 these missions were especially designed ; and col- 
 lecting money by these means, and by personal 
 application to such as were likely to contribute ; 
 going himself from door to door.* The rebuffs 
 which he frequently met with, did not deter him 
 from the work which he had undertaken ; and he 
 obtained enough to discharge the whole debt 
 which had been contracted on this account, and 
 to proceed with the missions upon an extended 
 scale. In the autumn of 1790, he made a third 
 voyage to the Columbian Islands. A chapel had 
 been built at Barbadoes, during his absence, 
 capable of holding some seven hundred persons ; 
 but the hopes of those, by whom this building had 
 been directed, had been greater than their foresight. 
 Though the curate at Bridgetown, Mr. Dent, was 
 the only clergyman in all the islands who coun- 
 tenanced the Methodists, and was heartily glad at 
 receiving from them the assistance which he 
 wanted; though the governor was not unfavour- 
 
 * A captain in the navy, from whom he obtained a subscription, 
 calling upon an acquaintance of Coke's the same morning, said " Do 
 you know any thing of a little fellow who calls himself Dr. Coke, and 
 who is going about begging money for missionaries to be sent among 
 the slaves ?" — " I know him well," was the reply. " He seems," re- 
 joined the captain, w to be a heavenly-minded little devil. He coaxed 
 me out of two guineas this morning." — Drew's Life of Dr. Coke, 
 p. 588. 
 
 VOL. II. I I 
 
482 METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES. 
 
 able to them, and they had begun under such fa- 
 vourable appearances, the preacher had become 
 obnoxious : the nick-name of Hallelujahs had been 
 fixed upon his followers, and they had undergone 
 that sort of opposition, which they dignify by the 
 name of persecution. Persecution, in the true sense 
 of the word, they have since that time suffered in 
 some of the islands ; but in these instances the 
 missionary seems to have been protected by the 
 magistrates when he appealed for redress. At 
 St. Vincent's the attempt to civilize the Caribs 
 had altogether failed. This was owing to the 
 French priests at Martinico. The French mis- 
 sionaries have rendered themselves liable to the 
 heavy accusation of sacrificing the interests of 
 Christianity to the political views of their country. 
 Of this their conduct in Canada affords scandalous 
 proofs ; and on the present occasion they acted in 
 the same manner. They persuaded the Caribs, 
 who went to Martinico on one of their trading 
 visits, that the Methodists were spies, whom the 
 king of England had sent to explore their land ; and 
 as soon as they had finished their errand, they 
 would retire, and an army would be sent to con f 
 quer the country. The Caribs had regarded 
 Baxter as their father, till they were deceived by 
 litis villainous artifice. They then behaved so 
 sullenly towards him, that he thought it advisable 
 to hasten with his wife out of their power. When 
 Mrs. Baxter took leave of these poor savages, to 
 whose instruction she had vainly devoted herself, 
 she wept bitterly, and prayed that they might 
 
METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES. 488 
 
 have another call, and might not reject it as they 
 had done this. But among the other casts upon 
 the island the preachers were well received. The 
 negroes, who, in Barbadoes, were remarkably indif- 
 ferent to religious instruction, here were exceed- 
 ingly desirous of it j and even the Catholic families 
 showed favour to the missionaries, and sent for 
 Baxter to baptize their children. The prospect 
 was still more favourable at Grenada. Mr. Dent 
 had recently been presented to the living of St. 
 George's in that island ; and the governor, General 
 Matthews, requested Dr. Coke to send missionaries 
 there, saying it was his wish that the negroes 
 should be fully instructed, and there would be 
 work enough for their preachers and for the clergy 
 of the island too. 
 
 The Methodists were increasing in Antigua ; but 
 here a symptom appeared of that enthusiasm of 
 which it is so difficult for Methodism to clear 
 itself, sanctioned as it has been by Wesley. At 
 the baptism of some adults, one of them was so 
 overcome by her feelings that she fell into a swoon ; 
 and Dr. Coke, instead of regarding this as a dis- 
 order, and impressing upon his disciples the duty of 
 controuling their emotions, spoke of it as a me- 
 morable thing, and with evident satisfaction related 
 that, as she lay entranced with an enraptured 
 countenance, all she said for some time was, Hea- 
 ven ! Heaven ! Come ! Come ! It requires more 
 charity and more discrimination than the majority 
 of men possess, not to suspect either the sincerity 
 or the sanity of persons who aim at producing 
 
 ii 2 
 
484 METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES. 
 
 effects like this by their ministry, or exult in 
 them when they are produced. Not deterred by 
 his former ill success at St. Eustatius, Coke, with 
 the perseverance that characterised him in all his 
 undertakings, made a third visit there, and waited 
 upon the new governor, who had recently arrived 
 from Holland. The Dutchman, he says, received 
 him with very great rudeness indeed; but he 
 ought to have considered it as an act of courtesy 
 that he was not immediately sent off the island. 
 The Methodists there were in the habit of regularly 
 holding their class-meetings ; and notwithstanding 
 the edict* there were no fewer than eight ex- 
 torters among them. One of these persons called 
 upon the Doctor, requested him to correspond 
 with them, and promised, in the name of his fel- 
 lows, punctually to obey all the directions which 
 should be given them concerning the management 
 of the society. He told him also that many of the 
 free blacks of both sexes intended going to St. 
 Kitt's to receive the sacrament at Christmas, from 
 one of the missionaries. Here Dr. Coke met with 
 another instance, which, if he had been capable 
 of learning that lesson, might have taught him how 
 dangerous it is to excite an enthusiastic spirit of 
 religion. The person, who, on his former visits, 
 had entertained him with true hospitality, was in 
 the very depth of despair. " The only reason he 
 gave for his deplorable situation was, that the 
 Lord had very powerfully called him, time after 
 time, to preach, and he had as often resisted the 
 call, till at last he entirely lost a sense of the 
 
METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES. 485 
 
 favour of God. He seemed to have no hope left. 
 We endeavoured," the Doctor adds, " to raise his 
 drooping head, but all in vain." If this case were 
 known to the persons in office, as in all likelihood 
 it must have been, it would satisfy them that 
 they had done wisely in proscribing a system 
 which produced effects like this. The person in 
 question conceived himself to be in a state of 
 reprobation because he had not broken the laws 
 of the place wherein he lived. 
 
 By this time the alloy of Methodism had shown 
 itself in the islands. Dr. Coke commanded respect 
 there by his manners, his education, and his station 
 in life. The missionaries who followed him had 
 none of these advantages ; their poverty and their 
 peculiarities provoked contempt in those who had 
 no respect for their zeal, and who perceived all 
 that was offensive in their conduct, and all that 
 was indiscreet, but were insensible of the good 
 which these instruments were producing. Indis- 
 pensable as religion is to the well-being of every 
 society, its salutary influences are more especially 
 required in countries where the system of slavery 
 is established. If the planters understood their 
 own interest, they would see that the missionaries 
 might be made their best friends : that by their 
 means the evils of slavery might be mitigated ; and 
 that, in proportion as the slave was made a religious 
 being, he became resigned to his lot and eon- 
 tented. But one sure effect of that abominable 
 system is, that it demoralizes the masters as much 
 as it brutalizes the slaves. Men whose lives are 
 
 ii 3 
 
486 METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES. 
 
 evil willingly disbelieve the Gospel if they can ; 
 and, with the greater part of mankind, belief and 
 disbelief depend upon volition far more than is 
 generally understood. But if they cannot succeed 
 in this, they naturally hate those who preach zea- 
 lously against their habitual vices. Among the 
 causes, therefore, which soon made the Methodists 
 unpopular in all or most of the Columbian islands, 
 the first place must be assigned to that hateful 
 licentiousness, which prevails wherever slavery ex- 
 ists : something is to be allowed to a contempt for 
 the preachers ; something to the objectionable prac- 
 tices of Methodism, and to a just dislike of what 
 was offensive in its language ; and perhaps not 
 a little to the meritorious zeal which the society 
 had shown in England in favour of the abolition 
 of the Slave Trade, when that great question was 
 first agitated with such ardent benevolence on one 
 side, and such fierce repugnance on the other. 
 
 While Dr. Coke was in Antigua, Baxter was 
 assaulted at the door of his chapel by some 
 drunken persons of the higher order, who threat- 
 ened to murder him. His wife and the negroes 
 believed them to be in earnest j the cry which they 
 raised was mistaken for a cry of fire, and the whole 
 town was presently in an uproar. Baxter was in- 
 formed by the magistrates that the offenders should 
 be punished as they deserved, if he would lodge 
 an information against them. But it was thought 
 best to acknowledge a grateful sense of their pro- 
 tection, and to decline the prosecution. Shortly 
 afterwards, the chapel at St. Vincent's was broken 
 
METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES* 487 
 
 open by night, not by robbers, but by mischievous 
 and probably drunken persons, who did what mis- 
 chief they could, and, carrying away the Bible, sus- 
 pended it from the gallows ; a flagitious act, which 
 caused the magistrates to offer a large reward for 
 discovering the perpetrators. This growing ill 
 will was more openly displayed at Jamaica, where 
 a missionary had been appointed, and a chapel 
 erected in Kingston. The preacher's life had 
 been frequently endangered here by an outrageous 
 rabble ; and a person who was considered to be 
 the chief of the Methodists narrowly escaped being 
 stoned to death, and was once obliged to, disguise 
 himself in regimentals. Attempts were made to 
 pull down the chapel ; and when some of the rioters 
 were prosecuted, they were acquitted, Coke says, 
 against the clearest evidence. The most abomin- 
 able reports were raised against Hammet, the 
 preacher ; and as for Dr. Coke, he, they said, had 
 been tried in England for horse-stealing, and had 
 fled the country in order to escape from justice. 
 
 Such was the temper of the Jamaica people, 
 when the Doctor, with another missionary in his 
 company, landed at Montego Bay, in the begin- 
 ning of 1791. A recommendatory letter to a gen- 
 tleman in the neighbourhood procured them an 
 excellent dinner, but no help in their main design ; 
 and they walked the streets, " peeping and enquir- 
 ing for a place wherein to preach, in vain ;" to 
 preach out of doors in that climate while the sun 
 is up, is almost impracticable ; and at evening, the 
 only time when the slaves can attend, the heavy 
 
 11 4 
 
488 METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES* 
 
 dews render it imprudent and dangerous. Dining, 
 however, at an ordinary the next day, and stating 
 his sorrow that he was prevented from preaching 
 for want of a place, one of the company advised 
 him to apply for a large room, which had originally 
 been the church, served now for assemblies, and 
 was frequently used as a theatre. Here he preached 
 every evening during a short stay, and though a 
 few bucks clapped and encored him, he was on the 
 whole well satisfied with the attention of the con- 
 gregation*, and the respect with which he was 
 treated. But at Spanish Town and at Kingston 
 he was grossly insulted by a set of profligate 
 young men : their conduct roused in him an emo- 
 tion which he had never felt in the same degree 
 before, and which, he says, he believed was a 
 spark of the proper spirit of martyrdom ; and, 
 addressing himself to these rioters in terms of 
 just reproof, he told them that he was willing — > 
 yea, desirous to suffer martyrdom, if the kingdom 
 of Christ might be promoted thereby. The effect 
 which he says that this produced, was undoubtedly 
 assisted by his station in life, which enabled him 
 to appear upon equal terms with the proudest of 
 
 * " On the Sunday morning," says Dr. Coke (Journal, page 130), 
 « c we went to church ; but a little rain falling, the congregation consisted 
 only of half a dozen or thereabouts at the exact time of beginning j 
 on which the minister walked out ; if he had condescended to have 
 waited ten minutes longer, we should have been, I believe, about 
 twenty. The Sunday before, also, there had been no service. In some 
 of the parishes of this island there is no church, nor any divine ser- 
 vice performed, except the burial of the dead, and christenings and 
 weddings in private houses, though the livings are very lucrative. But 
 I will write no more on this subject, lest I should grow indignant." 
 
METHODISM IN THE WEST-INDIES. 489 
 
 his assailants. On another occasion, when he had 
 ended his sermon, he told these persons that he 
 and his brethren were determined to proceed, and 
 to apply to the legal authorities for justice, if such 
 insults and outrages were continued ; and if justice 
 were not to be found in Jamaica, they were sure, 
 he said, of obtaining it at home. 
 
 The affairs of Methodism in the West Indies were 
 in this state at the time of Mr. Wesley's death. 
 Fourteen preachers were stationed there, of whom 
 two came from the American branch. The num- 
 ber of persons enrolled in the connection then 
 amounted to about six thousand, of whom two- 
 thirds were negroes, and the number of white 
 persons did not exceed two hundred. A more 
 determined spirit of opposition was arising than 
 they had ever experienced in Europe, but they 
 were sure of protection from the home-govern- 
 ment, and knew that by perseverance they should 
 make their cause good. 
 
490 
 
 CHAP. XXIX. 
 
 SETTLEMENT OF THE CONFERENCE. MANNERS AND 
 
 EFFECTS OF METHODISM. 
 
 1 he year 1784 has been called the grand climac- 
 terical year of Methodism, because Wesley then 
 first arrogated to himself an episcopal power ; and 
 because in that year the legal settlement of the 
 Conference was effected, whereby provision was 
 made for the government of the society after his 
 death, as long as it should continue. 
 
 The Methodist chapels, with the preachers' 
 
 houses annexed to them, had all been conveyed to 
 
 trustees for the use of such persons as should be 
 
 appointed from time to time by John or Charles 
 
 Wesley, during their lives ; by the survivor, and 
 
 after the death of both, by the yearly Conference 
 
 of the people called Methodists, in London, Bristol, 
 
 or Leeds. A legal opinion was taken, whether the 
 
 law would recognize the Conference, unless the 
 
 precise meaning of the word were defined; the 
 
 lawyers were of opinion that it would not, and 
 
 therefore at the next meeting of that body, Mr. 
 
 Wesley was unanimously desired to draw up a deed 
 
 which should give a legal specification of the 
 
 term ; the mode of doing it being left entirely to 
 
 his discretion. The necessity for this was obvious. 
 
 " Without some authentic deed fixing the meaning 
 
 3 
 
SETTLEMENT OF THE CONFERENCE. 491 
 
 of the term, the moment I died, says he, the 
 Conference had been nothing : therefore any of 
 the proprietors of land on which our preaching 
 houses had been built might have seized them for 
 their own use, and there would have been none to 
 hinder them ; for the Conference would have been 
 nobody — a mere empty name." 
 
 His first thought was to name some ten or 
 twelve persons. On further consideration he ap- 
 pointed one hundred, believing, he says, " there 
 would be more safety in a greater number of 
 counsellors," and judging these were as many as 
 could meet without too great an expense, and 
 without leaving any circuit deprived of preachers 
 while the Conference was assembled. The hun- 
 dred persons thus nominated " being preachers 
 and expounders of God's holy Word, under the care 
 of, and in connexion with, the said John Wesley," 
 were declared to constitute the Conference, ac- 
 cording to the true intent and meaning of the 
 various deeds in which that term was used; and 
 provision was now made for continuing the suc- 
 cession and identity of this body, wherein the 
 administration of the Methodist Connection was to 
 be vested after the founder's death. They were to 
 assemble yearly at London, j Bristol, or Leeds, or 
 any other place which they might think proper to 
 appoint ; and their first act was to be, to fill up all 
 vacancies occasioned by death or other circum- 
 stances. No act was to be valid unless forty 
 members were present, provided the whole body 
 had not been reduced below that number by death, 
 
492 SETTLEMENT OF THE CONFERENCE. 
 
 or other causes. The duration of the assembly 
 should not be less than five days, nor more than 
 three weeks, but any time between those limits at 
 their discretion. They were to elect a president 
 and secretary from their own number, and the 
 president should have a double vote. Any member 
 absenting himself without leave from two succes- 
 sive conferences, and not appearing on the first 
 day of the third, forfeited his seat by that absence. 
 They had power to admit preachers and expounders 
 upon trial, to receive them into full connection, 
 and to expel any person for sufficient cause ; but 
 no person might be elected a member of their 
 body, till he had been twelve months in full con- 
 nection as a preacher. They might not appoint 
 any one to preach in any of their chapels who was 
 not a member of the Connection, nor might they 
 appoint any preacher for more than three years to 
 one place, except ordained ministers of the Church 
 of England. They might delegate any member or 
 members of their own body to act with full power 
 in Ireland, or any other parts out of the kingdom 
 of Great Britain. Whenever the Conference should 
 be reduced below the number of forty members, 
 and continue so reduced for three years, or when- 
 ever it should neglect to meet for three successive 
 years, in either of such cases the Conference should 
 be extinguished ; and the chapels and other pre- 
 mises should vest in the trustees for the time being, 
 in trust that they should appoint persons to preach 
 therein. The deed concluded with a provision 
 that nothing which it contained should be construed 
 
SETTLEMENT OF THE CONFERENCE. 493 
 
 so as to extinguish, lessen, or abridge the life 
 estate of John and Charles Wesley in any of the 
 chapels and premises. 
 
 At the time when this settlement was made, there 
 were one hundred and ninety-one preachers in full 
 connection ; they who were omitted in the list of 
 the Hundred were offended as well as disappointed ; 
 and they imputed their exclusion to Dr. Coke, 
 whom many of them regarded with jealousy be- 
 cause of the place which he deservedly held in 
 Mr. Wesley's opinion, and the conspicuous rank 
 which he filled in the society. He was grievously 
 wronged by this suspicion ; for he has declared, 
 and there can be no possible grounds for doubting 
 his veracity, that his opinion at the time was, that 
 every preacher in full connection should be a 
 member of the Conference. Wesley acted upon 
 his own judgment ; and the reasons which he 
 assigned for determining the number were satis- 
 factory. Five of the excluded preachers, who 
 thought themselves most aggrieved, sent circular 
 letters to those who were in the same case with 
 themselves, inviting them to canvass the business 
 in the ensuing Conference, and, in fact, to form a 
 regular opposition to Mr. Wesley. They had reason 
 to expect that they should be powerfully sup- 
 ported ; but when the assembly met, Wesley ex- 
 plained his motives in a manner that carried con- 
 viction with it, reproved the persons who had 
 issued the circular letters with great severity, and 
 called upon all those who agreed with him in 
 opinion to stand up ; upon which the whole Con- 
 
4<H MANNERS AND EFFECTS 
 
 ference rose, with the exception of the five mal- 
 contents. Mr. Fletcher interfered in their behalf, 
 and by his means they were induced to acknow- 
 ledge that they had sinned ; and a verbal promise, 
 according to their own account, was given them, 
 that Mr. Wesley would take measures for putting 
 them on a footing with the rest. He could only 
 mean that they would be appointed members of the 
 Conference as vacancies occurred ; and it appears 
 by their own statement also, that they had not 
 patience to wait for this, but, in the course of the 
 year, withdrew from the Connection, complaining 
 of their wrongs, talking of their indisputable rights, 
 and appealing to an original compact which had 
 no existence. On the contrary, Wesley had always 
 taken especial care to assert, as well as to exercise, 
 his authority over the society which he had raised, 
 and the preachers, whom he received as his assist- 
 ants, not his equals ; still less as persons who might 
 oppose and controul him. 
 
 Wesley prided himself upon the economy of 
 his society, and upon his management of it. It 
 was the peculiar talent, he said, which God had 
 given him. He possessed that talent beyond all 
 doubt, in a remarkable degree. The constitution 
 of Methodism, like most forms of government, had 
 arisen out of accidents and circumstances : but 
 Wesley had availed himself of these with great 
 skill, and made them subservient to his views and 
 purposes as they arose : whatever power of mind 
 was displayed in the formation of Methodism was 
 his own. In this respect he differs from those 
 
OF METHODISM. 495 
 
 monastic patriarchs, with whom he may most ob- 
 viously be compared. St. Benedict compiled his 
 rule from elder statutes, modifying them, and 
 adapting them to his own time and country. St. 
 Francis seems to have become the tool of his art- 
 ful and ambitious disciples ; and Loyola was not the 
 architect of the admirable structure which he 
 founded. But the system of Methodism was 
 Wesley's own work. The task of directing it was 
 not so difficult as might at first appear. His rank, 
 his attainments, his abilities, and his reputation, 
 secured for him so decided a superiority, that no 
 person in his own community could, with the slight- 
 est prospect of success, dispute it ; and in the lat- 
 ter years of his life, that superiority was still far- 
 ther increased by his venerable age, and the respect 
 which he had then obtained even among strangers. 
 Those who were weary of acting under his direc- 
 tion as preachers, or of observing his rules as mem- 
 bers, either withdrew, or were easily dismissed. 
 This is the great advantage which all sects enjoy. 
 They get rid of troublesome spirits and bad sub- 
 jects 5 and general society is ready to receive the 
 outcasts. 
 
 The quarterly renewal of the band and class 
 tickets afforded a ready means of ejecting unworthy 
 and disobedient members. The terms of admis- 
 sion, therefore, might well be made comprehensive ; 
 while these means of cutting short all discordance 
 were in the preacher's hands. Upon this facility 
 of admission Wesley prided himself. " One cir- 
 cumstance," says he, " is quite peculiar to the 
 
496 MANNERS AND EFFECTS 
 
 Methodists : the terms upon which any person may 
 be admitted into their society. They do not impose, 
 in order to their admission, any opinions whatever. 
 Let them hold particular or general redemption, 
 absolute or conditional decrees; let them be 
 Churchmen or Dissenters, Presbyterians or Inde- 
 pendents, it is no obstacle. Let them choose one 
 mode of worship or another, it is no bar to their 
 admission. The Presbyterian may be a Presby- 
 terian still ; the Independent or Anabaptist use his 
 own mode of worship ; so may the Quaker, and 
 none will contend with him about it. They think, 
 and let think. One condition, and one only, is 
 required, — a real desire to save their souls. Where 
 this is, it is enough ; they desire no more. They 
 lay stress upon nothing else. They ask only, Is 
 thy heart herein as my heart ? If it be, give me 
 thy hand. Is there any other society in Great 
 Britain or Ireland that is so remote from bigotry ? 
 that is so truly of a Catholic spirit ? so ready to ad- 
 mit all serious persons without distinction ? Where, 
 then, is there such another society ? in Europe ? in 
 the habitable world ? I know none. Let any man 
 show it me that can. Till then, let no one talk of 
 the bigotry of the Methodists." The propriety of 
 thus admitting persons of opposite persuasions, and 
 of bearing with the opposition which they might 
 raise, was once debated in Conference. Mr. Wesley 
 listened patiently to the discussion, and concluded 
 it by saying, " I have no more right to object to a 
 man for holding a different opinion from me, than 
 I fyave to differ with a man because he wears a wig 
 
OF METHODISM. 497 
 
 Slid I wear my own hair ; but if he takes his Wig 
 off, and begins to shake the powder about my eyes, 
 I shall consider it my duty to get quit of him . as 
 soon as possible." 
 
 Wesley, indeed, well understood the import- 
 ance of unanimity in his connection ; and even 
 before he had taken those decided steps which 
 prepared the way for a separation from the 
 Church, aimed, in many of his regulations, at 
 making the Methodists a peculiar people. For 
 this reason, he required them, like the Quakers, 
 to intermarry among themselves. This point was de- 
 termined in the first Conference, the want of such a 
 regulation having been experienced, " Many of our 
 members," it was said, " have lately married with 
 unbelievers, even with such as were wholly imawak- 
 ened ; and this has been attended with fatal conse- 
 quences. Few of these have gained the unbe* 
 lieving wife or husband. Generally, they have 
 themselves either had a heavy cross for life, or en- 
 tirely fallen back into the world." In order to pre- 
 vent such marriages, it was decreed that every 
 preacher should enforce the apostolic caution, 
 " Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers ;" 
 that whoever acted contrary to it should be ex- 
 pelled the society ; and that all persons should be 
 exhorted " to take no step in so weighty a matter 
 without consulting the most serious of their bre- 
 thren." The rule was well designed for the pre- 
 servation and increase of Methodism; but the lan- 
 guage savours strongly of that spiritual pride which 
 seetarism of every kind tends to excite and foster. 
 
 vol. ir. K K 
 
498 MANNERS AND EFFECTS 
 
 This was not the only point in which Wesley 
 imitated the Quakers. He has himself said, that, 
 having remarked among them several parts of 
 Christian practice, he had willingly adopted, with 
 some restrictions, plainness of speech and plain- 
 ness of dress. In their barbarisms of language, 
 and their superstitious rejection of common forms 
 of speech, he was too well educated and too sen- 
 sible to follow them ; neither did he recommend 
 his followers to imitate them in those little parti^ 
 cularities of dress which could answer no end but 
 that of distinguishing them from other people. " To 
 be singular," he said, " merely for singularity's sake, 
 is not the part of a Christian. I do not, therefore, 
 advise you to wear a hat of such dimensions, or a 
 coat of a particular form. Rather, in things that 
 are absolutely indifferent, humility and courtesy 
 j-equire you to conform to the customs of your 
 country ; but I advise you to imitate them in the 
 neatness and in the plainness of their apparel. In 
 this are implied two things : that your apparel be 
 cheap, far cheaper than others in your circum- 
 stances wear, or than you would wear if you knew 
 not God ; that it be grave, not gay, airy, or showy — 
 not in the point of the fashion."—" Shall I be 
 more particular ?" he pursues. " Then I exhort all 
 those who desire me to watch over their souls, wear 
 no gold, no pearls or precious stones ; use no 
 curling of hair or costly apparel, how grave soever. 
 / advise those who are able to receive this saying r 
 buy no velvet, no silks, no fine linen, no super- 
 fluities, no mere ornaments, though ever so much 
 
OF METHODISM. 499 
 
 in fashion. Wear nothing, though you have it al- 
 ready, which is of a glaring colour, or which is in 
 any kind gay, glistering, or showy ; nothing made 
 in the very height of the fashion, nothing apt to 
 attract the eyes of the bystanders. I do not ad- 
 vise women to wear rings, ear-rings, neck-laces, 
 laces (of whatever kind or colour), or ruffles, which, 
 by little and little, may shoot easily from one 
 to twelve inches deep. Neither do I advise men 
 to wear coloured waistcoats, shining stockings, 
 glittering or costly buckles or buttons, either on 
 their coats or in their sleeves, any more than gay, 
 fashionable, or expensive perukes. It is true, these 
 are little, very little things, which are not worth 
 defending ; therefore give them up, let them drop : 
 throw them away, without another word." 
 
 It was one of the band-rules that rings, ear- 
 rings, necklaces, lace, and ruffles, were not to be 
 worn ; and this rule was ordered by the first Con- 
 ference to be enforced, particularly with regard to 
 ruffles : band-tickets were not to be given to any 
 persons who had not left them off; and no exempt 
 case was to be allowed, not even of a married 
 woman : " Better one suffer than many,'* was Mr. 
 Wesley's language at that time. This injunction 
 was afterwards withdrawn ; because it was found 
 impracticable, as interfering in a manner not to be 
 borne with domestic affairs. He admitted, there- 
 fore, that " women under the yoke of unbeliev- 
 ing parents or husbands (as well as men in office) 
 might be constrained to put on gold or costly 
 apparel; and in cases of this kind," says he, 
 
 kk2 
 
500 MANNERS AND EFFECTS 
 
 " plain experience shows, that the baneful influ- 
 ence is suspended ; so that, wherever it is not our 
 choice, but our cross, it may consist with godli- 
 ness, with a meek and quiet spirit, with lowliness 
 of heart, with Christian seriousness." Women, 
 therefore, who were constrained by " self-willed, 
 unreasonable husbands or parents," to do in this re- 
 spect what otherwise they would not, were held 
 blameless, provided they used " all possible means, 
 arguments, and entreaties to be excused,", and 
 complied just " so far as they were constrained, and 
 no farther." Even in this concession, the intoler- 
 ant spirit of a reformer is betrayed ; and no scru- 
 ple was made at introducing discord into private 
 families, for the sake of an idle fancy which Wesley 
 had taken up in the days of his enthusiasm. He 
 maintained, that curling the hair, and wearing 
 gold, precious stones, and costly apparel, were 
 expressly forbidden in Scripture ; and that whoever 
 said there is no harm in these things, might as 
 well say there is- no harm in stealing or adultery ; 
 a mode of reasoning which would produce no 
 effect so surely as that of confounding all notions 
 of right and wrong. 
 
 In spite, however, of his exhortations, those of 
 his own people, who could afford it, " the very 
 people that sate under the pulpit, or by the side of 
 it," were as fashionably adorned as others of their 
 own rank. " This," said Wesley, " is a melan- 
 choly truth : I am ashamed of it, but I know not 
 how to help it. I call heaven and earth to wit- 
 ness this day, that it is not my fault. The trumpet 
 
 7 
 
OF METHODISM. 501 
 
 has not given an uncertain sound, for near fifty 
 years last past. O God, thou knowest I have 
 borne a clear and a faithful testimony. In print * 
 in preaching, in meeting the society, I have not 
 shunned to declare the whole counsel of God ; I 
 am therefore clear of the blood of those that will 
 not hear: it lies upon their own heads. I conjure 
 you all who have any regard for me, show me, be- 
 fore I go hence, that I have not laboured, even in 
 this respect, in vain, for near half a century. Let 
 me see, before I die, a Methodist congregation, 
 full as plain dressed as a Quaker congregation. 
 Only be more consistent with yourselves : let your 
 dress be cheap as well as plain, otherwise you do 
 but trifle with God, and me, and your own souls. 
 I pray let there be no costly silks among you, how 
 grave soever they may be : let there be no Quaker 
 linen, proverbially so called for its exquisite fine- 
 ness ; no Brussels lace ; no elephantine hats or 
 bonnets, — those scandals of female modesty. Be 
 all of a piece, dressed from head to foot as per- 
 sons professing godliness ; professing to do every 
 thing, small and great, with the single view of 
 pleasing God." 
 
 Whitefield, in the early part of his course, had 
 fallen into an error of this kind ; and, for about a 
 year, he says, thought that " Christianity re- 
 quired him to go nasty." But Wesley was always 
 scrupulously neat in his person, and enforced upon 
 his followers the necessity of personal neatness. 
 Toward the end of his life, he publicly declared 
 •his regret that he had not made the Methodists 
 kk3 
 
502 MANNERS AND EFFECTS 
 
 distinguish themselves by a peculiar costume. ' " I 
 might have been as firm," he says, " (and I now 
 see it would have been far better) as either the 
 people called Quakers, or the Moravian brethren : 
 I might have said, ? this is our manner of dress, 
 which we know is both scriptural and rational. If 
 you join with us, you are to dress as we do ; but 
 you need not join us unless you please.' But, 
 alas ! the time is now past." Perhaps, if he had 
 attempted this early in his career, he might have 
 succeeded, as well as George Fox ; but if, like 
 George Fox, he had taken for his standard the 
 common dress of grave persons, in the middle 
 rank of life, he would have perpetuated a fashion 
 more graceless than that of Quakerism in its rigour. 
 The Quakers are not desirous of increasing their 
 numbers by proselytes ; if they were, they would 
 find an inconvenience in their costuine : instead of 
 making the entrance easy and imperceptible, so 
 that he who enters scarcely knows when he has 
 passed the line, it places a Rubicon in the way. 
 It has the farther inconvenience, and this they 
 feel and lament, that the desire of getting rid of 
 so peculiar a garb, is one inducement for young 
 members to withdraw from the sect. The latter 
 objection Wesley might have avoided,, by choosing 
 a habit at onCe graceful and convenient : but the 
 former would have greatly impeded his success ; 
 and he himself, who compassed sea and land to 
 gain proselytes, w r ould soon have been impatient 
 of such an impediment. Upon his wealthier fol- 
 lowers, his exhortations upon this subject produced 
 
OF METHODISM. 503 
 
 little or no effect; but, in the middle and lower 
 classes, of which the great majority consisted, the 
 women took to a mode of dress less formal than 
 jthat of the Quakers, but almost as plain, and 
 by which they were easily distinguished.* With 
 the men he was less successful: it was asked, in 
 the Conference of 1782, if it were well for the 
 preachers to powder their hair, and to wear arti- 
 ficial curls ? and the answer merely said, that " to 
 abstain from both is the more excellent way." A 
 direct prohibition was not thought advisable, be- 
 cause it would not have been willingly obeyed. 
 
 Cards, dancing, and the theatres were, of course, 
 forbidden to his disciples. Not contented with 
 such reasons as are valid or plausible for the pro- 
 hibition, they have collected superstitious anec- 
 dotes upon these subjects ; and, in a spirit as pre- 
 sumptuous as it is uncharitable, have recorded 
 tales of sudden death, as instances of God's judge- 
 ment upon card-players and dancing-masters ! In- 
 nocent was a word which Wesley would never 
 
 * In one of his Magazines, Wesley published an extract from a tract 
 called the Refined Courtier ; and the following passage was loudly com- 
 plained of, as inconsistent with the opinions upon this subject which he 
 had repeatedly professed : " Let every one, when he appears in public, 
 be decently clothed, according to his age, and the custom of the place 
 where he lives : he that does otherwise seems to affect singularity. Nor 
 is it sufficient that our garment be made of good cloth ; but we should 
 constrain ourselves to follow the garb where we reside, seeing custom 
 is the law and standard of decency in all things of this nature." He 
 paraphrases this in a subsequent number, in order to vindicate it ; says 
 that the author is speaking of people of rank ; and, that he may get rid 
 of the accusation with a jest, exhorts all lords of the bed-chamber, and 
 maids of honour, to follow the advice. " The whole," says he, " may 
 bear a sound construction, nor does it contradict any thing which I 
 have said or written." 
 
 K K 4 
 
604f MANNERS AND EFFECTS * 
 
 suffer to be applied to any kind of pastime ; for he 
 had set his face against all diversions of any kind, 
 and would not even allow the children at school to 
 play. " Those things we have falsely called inno- 
 cent," says one of his correspondents, " are the 
 right eye to be plucked out. If you were besieg- 
 ing strong enemies, and had no hope of conquering 
 but by starving them, would it be innocent now 
 and then to throw them a little bread ?" Wesley 
 was in nothing more erroneous than in judging of 
 others by himself, and requiring from them a con- 
 stant attention to spiritual things, and that unre- 
 mitting stretch of the faculties, which, to him, was 
 become habitual. If he never flagged, it was be- 
 cause he was blessed, above all men, wit!h a conti- 
 nual elasticity of spirits ; because the strong motive 
 of ambition was always acting upon him ; because 
 perpetual change of place kept his mind and body 
 for ever on the alert; and because, wherever he 
 went, his presence excited a stir among strangers, 
 and made a festival among his friends. Daily 
 change of scene and of society, with a life of ac- 
 tivity and exertion, kept him in hilarity as well as 
 health. But it was Unreasonable to expect that 
 his followers should have the same happy tem- 
 perament. 
 
 Bishop Hacket's happy motto was, " Serve God, 
 and be cheerful."-—" Be serious," was one of Wes- 
 ley's favourite injunctions. " Be serious •" it was 
 said in the first Conference. " Let your motto be, 
 « Holiness to the Lord.' Avoid all lightness, as 
 you would avoid hell-fire ; and trifling, as you 
 
OF METHODISM. 50& 
 
 would cursing and swearing. Touch no woman : 
 be as loving as you will, but the custom of the 
 country is nothing to us/' * When the two 
 brothers, John and Charles, were in the first stage 
 of their enthusiasm, they used to spend part of the 
 Sabbath in walking in the fields, and singing 
 psalms. One Sunday, when they were beginning 
 to set the stave, a sense of the ridiculous situation 
 came upon Charles, and he burst into a loud 
 laughter. " I asked him," says John, " if he was 
 distracted, and began to be very angry, and pre- 
 sently after to laugh as loud as he. Nor could we 
 possibly refrain, though we were ready to tear our- 
 selves in pieces, but were forced to go home, with- 
 out singing another line." Hysterical laughter, 
 and that laughter which is as contagious as the act 
 of yawning, when the company are in tune for it, 
 Wesley believed to be the work of the devil, — one 
 of tfre many points in which the parallel holds 
 good between the enthusiasm of the Methodists 
 and of the Papists, f 
 
 * This passage will not be found in the minutes of the Conference. 
 It is given by Mr. Myles, in his Chronological History of the Methodists, 
 (p. 31. 3d edition,) as a minute relative to practice. This authority will 
 not be questioned, Mr. Myles being a travelling preacher himself, and 
 a distinguished member of the Conference. 
 
 f There is a grand diatribe of St. Pachomius against laughing. The 
 beatified Jordan, second general of the Dominicans, treated an hyste- 
 rical affection of this kind with a degree of prudence and practical wis- 
 dom, not often to be found in the life of a Romish saint. " Cum idem 
 magister duceret secum multos novitios, quos receperat in quodam loco, ubi 
 nonerat conventus ; accidit quod in quodam hospitio cum Completorium 
 cum eis fy aliis suis dicer et, unus ccepit rider e ; et alii hoc videntes similiter 
 fortiter inceperunt ridere. Quidem autem de sociis magistri incepit eos 
 per signa compescere ; at ilk magis ac magis ridebant. Tunc dimisso 
 
506 MANNERS AND EFFECTS 
 
 He advised his preachers not to converse with 
 any person more than an hour at a time ; in general 
 to fix the end of every conversation before they 
 began ; to plan it before-hand ; to pray before and 
 after it, and to watch and pray during the time. 
 In the same spirit of a monastic legislator also, but 
 to a more practicable and useful end, he exhorted 
 them to watch against what he called the lust of 
 finishing ; to "mortify which, he and his companions 
 at Oxford, he said, frequently broke off* writing 
 in the middle of a sentence, if not in the middle 
 of a word, especially the moment they heard the 
 chapel bell ring. " If nature," said he, " re- 
 claimed, we remembered the word of the heathen 
 
 Completorio, et dicto benedicite, incepit magister dicere illi socio suo, Fra- 
 ter, quis fecit vos magistrum novitiorum nostrorum ? Quid pertinet ad 
 vos eos corrigere ? Et conversus ad novitios dixit, carissimi ridete fortiter> 
 et non dimittatis propter frairem istum; ego do vobi$ licentiam. Et vere 
 debetis gaudere et rider e, quia exivistis de car cere diaboli etfracta sunt 
 dura vinculi illius, quibus multis annis tcnuit vos ligalos. Ridete ergo, 
 carissimi, ridete. At illi in his verbis consolali sunt inanimo; et post 
 ridere dissolute non potuerunt." Acta Sanctorum, 15 Feb. p. 754. 
 
 * St. David accustomed his monks to the same kind of alert disci- 
 pline : if any one heard the bell ring while he was engaged in writing,, 
 he instantly left off, though it might be in the middle of a letter. 
 Veniente autem vespera nolce sonitus audiebatur, et quisque studium suum 
 deserebat, et ad eommunitatem veniebat. Si vero in auribus alicujus 
 resonabat scripta tunc Uteres apice vel etiam dimidia litera earn incom~ 
 pletam dimittebat, et ad cornmunem locum conveniebat cum silent io. — 
 Acta Sanctorum, March 1st, Vol. i. p. 46. 
 
 Stanihurst, in his description of Ireland, relates an instance of this 
 in " an holie and learned abbot called Kanicus," who " was wholly 
 wedded to his book and to devotion ; wherein he continued so painful 
 and diligent, as being on a certain time penning a serious matter, and 
 having not fully drawn the fourth vocal, the abbey-bell ting'd to 
 assemble the convent to some spiritual exercise ; to which he so 
 hastened, as he left the letter in semi-cirde-wise unfinished, until he 
 returned back to his book." 
 
OF METHODISM. 507 
 
 ejicienda est hcec mollities animi." Could his rules 
 have been enforced like those of his kindred spirits 
 in the days of papal dominion, he also would have 
 had his followers regular as clock-work, and as 
 obedient, as uniform, and as artificial as they could 
 have been made by the institutions of the Chinese 
 empire, or the monastery of La Trappe. This was 
 not possible, because obedience was a matter of 
 choice : his disciples conformed no farther than 
 they thought good ; dismissal was the only punish- 
 ment which he could inflict, and it was always in 
 their power to withdraw from the Connection. 
 Even his establishment at Kingswood failed of the 
 effect which he had expected from it, though 
 authority was not wanting there ; because the 
 system was too rigorous and too monastic for the 
 age and country. The plan of making it a general 
 school for the society was relinquished ; but it was 
 continued for the sons of the preachers, and be^ 
 came one of those objects for which the Conference 
 regularly provided at their annual meeting. In the 
 year I766 he delivered over the management of it 
 to stewards on whom he could depend : " So I 
 have cast," said he, " a heavy load off my shoulders ; 
 blessed be God for able and faithful men who will 
 do his work without any .temporal reward,-" The 
 superintendence he sjtill retained ; and it was a fre- 
 quent cause of vexation to him. Maids, masters, 
 and boys, were refractory, sometimes the one, 
 sometimes the other, sometimes all together, so 
 that he talked of letting the burthen drop. On 
 one occasion, he says, " Having told my whole 
 
508 MANNERS AND EFFECTS 
 
 mind to the masters and servants, I spoke to the 
 children in a far stronger manner than ever I did 
 before. I will kill or cure. I will have one or the 
 other, — a Christian school, or none at all." But 
 the necessity of such an asylum induced him to 
 persevere in it ; and it was evidently, with all the 
 gross errors of its plan, and all the trouble and 
 chagrin which it occasioned, a favourite institution 
 with the founder. " Trevecca," said he, " is 
 much more to Lady Huntingdon than Kingswood 
 is to me. I mixes with every thing. It is my 
 college, my masters, raj/ students. I do not speak 
 so of this school. It is not mine, but the Lord's." , 
 Looking upon himself, however, as the vicegerent, 
 the complacency with which he regarded the 
 design, made amends to him for the frequent dis- 
 appointment of his hopes. " Every man of sense," 
 he said, " who read the rules, might conclude that 
 a school so conducted by men of piety and under- 
 standing would exceed any other school or academy 
 in Great Britain or Ireland." And his amazing 
 credulity whenever a work of grace was announced 
 among the boys, was proof against repeated ex- 
 perience, as well as common sense. The boys 
 were taken to see a corpse one day, and, while 
 the impression was fresh upon them, they were 
 lectured upon the occasion, and made to join in a 
 hymn upon death. Some of them being very 
 much affected, they were told that those who were 
 resolved to serve God might go and pray together ; 
 and, accordingly, fifteen of them went, and, in 
 Wesley's language, " continued wrestling with 
 
OF METHODISM. 50$ 
 
 God, with strong cries and tears," till their bed- . 
 time. Wesley happened to be upon the spot. 
 The excitement was kept up day after day, by 
 what he calls " strong exhortations," and many 
 gave in their names to him, being resolved, they 
 said, to serve God. It was a wonder that the 
 boys were not driven mad by the conduct of their 
 instructors. These insane persons urged them 
 never to rest till they had obtained a clear sense 
 of the pardoning love of God. This advice they 
 gave them severally, as well as collectively ; and 
 some of the poor children actually agreed " that 
 they would not sleep till God revealed himself to 
 them, and they had found peace ! The scene which 
 ensued was worthy of Bedlam, and might fairly 
 have entitled the promoters to a place there. One 
 of the masters, rinding that they had risen from 
 bed, and were hard at prayer, some half-dressed 
 and some almost naked, went and prayed and 
 sung with them, and then ordered them to bed. 
 It was impossible that they could sleep in such a 
 state of delirium ; they rose again, and went to the 
 same work ; and being again ordered to bed, again 
 stole out, one after another, till, when it was near 
 mid-night, they were all at prayer again. The maids 
 caught the madness, and were upon their knees 
 with the children. This continued all night ; and 
 maids and boys went on raving and praying through 
 the next day, till, one after another, they every 
 one fancied at last, that they felt their justification! 
 " In the evening all the maids, and many of the 
 boys, not having been used to so long and violent 
 
510 MANNERS AND EFFECTS 
 
 speaking, (for this had lasted from Tuesday till 
 Saturday !) were worn out as to bodily strength, 
 and so hoarse, that they were scarce able to speak." 
 But it was added that they were " strong in the 
 Spirit, full of love, and of joy and peace in be- 
 lieving." Most of them were admitted to the 
 Lord's Supper the next day, for the first time : 
 and Wesley inserted the whole monstrous account, 
 with all its details, in his journal ; and, in a letter 
 written at the time, affirms that God had sent a 
 shower of grace upon the children ! " Thirteen," 
 he says, " found peace with God, and four or five 
 of them were some of the smallest there, not 
 above seven or eight years old !" Twelve months 
 afterwards, there' is this notable entry in his 
 journal : " I spent an hour among our children at 
 Kingswood. It is strange ! How long shall we 
 be constrained to weave Penelope's web ? What 
 is become of the wonderful work of grace which 
 God wrought in them last September ? It is gone ! 
 It is lost! It is vanished away! There is scarce 
 any trace of it remaining ! — Then .we must begin 
 again ; and in due time we 1 shall reap, if we faint 
 not." On this subject he was incapable of deriving 
 instruction from experience. 
 
 Neither did f Wesley ever discover the extreme 
 danger of exciting an inflammatory state of de- 
 votional feeling. His system, on the contrary, 
 enjoined' a perpetual course of stimulants, and 
 lest the watch-nights and the love-feasts, with the 
 ordinary means of class-meetings and band-meet- 
 ings, should be insufficient, he borrowed from the 
 
 * 
 
OF METHODISM. 511 
 
 Puritans one of the most perilous practices that 
 ever was devised by enthusiasm ; the entering into a 
 covenant, in which the devotee promises and vows 
 to the " most dreadful God," (beginning the ad- 
 dress with that dreadful appellation!) to become his 
 covenant servant; and, giving up himself, body and 
 soul, to his service, to observe all his laws, and obey 
 him before all others, " and this to the death !" 
 Mr. Wesley may perhaps have been prejudiced in 
 favour of this practice, because he found it recom- 
 mended by the non-conformist Richard Allein, 
 whose works had been published by his maternal 
 grandfather, Dr. Annesley j so that he had pro- 
 bably been taught to respect the author in his 
 youth. In the year 1755, he first recommended 
 this covenant ; and, after explaining the subject to 
 his London congregation during several successive 
 days, he assembled as many as were willing to 
 enter into the engagement, at the French church 
 in Spitalfields, and read to them the tremendous 
 formula, to which eighteen hundred persons sig- 
 nified their assent by standing up. " Such a 
 night," he says, " I scarce ever saw before : surely 
 the fruit of it shall remain for ever !" From that 
 time it has been the practice among the Methodists, 
 to renew the covenant annually, generally on the first 
 night of the new year, or of the Sunday following. 
 They are exhorted to make it not only in hearty but 
 in word ; not only in word, but in writing ; and to 
 spread the writing with all possible reverence be- 
 fore the Lord, as if they would present it to him 
 as their act and deed, and then to set their hands 
 
512 MANNERS AND EFFECTS 
 
 to it. It is said, that some persons, from a fana- 
 tical and frightful notion of ma'king the covenant 
 perfect on their part, have signed it with their own 
 blood! 
 
 A practice like this, highly reprehensible as it 
 would always be, might be comparatively harmless, 
 if absolution were a part of the methodistic eco- 
 nomy, as well as confession ; and if the distinction 
 between venial and deadly sins were admitted, or 
 if things, innocent in themselves, were not con- 
 sidered sinful in their morality. The rules of a 
 monastic order, however austere, are observed in 
 the convent, because there exists an authority 
 which can compel the observance, and punish any 
 disobedience; moreover, all opportunities of infrac- 
 tion or of temptation are, as much as possible, pre- 
 cluded there, and the discipline is regularly and con- 
 stantly enforced. But they who take the method- 
 istic covenant, have no keeper except their own 
 conscience ; that, too, in a state of diseased irrita- 
 bility, often unable to prevent them from lapsing 
 into offences, but sure to exaggerate the most 
 trifling fault, and to avenge even imaginary guilt 
 with real anguish. The struggle which such an 
 engagement is but too likely to produce, may 
 well be imagined ; nor can its consequences be 
 doubtful : some would have strength of nerves 
 enough to succeed in stifling their conscience, or, 
 at least, in keeping it down; and they. would 
 throw off all religion as burdensome, because they 
 had taken upon themselves a yoke too heavy to be 
 borne : others would lose their senses. 
 
OF METHODISM. 513 
 
 Methodism has sometimes been the cure of 
 madness, and has frequently changed the type of 
 the disease, and mitigated its evils. Sometimes it 
 has obtained credit by curing the malady which it 
 caused ; but its remedial powers are not always 
 able to restore the patient, and overstrained feel- 
 ings have ended in confirmed insanity or in death. 
 When Wesley instructed his preachers that they 
 should throw men into strong terror and fear, and 
 strive to make them inconsolable, he did not con- 
 sider that all constitutions were not strong enough 
 to stand this moral salivation. The language of 
 his own sermons was sometimes well calculated to 
 produce this effect. " Mine and your desert," 
 said he to his hearers, " is hell : and it is mere 
 mercy, free undeserved mercy, that *we are not now 
 in unquenchable fire." — " The natural man," 
 said he, " lies in the valley of the shadow of 
 death. Having no inlets for the knowledge of 
 spiritual things, all the avenues of his soul being 
 shut up, he is in gross stupid ignorance of what- 
 ever he is most concerned to know. He sees not 
 that he stands on the edge of the pit ; therefore he 
 fears it not : he has not understanding enough to 
 fear. He satisfies himself by saying, God is mer- 
 ciful ; confounding and swallowing up at once, in 
 that unwieldy idea of mercy, all his holiness and 
 essential hatred of sin — all his justice, wisdom, 
 and truth. God touches him, and now first he 
 discovers his real state. Horrid light breaks 
 in upon his soul — such light as may be con- 
 ceived to gleam from the bottomless pit, from 
 
 VOL. II. L L 
 
5 14 MANNERS AND EFFECTS 
 
 the lowest deep, from a lake of fire burning with 
 brimstone." The effect of such sulphurous language 
 may be easily conceived, especially when it was en- 
 forced by his manner of addressing himself personal- 
 ly to every individual who chose to apply it to him- 
 self : " Art thou thoroughly convinced that thou 
 deservest everlasting damnation ? Would God do 
 thee any wrong if he commanded the earth to 
 open and swallow thee up ? — if thou wert now to 
 go down into the pit — into the fire that never 
 shall be quenched ?" 
 
 The manner in which he insisted upon the neces- 
 sity of the new birth, was especially dangerous : 
 without this he affirmed that there could be no 
 salvation. " To say that ye cannot be born 
 again," said he, " that there is no new birth 
 but in baptism, is to seal you all under damnation 
 — to consign you to hell, without help, without 
 hope. Thousands do really believe that they have 
 found a broad way which leadeth not to destruction, 
 ' What danger, (say they,) can a woman be in, 
 that is so harmless and so virtuous ? What fear is 
 there that so honest & man, one of so strict morality 
 should miss of heaven? Especially if, over and 
 above all this, they constantly attend on the church 
 and sacrament.' One of these will ask with all 
 assurance, * What ! shall I not do as well as my 
 neighbours?' Yes ; as well as your unholy neigh- 
 bours ; as well as your neighbours that die in their 
 sins ; for you will all drop into the pit together, 
 into the nethermost hell . You will all lie together 
 in the lake of fire, « the lake of fire burning with 
 
OF METHODISM. 515 
 
 brimstone.* Then at length you will see (but 
 God grant you may see it before !) the necessity of 
 holiness in order to glory, and, consequently, of 
 the new birth ; since none can be holy, except he 
 be born again." And he inveighed bitterly 
 against all who preached any doctrine short of this. 
 " Where lies the uncharitableness," he asked; "on 
 my side, or on yours ? I say he may be born again, 
 and so become an heir of salvation ; you say he 
 cannot be born again ; and, if so, he must inevi- 
 tably perish : so you utterly block up his way to 
 salvation, and send him to hell, out of mere cha- 
 rity." — " They who do not teach men to walk in 
 the narrow way, — who encourage the easy, care- 
 less, harmless, useless creature, the man who suffers 
 no reproach for righteousness sake, to imagine he 
 is in the way to heaven ; these are false prophets 
 in the highest sense of the word ; these are traitors 
 both to God and man ; these are no other than the 
 first-born of Satan, and the eldest sons of Apollyon 
 the destroyer. These are above the rank of ordi- 
 nary cut-throats ; for they murder the souls of men. 
 They are continually peopling the realms of night ; 
 and, whenever they follow the poor souls whom 
 they have destroyed, hell shall be moved from 
 beneath to meet them at their coming." 
 
 The effect of these violent discourses was aided 
 by the injudicious language concerning good 
 works, into which Wesley was sometimes hurried, 
 in opposition even to his own calmer judgment 
 upon that contested point. " If you had done no 
 harm to any man," said he, " if you had abstained 
 
 ll2 
 
516 MANNERS AND EFFECTS 
 
 from all wilful sin, if you had done all the good 
 you possibly could to all men, and constantly at- 
 tended all the ordinances of God, all this will not 
 keep you from hell, except you be born again." And 
 he attempted to prove, by a syllogism, that no 
 works done before justification are good, because 
 they are not done as God hath willed and com- 
 manded them to be done. " Wherewithal,'* said he, 
 "shalla sinful man atone for any the least of his sins? 
 With his own Works? — Were they ever so many or 
 holy, they are not his own but God's. But indeed 
 they are all unholy and sinful themselves; so that 
 every one of them needs a fresh atonement." — " If 
 thou couldst do all things well; if from this very 
 hour till death thou couldst perform perfect un- 
 interrupted obedience, even this would not atone 
 for what is past. Yea, the present and the future 
 obedience of all the men upon earth, and all the 
 angels in Heaven, would never make satisfaction 
 to the justice of God for one single sin." Wesley 
 has censured the error of reposing in what he calls 
 the unwieldy idea of God's mercy, — is such an 
 idea of his justice more tenable ? If such notions 
 were well founded, whereon would the value of a 
 good conscience consist? — or why should we have 
 been taught and commanded, when we pray, to say 
 — " forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them 
 that trespass against us." 
 
 These were not Wesley's deliberate opinions. 
 He held a saner doctrine *, and the avowal of that 
 
 * It was asked in the second Conference — Q. 9. * How can we 
 maintain that all works done before we have a sense of the pardoning, 
 
OF METHODISM^. 5 IX 
 
 doctrine was what drew upon him such loads of 
 slanderous abuse from the Ultra-Calvinists. Yet he 
 was led to these inconsistencies by the course of his 
 preaching, and the desire of emptying men of their 
 righteousness, as he called it. And if he were thus 
 indiscrete, what was to be expected from his lay 
 preachers, especially from those who were at the 
 same time in the heat of their enthusiasm, and the 
 plenitude of their ignorance? The overstrained 
 feelings which were thus excited, and the rigid 
 doctrine which was preached, tended to produce 
 two opposite extremes of evil. Many would be- 
 come what, in puritanical language, is called back- 
 sliders, and still more would settle into all the 
 hypocritical formalities of puritanism. " Despise 
 not a profession of holiness, says Osborn, because 
 it may be true : but have a care how you trust it, 
 for fear it should be false 1" 
 
 love of God, are sin; and as such, an abomination to him ? A. The 
 works of him who has heard the Gospel, and does not believe, are not 
 done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done. And yet 
 we know not how to say, that they are an abomination to the Lord, 
 in him who feareth God, and from that principle does the best he can. 
 — Q. 10. Seeing there is so much difficulty in this subject, can we deal 
 too tenderly with them that oppose us ? A. We cannot." 
 
 Dr. Hales, Rector of Killasandra, in Ireland, happened to tell 
 Mr. Wesley, that when Bishop Chevenix, (of Waterford,) in his old age, 
 was congratulated on recovering from a fever, the Bishop replied, " I 
 believe I am not long for this world. I have lost all relish for what 
 formerly gave me pleasure; even my books no longer entertain me- 
 There is nothing sticks by me but the recollection of what little good I 
 may have done." One of Mr. Wesley's preachers, who was present, 
 exclaimed at this, " Oh the vain man, boasting of his good works !" 
 Dr. Hales vindicated the good old bishop, and Mr. Wesley silenced the 
 preacher by saying, " Yes, Dr. Hales is right : there is indeed grea* 
 comfort in the calm remembrance of a life well spent.'* 
 
 L l3 
 
518 MANNERS AND EFFECTS 
 
 The tendency to produce mock humility and 
 spiritual pride, is one of the evil effects of Method- 
 ism. It is chargeable also with leading to bigotry, 
 illiberal manners, confined knowledge, and uncha- 
 ritable superstition. In its insolent language, all 
 unawakened persons, that is to say, all except 
 themselves, or such graduated professors in other 
 evangelical sects as they are pleased to admit ad 
 eundem, are contemptuously styled unbelievers. 
 Wesley could not communicate to his followers 
 his own catholic charity ; indeed, the doctrine 
 which he held forth was not always consistent with 
 his own better feelings. Still less was he able to 
 impart that winning deportment, which arose, in 
 him, from the benignity of his disposition, and 
 which no Jesuit ever possessed in so consum- 
 mate a degree by art, as he by nature. The 
 circle to which he would have confined their 
 reading w 7 as narrow enough ; his own works, and 
 his own series of abridgements, would have con- 
 stituted the main part of a Methodist's library. 
 But in this respect the zeal of the pupils exceeded 
 that of the master, and Wesley actually gave offence 
 by printing Prior's Henry and Emma in his Ma- 
 gazine. So many remonstrances were made to 
 him upon this occasion, that he found it necessary, 
 in a subsequent number, to vindicate himselfj by 
 urging that there was nothing in the poem con- 
 trary to religion, nothing which could offend the 
 chastest ear ; that many truly religious men and 
 women had read it and profited thereby ; that it 
 was one of the finest poems in the language, both 
 
OF METHODISM. 519 
 
 for expression and sentiment ; and that whoever 
 could read it without tears must have a stupid un- 
 feeling heart. However, he concluded, I do not 
 know that any thing of the same kind will appear 
 in any of the following Magazines." 
 
 In proportion as Methodism obtained ground 
 among the educated classes, its direct effects were 
 evil. It narrowed their views and feelings ; bur- 
 thened them with forms ; restricted them from re- 
 creations which keep the mind in health ; discou- 
 raged, if it did not absolutely prohibit, accomplish- 
 ments that give a grace to life ; separated them from 
 general society ; substituted a sectarian in the place 
 of a catholic spirit ; and, by alienating them from the 
 national church, weakened the strongest cement 
 of social order, and loosened the ties whereby men 
 are bound to their native land. It carried dis- 
 union and discord into private life, breaking up 
 families and friendships. The sooner you weaned 
 your affections from those who, not being awakened, 
 were of course in the way to perdition — the sooner 
 the sheep withdrew from the goats, the better. 
 Upon this head the monks have not been more re- 
 morseless than the Methodists. * Wesley has said in 
 
 * What an old writer says of the Independents in the time of the 
 Commonwealth, is perfectly applicable to this worst part of Methodism. 
 " They take all other Christians to be heathens. These are those great 
 pretenders to the Spirit, into whose party does the vilest person living 
 no sooner adscribe himself, but he is ipso facto dubbed a saint, hallowed 
 and dear to God. These are the confidents who can design the minute> 
 the place, and the means of their conversion: — a schism full of spi- 
 ritual disdain, incharity, and high imposture, if any such there be on 
 earth." —A Character of England. Scott's Somers's Tracts, vol. vii. 
 
 p. 180. 
 
 Ll4 
 
520 MANNERS AND EFFECTS 
 
 one of his sermons that, how frequently parents should 
 converse with their children when they are grown 
 up, is to be determined by Christian prudence. 
 " This also," says he, " will determine how long 
 it is expedient for children, if it be at their own 
 choice, to remain with their parents. In general, 
 if they do not fear God, you should leave them as 
 soon as is convenient. But, wherever you are, take 
 care (if it be in your power) that they do not want 
 the necessaries or conveniences of life. As for 
 all other relations, even brothers or sisters, if they 
 are of the world, you are under no obligation to be 
 intimate with them : you may be civil and friendly 
 at a distance." What infinite domestic unhappi- 
 ness must this abominable spirit have occasioned ! 
 
 Mr. Wesley's notions concerning education must 
 also have done great evil. No man was ever more 
 thoroughly ignorant of the nature of children. 
 "Break their wills betimes," he says: " begin this 
 work before they can run alone, before they can 
 speak plain, perhaps before they can speak at all. 
 Whatever pains it costs, break the will if you 
 would not damn the child. Let a child from a 
 year old be taught to fear the rod and to cry softly ; 
 from that age make him do as he is bid 5 if you 
 whip him ten times running to effect it. If you 
 spare the rod you spoil the child. If you do not 
 conquer, you ruin him. Break his will now, and 
 his soul shall live, and he will probably bless you 
 to all eternity." He exhorts parents never to 
 commend their children for any thing ; and says, 
 il that in particular they should labour to convince 
 
OF METHODISM. 521 
 
 them of atheism, and show them that they do not 
 know God, love him, delight in him, or enjoy him, 
 any more than do the beasts that perish !" If Wesley 
 had been a father himself, he would have known 
 that children are more easily governed by love 
 than by fear. There is no subject, that of govern- 
 ment excepted, upon which so many impracticable 
 or injurious systems have been sent into the world, 
 as that of education ; and, among bad systems, that 
 of Wesley is one of the very worst. 
 
 The rigid doctrine which he preached concern- 
 ing riches, being only one degree more reasonable 
 than that of St. Francis, prevented Methodism 
 from extending itself as it otherwise might have 
 done, among those classes where these notions 
 would have been acted upon by zealous mothers. 
 When Wesley considered the prodigious increase 
 of his society, " from two or three poor people, to 
 hundreds, to thousands, to myriads," he affirmed 
 that such an event, considered in all its circum- 
 stances, had not been seen upon earth since the time 
 that St. John went to Abraham's bosom. But he 
 perceived where the principle of decay was to be 
 found. " Methodism," says he, " is only plain 
 scriptural religion guarded by a few prudential 
 regulations. The essence of it is holiness of heart 
 and life : the circumstantials all point to this ; and, 
 as long as they are joined together in the people 
 called Methodists, no weapon formed against them 
 shall prosper. But if ever the circumstantial parts 
 are despised, the essential will soon be lost ; and 
 if ever the essential parts should evaporate, what 
 
522 MANNERS AND EFFECTS 
 
 remains will be dung and dross. I fear, wherever 
 riches have increased, the essence of religion has 
 decreased in the same proportion. Therefore I 
 do not see how it is possible, in the nature of things, 
 for any revival of true religion to continue long. 
 For religion must necessarily produce both industry 
 and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. 
 But as riches increase so will pride, anger, and 
 love of the world in all its branches. How then 
 is it possible that Methodism, that is, a religion of 
 the heart, though it flourishes now as a green bay- 
 tree, should continue in this state ? For the Me- 
 thodists in every place grow diligent and frugal ; 
 consequently they increase in goods. Hence they 
 proportionably increase in pride, in anger, in the 
 desire of the fleshy the desire of the eyes, and the 
 pride of life. So, although the form of religion 
 remains, the spirit is swiftly vanishing away. Is 
 there no way to prevent this- — this continual decay 
 of pure religion ? We ought not to prevent people 
 from being diligent and frugal ; we must exhort all 
 Christians to gain all they can, and to save all they 
 can ; that is, in effect, to grow rich. What way, 
 then, can we take, that our money may not sink us 
 to the nethermost hell ? There is one way, and 
 there is no other under heaven. If those who gain 
 all they can, and save all they can, will likewise 
 give all they can, then the more they gain the more 
 they will grow in grace, and the more treasure 
 they will lay up in heaven." 
 
 Upon this subject Wesley's opinions were in- 
 consistent with the existing order of society. 
 10 
 
OF METHODISM. 3%$ 
 
 " Every man," he said, " ought to provide the 
 plain necessaries of life for his wife and children, 
 and to put them into a capacity of providing these 
 for themselves when he is gone ; I say, these — the 
 plain necessaries of life, not delicacies, not super- 
 fluities; for it is no man's duty to furnish them 
 with the means either of luxury or idleness. The 
 designedly procuring more of this world's goods 
 than will answer the foregoing purposes ; the 
 labouring after a larger measure of worldly sub- 
 stance ; a larger increase of gold and silver ; the 
 laying up any more than these ends require, is ex- 
 pressly and absolutely forbidden." And he main- 
 tained, that whoever did this practically denied 
 the faith, was worse than an African infidel, be- 
 came an abomination in the sight of God, and 
 purchased for himself hell-fire." How injurious, 
 if such opinions were reduced to practice, they 
 would prove to general industry, and how incom- 
 patible they were with the general welfare of the 
 world, Wesley seems not to have regarded. Not less 
 enthusiastic in this respect than Francis or Loyola, 
 and not less sincere also, he exclaimed : "I call 
 God to record upon my soul, that I advise no 
 more than I practise. I do, blessed be God, gain, 
 and save, and give all I can ; and, I trust in God, 
 I shall do, while the breath of life is in my 
 nostrils." 
 
 This was strictly true ; Wesley had at heart the 
 advice which he gave.* He dwelt upon it with 
 
 * Upon this principle he began in his youth, and acted upon it 
 throughout his long life. " This," said he, in a sewaon, " was the 
 
5%i< MANNERS AND EFFECTS 
 
 great earnestness in one of his last sermons a few 
 months only before his death. " After you have 
 gained all you can," said he, " and saved all you 
 can, wanting for nothing, spend not one pound, 
 one shilling, or one penny, to gratify either the 
 desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, or the 
 pride of life, or for any other end than to please 
 and glorify God. Having avoided this rock on the 
 right hand, beware of that on the left. Hoard no- 
 thing. Lay up no treasure on earth, but give all 
 you can, that is, all you have. I defy all the men 
 upon earth, yea, all the angels in heaven, to find 
 any other way of extracting the poison from riches. 
 After having served you between sixty and seventy 
 years, with dim eyes, shaking hands, and tottering 
 feet, I give you this advice, before I sink into the 
 dust. I am pained for you that are rich in this 
 world. You who receive five hundred pounds a year, 
 and spend only two hundred, do you give three 
 hundred back to God ? If not, you certainly rob 
 God of that three hundred. You who receive two 
 
 practice of all the young men at Oxford who were called Methodists. 
 For example: one of them had thirty pounds a year; he lived on 
 twenty-eight, and gave away forty shillings. The next year, receiving 
 sixty pounds, he still lived on twenty-eight, and gave away two-and- 
 thirty. The third year he received ninety pounds, and gave away sixty- 
 two. The fourth year he received an hundred and twenty pounds 
 still he lived as before on twenty-eight, and gave to the poor ninety-two." 
 It was of himself he spoke. It is affirmed that, in the course of his life, he 
 gave away not less than thirty thousand pounds ; and the assertion is 
 probably well founded. " All the profit of his literary labours, all that 
 he received or could collect, (and it amounted, says Mr. Nichols, to an 
 immense sum, for he. was his own printer and bookseller,) was devoted 
 to charitable purposes." 
 
OF METHODISM. 525 
 
 hundred and spend but one, do you give God the 
 other hundred ? If not, you rob him of just so 
 much. c Nay, may I not do what I will with my 
 own?' Here lies the ground of your mistake. It 
 is not your own. It cannot be, unless you are lord 
 of heaven and earth. ' However I must provide 
 for my children/ Certainly : but how ? By making 
 them rich? Then you will probably make them 
 heathens, as some of you have done already. Se- 
 cure them enough to live on ; not in idleness and 
 luxury, but by honest industry. And if you have 
 not children, upon what scriptural or rational 
 principle can you leave a groat behind you more 
 than will bury you ? Oh ! leave nothing behind 
 you ! Send all you have before you into a better 
 world ! Lend it, lend it all unto the Lord, and it 
 shall be paid you again. Haste, haste, my brethren, 
 haste, lest you be called away before you have set- 
 tled what you have on this security. When this is 
 done, you may boldly say, ■ Now I have nothing to 
 do but to die ! Father, into thy hands I commend 
 my spirit ! Come, Lord Jesus ! come quickly !'" 
 
 There were times when Wesley perceived and 
 acknowledged how little real reformation had been 
 effected in the great body of his followers : " Might 
 I not have expected," said he, "a general increase 
 of faith and love, Of righteousness and true holiness ; 
 yea, and of the fruits of the Spirit — love, joy, 
 peace, long-suffering, meekness, gentleness, fidelity, 
 goodness, temperance? — Truly, when I saw what 
 God had done among his people between forty 
 and fifty years ago, when I saw them warm in 
 
526 MANNERS AND EFFECTS 
 
 their first love, magnifying the Lord, and rejoicing 
 in God their Saviour, I could expect nothing less 
 than that all these would have lived like angels 
 here below ; that they would have walked as con- 
 tinually seeing him that is invisible, having con- 
 stant communion with the Father and the Son, 
 living in eternity, and walking in eternity. I 
 looked to see * a chosen generation, a royal priest- 
 hood, a holy nation, a peculiar people-/ in the 
 whole tenor of their conversation « showing forth 
 his praise who had called them into his marvellous 
 light.' " But, instead of this, it brought forth error 
 in ten thousand shapes. It brought forth en- 
 thusiasm, imaginary inspiration, ascribing to the 
 all-wise God all the wild, absurd, self-inconsistent 
 dreams of a heated imagination. It brought 
 forth pride. It brought forth prejudice, evil- 
 surmising, censoriousness, judging and condemn- 
 ing one another; all totally subversive of that 
 brotherly love which is the very badge of the 
 Christian profession, without which whosoever 
 liveth is counted dead before God. It brought 
 forth anger, hatred, malice, revenge, and every evil 
 word and work ; all direful fruits, not of the Holy 
 Spirit, but of the bottomless pit. It brought forth 
 such base grovelling affections, such deep earthly^ 
 mindedness as that of the poor heathens, which 
 occasioned the lamentation of their own poet over 
 them : O curvce in terras animce ei ccelestium inanes! 
 " O souls bowed down to earth, and void of God I" 
 And he repeated, from the pulpit, a remark which 
 had been made upon the Methodists by one whom 
 
OF METHODISM. 527 
 
 he calls a holy man, that " never was there before 
 a people in the Christian Church who. had so 
 much of the power of God among them, with so 
 little self-denial." 
 
 Mr. Fletcher also confirms this unfavourable 
 representation, and indicates one of its causes. 
 There were members of the Society, he said, who 
 spoke in the most glorious manner of Christ, and 
 of their interest in his complete salvation, and yet 
 were indulging the most unchristian tempers, and 
 living in the greatest immoralities : " For some 
 years," said he, " I have suspected there is more 
 imaginary than unfeigned faith in most of those 
 who pass for believers. With a mixture of in- 
 dignation and grief have I seen them carelessly 
 follow the stream of corrupt nature, against which 
 they should have manfully wrestled ; and when 
 they should have exclaimed against their antino- 
 mianism, I have heard them cry out against the 
 legality of their wicked hearts, which, they said, 
 still suggested they were to do something in order 
 to salvation." Antinomianism, he said, was, in 
 general, " a motto better adapted to the state of 
 professing congregations, societies, families, and 
 individuals, than holiness unto the Lord, the in- 
 scription that should be even upon our horses' 
 bells." He saw what evil had been done by 
 " making much ado about finished salvation. 93 
 1* The smoothness of our doctrine," said he, " will 
 atone for our most glaring inconsistencies. We have 
 so whetted the antinomian appetite of our hearers, 
 that they swallow down almost any thing." 
 
528 MANNERS AND EFFECTS 
 
 Against this error, to which the professors of* 
 sanctity so easily incline, Wesley earnestly en- 
 deavoured to guard his followers. But if on this 
 point he was, during the latter, and indeed the 
 greater part of his life, blameless, it cannot be 
 denied that his system tended to produce more of 
 the appearance than of the reality of religion. It 
 dealt too much in sensations, and in outward 
 manifestations of theopathy ; it made religion too 
 much a thing of display, an affair of sympathy and 
 confederation ; it led persons too much from their 
 homes and their closets ; it imposed too many 
 forms ; it required too many professions ; it exacted 
 too many exposures. And the necessary conse- 
 quence was, that many, when their enthusiasm 
 abated, became mere formalists, and kept up a 
 Pharisaical appearance of holiness, when the whole 
 feeling had evaporated. 
 
 It was among those classes of society whose 
 moral and religious education had been blindly 
 and culpably neglected, that Methodism produced 
 an immediate beneficial effect; and, in cases of 
 brutal depravity and habitual vice, it often pro- 
 duced a thorough reformation, which could not 
 have been brought about by any less powerful 
 agency than that of religious zeal. " Sinners of 
 every other sort," said a good old clergyman, 
 " have I frequently known converted to God : 
 but an habitual drunkard I have never known con- 
 verted." — "But I," says Wesley, " have known 
 five hundred, perhaps five thousand." To these 
 moral miracles he appealed in triumph as unde- 
 4 
 

 OF METHODISM. 529 
 
 triable proofs that Methodism was an extraordinary 
 work of God. " I appeal," said he, " to every 
 candid unprejudiced person, whether we may not 
 at this day discern all those signs (understanding 
 the words in a spiritual sense) to which our Lord 
 referred John's disciples, ' The blind receive their 
 sight/ Those who were blind from their birth, 
 unable to see their own deplorable state, and 
 much more to see God, and the remedy he has 
 prepared for them, in the Son of his love, now see 
 themselves, yea, and * the light of the glory of God, 
 in the face of Jesus Christ.' The eyes of their 
 understanding being now opened, they see all 
 things clearly. ' The deaf hear/ Those that 
 were before utterly deaf to all the outward and inr 
 ward calls of God, now hear not only his providen- 
 tial calls, but also the whispers of his grace. 
 * The lame walk.' Those who never before arose 
 from the earth, or moved one step toward heaven, 
 are now walking in all the ways of God ; yea, 
 running the race that is set before them. ' The 
 lepers are cleansed.' The deadly leprosy of sin, 
 which they brought with them into the world, and 
 which no art of man could ever cure, is now clean 
 departed from them. And surely, never, in any 
 age or nation since the Apostles, have those words 
 been so eminently fulfilled, — * the poor have the 
 Gospel preached unto them,' as they are at this 
 day. At this day, the Gospel leaven, faith work- 
 ing by love, inward and outward holiness, or (to 
 use the terms of St, Paul) righteousness, and peace, 
 and joy in the Holy Ghost, hath so spread in va ? 
 vol. ir. M M 
 
530 MANNERS AND EFFECTS 
 
 rious parts of Europe, particularly in England, 
 Scotland, Ireland, in the Islands, in the north and 
 south from Georgia to New England and New- 
 foundland, that sinners have been truly converted 
 to God, thoroughly changed both in heart and in 
 life, not by tens, or by hundreds only, but by thou- 
 sands, yea, by myriads. The fact cannot be de- 
 nied : we can point out the persons, with their 
 names and places of abode ; and yet the wise men 
 of the world, the men of eminence, the men of 
 learning and renown, cannot imagine what we 
 mean by talking of any extraordinary work of 
 God." 
 
 Forcible examples are to be found of this true 
 conversion, this real regeneration ; as well as 
 many affecting instances of the support which re- 
 ligion, through the means of Methodism, has given 
 in the severest afflictions*, and of the peace and 
 contentment t which it has afforded to those who 
 
 * In Dr. Coke's History of the West Indies, there is one remarkable 
 instance, but it is too painful to be repeated. 
 
 f Of this there is a beautiful example in a letter written to Mr. Wes- 
 ley by one of his female disciples, who was employed in the Orphan- 
 house at Newcastle. " I know not," she says, " how to agree to the 
 not working. I am still unwilling to take any thing from any body. I 
 work out of choice, having never yet learned how a woman can be idle 
 and innocent. I have had as blessed times in my soul sitting at work, 
 as ever I had in my life ; especially in the night-time, when I see nothing 
 but the light of a candle and a white cloth, hear nothing but the sound 
 of my own breath, with God in my sight and heaven in my soul, I think 
 myself one of the happiest creatures below the skies. I do not complain 
 that God has not made me some fine thing, to be set up to be gazed at; 
 but I can heartily bless him, that he has made me just what I am, 
 a creature capable of the enjoyment of himself. If I go to the win- 
 dow and look out, I see the moon and stars ; I meditate a while on 
 the silence of the night, consider this world as a beautiful structure, and 
 
 9 
 
OF METHODISM. S3\ 
 
 without it would have been forlorn and hopeless, 
 Many, perhaps most of these conversions, were 
 produced by field-preaching; and it is probable,, 
 therefore, that Methodism did more good in its 
 earlier than in its latter days, when preaching 
 in the open air was gradually disused, as chapels 
 were multiplied. The two brothers, and the more 
 zealous of their followers, used at first also to fre- 
 quent Bedlam and the prisons, for the purpose of 
 administering consolation to those who stood most 
 in need of it. When Methodism was most unpo- 
 pular, admission at these places was refused them, 
 which occasioned Wesley to exclaim, " So we are 
 forbid to go to Newgate for fear of making them 
 wicked, and to Bedlam for fear of driving them 
 mad ! " In both places, and in hospitals also, great 
 good might be effected by that zeal which the Me- 
 thodists possess, were it tempered with discretion. 
 If they had instituted societies to discharge such 
 painful offices of humanity as are performed by 
 the Sceurs de laCharite in France, and by the Be- 
 guines of Brabant and Flanders, the good which 
 they might have effected would have been duly 
 appreciated and rewarded by public opinion. It is 
 
 the work of ati almighty hand ; then I sit down to work again, and think 
 myself one of the happiest of beings in it." 
 
 Both the feeling and the expression in the letter are so sweet, .that 
 the reader will probably be as sorry as I was to discover that this happy 
 state of mind was not permanent. In a letter of Wesley ? s written three 
 years afterwards, he says " I know not what to do more for poor Jenny 
 Keith, (that was her name). Alas ! from what a height is she fallen ! 
 What a burning and shining light was she six or seven years ago ! But 
 thus it ever was. Many of the first shall be last, and many of the las 6 
 first." 
 
 M M % 
 
53Q MANNERS AND EFFECTS 
 
 remarkable, that none of their abundant enthu- 
 siasm should have taken this direction, and that 
 so little use should have been made of the oppor- 
 tunity when the prisons were again opened to 
 them. The Wesleys appear not to have repeated 
 their visits after the exclusion. One of their fol- 
 lowers, by name Silas Told, a weak, credulous, 
 and, notwithstanding his honest zeal, not always a 
 credible man, attended at Newgate for more than 
 twenty years : his charity was bestowed almost 
 exclusively upon condemned criminals. After his 
 death he had no successor in this dismal vocation, 
 and the honour of having shown in what manner a 
 prison may be made a school of reformation, was 
 reserved for Mrs. Fry and the Quakers. 
 
 In estimating the effects of Methodism, the good 
 which it has done indirectly must not be over- 
 looked. As the Reformation produced a visible 
 reform in those parts of Christendom where the 
 Romish Church maintained its supremacy, so, 
 though in a less degree, the progress of Wesley's 
 disciples has been beneficial to our Establish- 
 ment, exciting in many of the parochial clergy the 
 zeal which was wanting. Where the clergy exert 
 themselves, the growth of Methodism is checked ; 
 and perhaps it may be said to be most useful 
 where it is least successful. To the impulse also, 
 which Was given by Methodism, that missionary 
 spirit may be ascribed which is now carrying the 
 light of the gospel to the uttermost parts of the 
 earth. In no way can religious zeal be so bene- 
 ficially directed as in this. 
 
 7 
 
OF METHODISM. 533 
 
 Some evil also, as well as some good, the Me- 
 thodists have indirectly caused. Though they be- 
 came careful in admitting lay-preachers themselves, 
 the bad example of suffering any ignorant enthu- 
 siast to proclaim himself a minister of the gospel, 
 found numerous imitators. The number of roving 
 adventurers* in all the intermediate grades between 
 knavery and madness, who took to preaching as a 
 thriving trade, brought an opprobrium upon reli- 
 gion itself; and when an attempt was made at last 
 to put an end to this scandal, a most outrageous 
 and unreasonable cry was raised, as if the rights 
 of conscience were invaded, t Perhaps the man- 
 ner in which Methodism has familiarized the lower 
 classes to the work of combining in associations, 
 making rules for their own governance, raising funds, 
 
 * One magistrate in the county of Middlesex licensed fourteen hun* 
 dred preachers in the course of five years. Of six-and-thirty persons 
 who obtained licences at one sessions, six spelled " ministers of the 
 gospel" in six different ways, and seven signed their mark ! One fellow, 
 who applied for a licence, being asked if he could read, replied, " Mo- 
 ther reads, and I 'spounds and 'splains." 
 
 •f A writer in the Gospel Magazine says, concerning Lord Sidmouth's 
 well-meant bill, "By the grace of God I can speak for one. If in any 
 place I am called to preach, and cannot obtain a licence, I shall feel 
 myself called upon to break through all restrictions, even if death be 
 the consequence ; for I know that God will avenge his own elect against 
 their persecutors, let them be who they may. The men that are sent of 
 God must deliver their message, whether men will hear, or whether they 
 will forbear ; whether they can obtain a licence or not. If God opens 
 their mouths, none can shut them." — Everyman his own Pope, and his 
 own lawgiver ! These are days in which authority may safely be defied 
 in such cases; but there is no reason to doubt that the man who 
 speaks thus plainly would not have been as ready to break the laws as 
 to defy them. Had he been born in the right place and time, he would 
 have enjoyed a glorification in the Grass-market. 
 
 M M 8 
 
634< MANNERS AND EFFECTS 
 
 and communicating from one part of the kingdom 
 to another, may be reckoned among the inciden- 
 tal evils which have resulted from it ; but in this 
 respect it has only facilitated a process to which 
 other causes had given birth. The principles of 
 Methodism are strictly loyal ; and the language 
 which has been held by the Conference, in all 
 times of political disturbance, have been highly 
 honourable to the society, and in strict conformity 
 to the intentions of the founder. On the other 
 hand, the good which it has done, by rendering 
 men good civil subjects, is counteracted by sepa- 
 rating them from the Church. This tendency 
 Wesley did not foresee ; and when he perceived it, 
 he could not prevent it. But his conduct upon this 
 point was neither consistent nor ingenuous. Soon 
 after he had taken the memorable step of consecrat- 
 ing Dr. Coke as an American bishop, he arrogated 
 to himself the same authority for Scotland as for 
 America; and this, he maintained, was not a sepa- 
 ration from the Church ; " not from the Church 
 of Scotland," said he, "for we were never con- 
 nected therewith ; not from the Church of Eng- 
 land, for this is not concerned in the steps which 
 are taken in Scotland. Whatever, then, is done, 
 either in America or Scotland, is no separation from 
 the Church of England. I have no thought of 
 this : I have many objections against it." He had 
 been led toward a separation imperceptibly, step 
 by step ; but it is not to his honour that he af- 
 fected to deprecate it to the last, while he was evi- 
 dently bringing it about by the measures which he 
 pursued. 
 
OF METHODISM. 585 
 
 In the latter end of his life, the tendency to 
 separation was increased by the vexations manner 
 in which some Lincolnshire magistrates enforced 
 the letter of the Toleration Act. They insisted, 
 that as the Methodists professed themselves mem- 
 bers of the Church, they were not within the in- 
 tention of the act j they refused to license their 
 chapels therefore, unless they declared themselves 
 dissenters: and when some of the trustees were 
 ready to do this, they were told that this was not 
 sufficient by itself; they must declare also, that they 
 scrupled to attend the service and sacrament of 
 the Church, the Act in question having been 
 made for those only who entertained such scruples. 
 This system of injurious severity did not stop here. 
 Understanding in what manner these magistrates 
 interpreted the law, some informers took advantage 
 of the opportunity, and enforced the Conventicle 
 Act against those who had preaching or prayer- 
 meetings in their houses : the persons thus ag- 
 grieved were mostly in humble circumstances, so 
 that they were distressed to pay the fine ; and 
 when they appealed to the quarter-sessions, it 
 was in vain ; the magistrates had no power to 
 relieve them. Mr. Wesley was irritated at this, 
 and wrote to the Bishop of the diocese in a 
 tone which he had never before assumed. — " My 
 Lord," said he, in his letter, " I am a dying man, 
 having already one foot in the grave. Humanly 
 speaking, I cannot long creep upon the earth, 
 being now nearer ninety than eighty years of 
 age. But I cannot die in peace before 1 have 
 
 M M 4 
 
536 MANNERS AND EFFECTS 
 
 discharged this office of Christian love to your 
 lordship. I write without ceremony, as neither 
 hoping nor fearing any thing from your lordship, 
 or from any man living. And I ask, in the name 
 and in the presence of Him, to whom both you 
 and I are shortly to give an account, why do 
 you trouble those that are quiet in the land, — 
 those that fear God and work righteousness ? 
 Does your lordship know what the Methodists 
 are ? that many thousands of them are zealous 
 members of the church of England, and strongly 
 attached, not only to His Majesty, but to his 
 present ministry ? Why should your lordship, set- 
 ting religion out of the question, throw away 
 such a body of respectable friends ? Is it for their 
 religious sentiments ? Alas ! my lord, is this a time 
 to persecute any man for conscience sake ? I be- 
 seech you, my lord, do as you would be done 
 to. You are a man of sense ; you are a man 
 of learning ; nay, I verily believe (what is of 
 Infinitely more value) you are a man of piety. 
 Then think and let think. I pray God to bless 
 you with the choicest of his blessings." * These 
 circumstances occurred a few months only before 
 his death. His friends advised that an applica- 
 tion should be made to Parliament for the repeal 
 of the Conventicle Act. In some shape, it can- 
 
 * In the life of Wesley, by Dr. Coke, and Mr. Moore, there is a letter 
 upon this occasion, in a more angry strain. Probably Mr. Wesley upon 
 reflection saw that he had written in an unbecoming manner, and sub- 
 stituted in its place that which I have copied from the life by Dr. White- 
 head. The official biographers indeed had in their hands such private 
 documents only, as had not been entrusted to the doctor. 
 
OF METHODISM. 537 
 
 ilot be doubted but that relief would have been 
 afforded, and several members of the House of 
 Commons, who respected Mr. Wesley, would have 
 stirred in his behalf. But his growing infirmi- 
 ties prevented him from exerting himself upon this 
 business as he would otherwise have done. 
 
538 
 
 CHAP. XXX, 
 
 WESLEY IN OLD AGE* 
 
 Leisure and I," said Wesley, " have taker* 
 leave of one another* I propose to be busy as 
 long as I live, if my health is so long indulged to 
 me." This resolution was made in the prime of 
 life, and never was resolution more punctually ob- 
 served. " Lord, let me not live to be useless ! " 
 was the prayer which he uttered after seeing one 
 whom he had long known as an active and use- 
 ful magistrate, reduced by age to be " a picture 
 of human nature in disgrace, feeble in body and 
 mind, slow of speech and understanding." He 
 was favoured with a constitution vigorous beyond 
 that of ordinary men, and with an activity of 
 spirit which is even rarer than his singular feli- 
 city of health and strength. Ten thousand cares 
 of various kinds, he said, were no more weight or 
 burden to his mind, than ten thousand hairs were 
 to his head. But in truth his only cares were 
 those of superintending the work of his ambition, 
 which continually prospered under his hands. Real 
 cares he had none ; no anxieties, no sorrows, no 
 griefs which touched him to the quick. His 
 manner of life was the most favourable that could 
 have been devised for longevity. He rose early, 
 
WESLEY IN OLD AGE. 539 
 
 and lay down at night with nothing to keep him 
 waking, or trouble him in sleep. His mind was 
 always in a pleasurable and wholesome state of 
 activity, he was temperate in his diet, and lived in 
 perpetual locomotion : and frequent change of air 
 is perhaps, of all things, that which most conduces 
 to joyous health and long life. 
 
 The time which Mr. Wesley spent in travelling 
 was not lost. " History, poetry, and philosophy," 
 said he, " I commonly read on horseback, having 
 other employment at other times." He used to 
 throw the reins on his horse's neck; and in this 
 way he rode, in the course of his life, above a 
 hundred thousand miles, without any accident of 
 sufficient magnitude to make him sensible of the 
 danger which he incurred. His friends, however, 
 saw the danger ; and in the sixty-ninth year of 
 his age, they prevailed upon him to travel in a 
 carriage, in consequence of a hurt which had 
 produced a hydrocele. The ablest practitioners 
 in Edinburgh were consulted upon his case, 
 and assured him there was but one method of 
 cure. " Perhaps but one natural one," says he* 
 " but I think God has more than one method of 
 healing either the soul or the body." He read, 
 upon the subject, a treatise which recommends a 
 seton or a caustic, '• but I am not inclined," said he, 
 " to try either of them; I know a physician that has 
 a shorter cure than either one or the other." After 
 two years however, he submitted to an operation 
 
 
 *' " Mr. Wathen performed the operation, and drew off something 
 more than a half pint of a thin, yellow, transparent water j with this 
 came out {to his no smali surprise) a pearl of the size of a small shot, 
 
540 WESLEY IN OLD AGE* 
 
 and obtained a cure. A little before this, he notices 
 in his Journal, the first night that he had ever lain 
 awake ; " I believe," he adds, " few can say this -, 
 in seventy years I never lost one night's sleep." 
 
 He lived to preach at Kingswood under the 
 shade of trees which he had planted; and he 
 outlived the lease of the Foundery*, the place 
 which had been the cradle of Methodism. In 
 1778, the head-quarters of the society were re- 
 moved to the City Road, where a new chapel was 
 built upon ground leased by the city. Great mul- 
 titudes assembled to see the ceremony of laying 
 the foundation, so that Wesley could not, without 
 much difficulty, get through the press to lay the 
 first stone, in which his name and the date were 
 inserted upon a plate of brass : " This was laid 
 by John Wesley on April 1. 1777." " Probably," 
 says he, " this will be seen no more by any human 
 eye, but will remain there till the earth and the 
 works thereof are burnt up." Charles, having long 
 ceased to itinerate, used to officiate here, and the 
 lay-preachers., who were always jealous of him, 
 
 which he supposed might be one cause of the disorder, by occasioning 
 a conflux of humours to the part." — Journal, xvii. p. 8. — What an 
 extraordinary relic would this pearl have been, had it been extracted 
 from a Romish saint ! I know not whether there be any other case 
 recorded of physical Oystracism. 
 
 * Silas Told describes this in the year 1 740 as " a ruinous place, with an 
 old pantile covering, a few rough deal boards put together to constitute 
 a temporary pulpit, and several other decayed timbers, which composed 
 the whole structure." No doubt it was improved afterwards. Mr. 
 Wesley's preaching hours, when he began there, were five in the morn- 
 ing and seven in the evening, for the convenience of the labouring 
 part of the congregation. The men and women sate apart, and there 
 were no pews, or difference of benches, or appointed place for any 
 person. 
 
WESLEY IN OLD AGE. 541 
 
 were greatly offended, because he excluded them 
 from the pulpit by serving the chapel twice on 
 Sundays, when John was not in town. They com- 
 plained of this as invidious and derogatory to them- 
 selves, and Wesley so far yielded to their impor- 
 tunities as to promise that one of their body 
 should preach when Charles could not, an arrange- 
 ment which preferred them to the clergymen in 
 the connection. Charles was hurt at this con- 
 cession of his brother's, and with good reason. 
 He represented that many persons, who had sub- 
 scribed towards the building of the chapel, and were 
 friends to Methodism, were yet not members of 
 the society, but true churchmen ; and that, from 
 regard to them and to the Church, not out of ill 
 will to the preachers, he wished the Church ser- 
 vice to be continued there ; for this also was made 
 a matter of complaint against him. Next to his 
 brother, he affirmed, he had the best right to 
 preach there ; and he used it because he had so 
 short a time to preach any where. " I am sorry," 
 said he, " you yielded to the lay-preachers : I 
 think them in the greatest danger through pride. 
 They affect to believe that I act as a clergyman in 
 opposition to them. If there was no man above 
 them, what would become of them ! how would 
 they tear one another in pieces ! Convince them, 
 if you can, that they want a clergyman over them 
 to keep them and the flock together. But rather 
 persuade them, if you can, to be the least, not 
 the greatest, and then all will be right again. You 
 ibave no alternative but to conquer that spirit, or 
 
542 WESLEY IN OLD AGE. 
 
 be conquered by it. — The preachers do not love 
 the Church of England. What must be the conse- 
 quence when we are gone ? A separation is inevit- 
 able. Do you not wish to keep as many good 
 people in the Church as you can? Something 
 might be done to save the remainder, if you had 
 resolution and would stand by me, as firmly as I 
 will by you." 
 
 This ill-temper in the preachers produced a 
 schism in the connection. An Irish clergyman, 
 being at Bath on account of his wife's health, was 
 desired by Mr. Wesley to preach every Sunday 
 evening in the Methodist chapel, as long as he 
 remained there. As soon as Wesley, had left 
 that city, a lay-preacher, by name M c Nab, raised 
 a sort of rebellion upon this ground, saying it 
 was the common cause of all the lay-preachers, for 
 they were appointed by the Conference, not by 
 Mr. Wesley, and they would not suffer the clergy 
 to ride over their heads. This touched Mr. Wes- 
 ley where he was most sensitive. He set out for 
 Bath, summoned the society, and read to them a 
 paper* which he had drawn up many years before, 
 upon a somewhat similar occasion; and which had 
 been read to the Conference of 17^6. He observed 
 that the rules of the preachers were fixed by him 
 before any Conference existed, and tliat the twelfth 
 rule stated, " above all, you are to preach when 
 antd where I appoint." This fundamental rule 
 Mf Nab had opposed, and therefore he ex- 
 
 * The substance of this paper has been previously given, Vol. ii. 
 pp. 198 — 200. 
 
WESLEY IN OLD AGE. 543 
 
 pelled him, But the mutinous preacher had 
 " thrown wildfire among the people, and occa- 
 sioned anger, jealousies, judging each other, back- 
 biting, and tale-bearing without end:" strange 
 weeds to spring up in the garden of Christian 
 perfection ! 
 
 On this occasion, as on all others, when his 
 authority was invaded, Wesley acted with prompti- 
 tude and decision. He had great talents for go- 
 vernment; and even when it was necessary, to 
 conform to circumstances which he could not con- 
 troul, he understood how important it was that he 
 should never appear to yield. But though, by his 
 presence of mind and skill in directing the minds 
 of men, he contrived in difficult circumstances to 
 save himself from any sacrifice of pride, he was 
 not always so successful on the score of principle ; 
 for his attachment to the Church was sacrificed to 
 the desire of extending and preserving his power ; 
 contented if he could stave off the separation as long 
 as he lived, he took measures which prepared for 
 it, just as he provided a system by which the con- 
 stitution of his society should become republican 
 after his death, satisfied with maintaining his au- 
 thority over it as a monarch during his life. 
 
 The remarkable talents with which the Wesley 
 family were endowed, manifested themselves in the 
 third generation as strikingly as in the second. One 
 of the nieces of Mr, Wesley, named Mehetabel after 
 her mother, was that Mrs. Wright who attained to 
 such excellence as a modeller in wax, and who is 
 said to have acted with great dexterity in conveying 
 
544 WESLEY IN OLD AGE. 
 
 treasonable intelligence to the Americans during 
 the war. The two sons of Charles were among 
 the most distinguished musicians of their age. Their 
 father, perceiving the decided bent of their genius, 
 very properly permitted them to follow it, and 
 make the science of music their profession. In a 
 letter to his brother, he said, " I am clear, without 
 doubt, that my sons' concert is after the will and 
 order of Providence." When John printed this 
 letter after his brother's death, he added, in a note, 
 " I am clear of another mind." Dr. Coke also 
 looked upon the concerts which were performed 
 in Charles Wesley's own house as being highly dis- 
 honourable to God, and considered him as criminal 
 " by reason of his situation in the church of Christ." 
 But upon mature consideration the Doctor saw rea- 
 son to alter this severe opinion. " It has established 
 them," said Charles, " as musicians, in a safe and 
 honourable way. We do not repent that we did 
 not make a show or advantage of our swans. They 
 may still make their fortunes if I will venture them 
 into the world ; but I never wish them rich : you 
 also agree with me in this. Our good old father 
 neglected every opportunity of selling our souls 
 to the devil." 
 
 One of these brothers became a papist, to the 
 sore grief of his parents. Upon this occasion 
 John addressed a letter to them, saying, he doubted 
 not that they were in great trouble, because their 
 son had " changed his religion ;" and, deducing a 
 topic of consolation from the inaccuracy of that 
 expression, " Nay," said he, " he has changed hi§ 
 
WESLEY IN OLD AGE. 54>5 
 
 opinions and mode of worship, but that is not relu 
 gion ; it is quite another thing. Has he then, you 
 may ask, sustained no loss by the change ? Yes ; 
 unspeakable loss : because his new opinions and 
 mode of worship are so unfavourable to religion, 
 that they make it, if not impossible to one that 
 knew better, yet extremely difficult. What, then, 
 is religion? It is happiness in God, or in the 
 knowledge and love of God. It is * faith working 
 by love,' producing c righteousness, and peace, 
 and joy in the Holy Ghost.' In other words, it is 
 a heart and life devoted to God ; or communion 
 with God the Father and the Son ; or the mind 
 which was in Christ Jesus, enabling us to walk as 
 he walked. Now, either he has this religion, or he 
 has not : if he has, he will not finally perish, not- 
 withstanding the absurd unscriptural opinions he 
 has embraced, and the superstitious and idolatrous 
 modes of worship. But these are so many shackles 
 which will greatly retard him in running the race 
 that is set before him. If he has not this religion ; 
 if he has not given God his heart, the case is 
 unspeakably worse : I doubt if he ever will ; for 
 his new friends will continually endeavour to 
 hinder him, by putting something else in its 
 place, by encouraging him to rest in the form, 
 notions, or externals, without being born again ; 
 without having Christ in him, the hope of glory ; 
 without being renewed in the image of Him that 
 created him. This is the deadly evil. I have often 
 lamented that he had not this holiness, without 
 which no man can see the Lord. But though he 
 
 VOL. II. N N 
 
546 WESLEY IN OLD AGE. 
 
 had it not, yet, in his hours of cool reflection, he 
 did not hope to go to heaven without it ; but now 
 he is, or will be taught, that, let him only have a 
 right faith, (that is, such and such notions,) and add 
 thereunto such and such externals, and he is quite 
 safe. He may indeed roll a few years in purging 
 fire, but he will surely go to heaven at last." 
 
 The father felt this evil so deeply, that, it is as- 
 serted, one of the last things he said upon his death- 
 bed was to declare his forgiveness of the person by 
 whose means his son had been perverted. To 
 Mr. Wesley it was a mortification as well as a grief ; 
 for he had exposed the errors of the Romanists in 
 some controversial writings, perspicuously and 
 forcibly. One of those writings gave the Catholics 
 an advantage, because it defended the Protestant 
 Association of 1780 ; and the events which speedily 
 followed, were turned against him. But, upon the 
 great points in dispute, he was clear and cogent; and 
 the temper of this, as of his other controversial tracts, 
 was such, that, some years afterwards, when a 
 common friend invited him to meet his antagonist, 
 lather O'Leary, it was gratifying to both parties 
 to meet upon terms of courtesy and mutual good 
 will. 
 
 Before Mr. Wesley submitted to the operation, 
 he considered himself as almost a disabled soldier ; 
 so little could he reconcile himself to the restric- 
 tion from horse-exercise. So perfectly, however, 
 was he re-established in health, that, a few months 
 afterwards, upon entering his seventy-second year, 
 he asked, " How is this, that I find just the same 
 
WESLEY IN OLD AGE. 54<7 
 
 strength as I did thirty years ago ; that my sight is 
 considerably better now, and my nerves* firmer 
 than they were then ; that I have none of the in- 
 firmities of old age, and have lost several I had in 
 my youth ? The grand cause is the good pleasure 
 of God, who doth whatsoever pleaseth him. The 
 chief means are, my constantly rising at four for 
 about fifty years ; my generally preaching at five in 
 the morning — one of the most healthy exercises 
 in the world ; my never travelling less, by sea or 
 land, than four thousand five hundred miles in a 
 year." Repeating the same question after another 
 year had elapsed, he added to this list of natural 
 means, " the ability, if ever I want, to sleep im- 
 mediately ; the never losing a night's sleep in my 
 life ; two violent fevers, and two deep consump- 
 tions ; these, it is true, were rough medicines ; 
 but they were of admirable service, causing my 
 ilesh to come again as the flesh of a little child. 
 May I add, lastly, evenness of temper : lfeel and 
 grieve ; but by the grace of God, I fret at nothing. 
 But still, the help that is done upon earth, He doth 
 it himself; and this he doth in answer to many 
 prayers." 
 
 He himself had prayed that he might not live to 
 be useless ; and the extraordinary vigour which he 
 preserved to extreme old age, might well make 
 
 * Mr. Wesley believed that the use of tea made his hand shake so, 
 before he was twenty years old, that he could hardly write. He pub- 
 lished an essay against tea-drinking, and left it off during twelve years . 
 then, " at the close of a consumption," by Dr. FothergilPs directions, 
 he used it again, and probably learnt how much he had been mistaken 
 an attributing ill effects to so refreshing and innocent a beverage. 
 
 N N % 
 
548 WESLEY IN OLD AGE. 
 
 him believe, that, in this instance, his heart's de- 
 sire had been granted. The seventy-eighth year 
 of his age found him, he says, "by the blessing of 
 God," just * the same as when he entered the 
 twenty-eighth y and, upon entering his eightieth, 
 he blessed God that his time was not labour and 
 sorrow, and that he found no more infirmities than 
 when he was in the flower of manhood. But 
 though this uncommon exemption from the bur- 
 then of age was vouchsafed him, it was not in the 
 nature of things that he should be spared from its 
 feelings and regrets. The days of his childhood 
 returned upon him when he visited Epworth ; and 
 taking a solitary walk in the churchyard of that 
 place, he says, " I felt the truth of * one generation 
 goeth, and another cometh.' See how the earth 
 drops its inhabitants, as the tree drops its leaves !" 
 Wherever he went, his old disciples had past away, 
 and other generations had succeeded in their stead ; 
 and, at the houses to which he looked on with plea- 
 sure in the course of his yearly rounds, he found 
 more and more frequently, in every succeeding year, 
 that death had been before him. Whole families 
 dropt off one by one, while he continued still in his 
 green old age, full of life, and activity, and strength, 
 and hope, and ardour. Such griefs were felt by him 
 less keenly than by other men ; because every day 
 brought with it to him change of scene and of per- 
 sons j and because, busy as he was on earth, his de- 
 
 * " In the year 1769," he says, " I weighed a hundred and twenty 
 two pounds. In 1783, I weighed not a pound more or less." 
 
WESLEY IN OLD AGE. 549 
 
 sires were in heaven. " I had hopes," says he, in 
 his Journal, u of seeing a friend at Lewisham in my 
 way : and so I did ; but it was in her coffin. It is 
 well, since she finished her course with joy. In due 
 time I shall see her in glory." To one of his young 
 female correspondents he says, with melancholy 
 anticipation, " I sometimes fear lest you also, as 
 those I tenderly love generally have been, should 
 be snatched away. But let us live to-day I" 
 Many of his most ardent and most amiable dis- 
 ciples seem to have been cut off, in the flower of 
 their youth, by consumption — a disease too fre- 
 quently connected with what is beautiful in form, 
 and intellect, and disposition. 
 
 Mr. Fletcher, though a much younger man, was 
 summoned to his reward before him. That excel- 
 lent person * left England, under all the symptoms 
 
 * In the year 1788, Mr. Wesley printed a letter written to him from 
 France in 1770, by Mr. Fletcher, in which the following remarkable 
 passage occurs : " A set of Free-thinkers (great admirers of Voltaire 
 and Rousseau, Bayle, and Mirabeau) seem bent upon destroying Christi- 
 anity and government. With one hand, says a lawyer, who has writ- 
 ten against them, they shake the throne, and, with the other, they 
 throw down the altar. If we believe them, the world is the dupe of 
 kings and priests ; religion is fanaticism and superstition ; subordina- 
 tion is slavery and tyrahny ; Christian morality is absurd, unnatural, 
 and impracticable ; and Christianity is the most bloody religion that 
 ever was. And here it is certain, that, by the example of Christians, 
 so called, and by our continual disputes, they have a great advantage. 
 Popery will certainly fall in France in this or the next century; and 
 God will use those vain men to bring about a reformation here, as he 
 used Henry VIII. to do that great work in England : so the madness 
 of his enemies shall turn at last to his praise, and to the furtherance 
 of his kingdom. If you ask what system these men adopt, I answer, 
 that some build, upon deism, a morality founded upon self-preserv- 
 ation, self-interest, and self-honour. Others laugh at all morality, ex- 
 cept that which violently disturbs society ; and external order is the 
 
 NN 3 
 
550 MR. FLETCHER. 
 
 of advanced consumption, to try the effect of his 
 native air ; and, in the expectation of death, ad- 
 dressed a pastoral letter at that time to his pa- 
 rishioners. " I sometimes," said he, " feel a de* 
 sire of being buried where you are buried, and 
 having my bones lie in a common earthen bed with 
 yours. But I soon resign that wish ; and, leaving 
 that particular to Providence, exult in thinking, 
 that neither life nor death shall ever be able (while 
 we hang on the Crucified, as He hung on the cross) 
 to separate us from Christ our head, nor from the 
 love of each other his members/' His recovery, 
 which appears almost miraculous, was ascribed by 
 himself more to eating plentifully of cherries and 
 grapes, than to any other remedies. His friends 
 wished him to remain among them at Nyon : "they 
 urge my being born here," said he, il and I reply, 
 that I was born again in England, and therefore 
 that is, of course, the country which to me is the 
 dearer of the two." He returned to his 1 parish, and 
 married Miss Bosanquet ; a woman perfectly suited 
 to him in age, temper, piety, and talents. '« We are 
 two poor invalids," said he, " who, between us, 
 make half a labourer. She sweetly helps me to 
 drink the dregs of life, and to carry with ease the 
 daily cross." His account of himself, after this 
 time, is so beautiful, that its insertion might be 
 
 decent cover of fatalism ; while materialism is their system." He invites 
 aHrChristians " to do what the herds do on the Swiss mountains, when 
 the wolves make an attack upon them : instead of goring one another, 
 they unite, form a close battalion, and face the enemy on all sides." 
 
DEATH OF MR. FLETCHER. 551 
 
 pardoned here, even if Mr. Fletcher were a less 
 important personage in the history of Methodism. 
 " I keep in my sentry-box," says he, " till Pro- 
 vidence remove me: my situation is quite suited 
 to my little strength. I may do as much or as little 
 as I please, according to my weakness ; and I have 
 an advantage, which I can have no where else in 
 such a degree : my little field of action is just at 
 my door, so that, if I happen to overdo myself, I 
 have but a step from my pulpit to my bed, and 
 from my bed to my grave. If I had a body full of 
 vigour, and a purse full of money, I should like 
 well enough to travel about as Mr. Wesley does ; 
 but, as Providence does not call me to it, I readily 
 submit. The snail does best in its shell." 
 
 This good man died in 1785, and in the 56th 
 year of his age. Volumes have been filled, and 
 are perpetually being filled, by sectarians of every 
 description, with accounts of the behaviour and 
 triumphant hopes of the dying, all resembling each 
 other ; but the circumstances of Mr. Fletcher's 
 death were as peculiar as those of his life. He had 
 taken cold, and a considerable degree of fever 
 had been induced ; but no persuasion could prevail 
 upon him to stay from church on the Sunday, nor 
 even to permit that any part of the service should be 
 performed for him. It was the will of the Lord, he 
 said, that he should go ; and he assured his wife 
 and his friends that God would strengthen him to 
 go through the duties of the day. Before he had 
 proceeded far in the service, he grew pale, and 
 faltered in his speech, and could scarcely keep 
 nn4 
 
,552 DEATH OF MR. FLETCHER, 
 
 himself from fainting. The congregation were 
 greatly affected and alarmed ; and Mrs. Fletcher, 
 pressing through the crowd, earnestly entreated' 
 him not to persevere in what was so evidently be- 
 yond his strength. He recovered, however, when 
 the windows were opened, exerted himself against 
 the mortal illness which he felt, went through the 
 service, and preached with remarkable earnestness, 
 and with not less effect, for his parishioners plainly 
 saw that the hand of death was upon him. After 
 the sermon, he walked to the communion-table, 
 saying, "I am going to throw myself under the 
 wings of the Cherubim, before the Mercy-seat !"" 
 — " Here" (it is his widow who describes this last 
 extraordinary effort of enthusiastic devotion) " the 
 same distressing scene was renewed, with addi- 
 tional solemnity. The people were deeply affected 
 while they beheld him offering up the last languid 
 remains of a life that had been lavishly spent in 1 
 their service. Groans and tears were on every 
 side. In going through this last part of his duty, 
 he was exhausted again and again ; but his spi- 
 ritual vigour triumphed over his bodily weakness. 
 After several times sinking on the sacramental 
 table, he still resumed his sacred work, and cheer- 
 fully distributed, with his dying hand, the love- 
 memorials of his dying Lord. In the course of 
 this concluding office, which he performed by 
 means of the most astonishing exertions, he gave 
 out several verses of hymns, and delivered many 
 affectionate exhortations to his people, calling upon 
 them, at intervals, to celebrate the mercy of God 
 
DEATH OF MR. FLETCHER. 553 
 
 in short songs of adoration and praise. And now, 
 having struggled through a service of near four 
 hours' continuance, he was supported, with bless- 
 ings in his mouth, from the altar to his chamber, 
 where he lay for some time in a swoon, and from 
 whence he never walked into the world again." 
 Mr. Fletcher's nearest and dearest friends sym- 
 pathized entirely with him in his devotional feel- 
 ings, and therefore they seem never to have 
 entertained a thought that this tragedy may have 
 exasperated his disease, and proved the direct oc- 
 casion of his death. " I besought the Lord," says 
 Mrs. Fletcher, "if it were his good pleasure, to 
 spare him to me a little longer. But my prayer 
 seemed to have no wings ; and I could not help 
 mingling continually therewith, Lord give me 
 perfect resignation !" 
 
 On the Sunday following he died, and that day 
 also was distinguished by circumstances not less 
 remarkable. A supplicatory hymn for his reco- 
 very was sung in the church ; and one who was 
 present says, it is impossible to convey an idea of 
 the burst of sorrow that accompanied it. " The 
 whole village," says his friend Mr. Gilpin, " wore 
 an air of consternation and sadness. Hasty mes- 
 sengers were passing to and fro, with anxious en- 
 quiries and confused reports ; and the members 
 of every family sate together in silence that day, 
 awaiting with trembling expectation the issue of 
 every hour." After the evening service, several 
 of the poor, who came from a distance, and who 
 were usually entertained under his roof, lingered 
 
554 DEATH OF MR. FLETCHER. 
 
 about the house, and expressed an earnest wish 
 that they might see their expiring pastor. Their 
 desire was granted. The door of his chamber 
 was set open ; directly opposite to which, he was 
 sitting upright in his bed, with the curtains un- 
 drawn, " unaltered in his usual venerable appear- 
 ance -"; and they passed along the gallery one by one, 
 pausing as they passed by the door, to look upon him 
 for the last time. A few hours after this extraor- 
 dinary scene he breathed his last, without a strug- 
 gle or a groan, in perfect peace, and in the fullness 
 of faith and of hope. Such was the death of Jean 
 Guillaume de la Flechere, or as he may more pro- 
 perly be designated, in this his adopted country, 
 Fletcher of Madeley, a man of whom Methodism 
 may well be proud as the most able of its defenders; 
 and whom the Church of England may hold in ho- 
 nourable remembrance, as one of the most pious 
 and excellent of her sons. " I was intimately 
 acquainted with him," says Mr. Wesley, iC for 
 above thirty years. I conversed with him morn- 
 ing, noon, and night, without the least reserve, 
 during a journey of many hundred miles : and in 
 all that time I never heard him speak one impro- 
 per word, nor saw him do an improper action. 
 Many exemplary men have I known, holy in heart 
 and life, within fourscore years j but one equal to 
 him I have not known : one so inwardly and out- 
 wardly devoted to God, so unblameable a character 
 in every respect, I have not found, either in Europe 
 or America. Nor do I expect to find another such 
 on this side of eternity." 
 
WESLEY IN OLD AGE. 555 
 
 Wesley thought, that if Mr. Fletcher's friends 
 had not dissuaded him from continuing that course 
 of itinerancy which he began in his company, it 
 would have made him a strong man. And that, 
 after his health was restored by his native air, 
 and confirmed by his wife's constant care, if " he 
 had used this health in travelling all over the 
 kingdom five or six, or seven months every year, 
 (for which never was man more eminently quali- 
 fied, no, not Mr. Whitefield himself) he would 
 have done more good than any other man in Eng- 
 land. I cannot doubt," he adds, " but this would 
 have been the more excellent way." It had been 
 Mr. Wesley's hope, at one time, thajt after his death, 
 Mr. Fletcher would succeed to the supremacy of the 
 spiritual dominion which he had established. Mr. 
 Fletcher was qualified for the succession by his 
 thorough disregard of worldly advantages, his perfect 
 piety, his devotedness to the people among whom 
 he ministered, his affable manner, and his popular 
 and persuasive oratory, — qualifications in which he 
 was not inferior to Wesley himself. But he had 
 neither the ambition, nor the flexibility of Mr. 
 Wesley ; he would not have known how to rule, 
 nor how to yield as he did : holiness with him was 
 all in all. Wesley had the temper and talents of 
 a statesman : in the Romish Church he would 
 have been the general, if not the founder, of an 
 order; or might have held a distinguished place 
 in history, as a cardinal or a pope. Fletcher, in 
 any communion, would have been a saint. 
 
 Mr. Wesley still continued to be the same mar- 
 
556 WESLEY IN OLD AGE. 
 
 vellous old man. No one who saw him, even ca- 
 sually, in his old age, can have forgotten his ve- 
 nerable appearance. His face was remarkably 
 fine ; his complexion fresh to the last week of his 
 life ; his eye quick, and keen, and active. When 
 you met him in the street of a crowded city, he 
 attracted notice, not only by his band and cassock, 
 and his long hair, white and bright as silver, but 
 by his pace and manner, both indicating that all his 
 minutes were numbered, and that not one was to be 
 lost. " Though I am always in haste," he says of 
 himself, " I am never in a hurry ; because I never 
 undertake any more work than I can go through 
 with perfect calmness of spirit. It is true, I travel 
 four or five thousand miles in a year ; but I gene- 
 rally travel alone in my carriage, and, consequently, 
 am as retired ten hours a-day as if I were in a 
 wilderness. On other days, I never spend less 
 than three hours (frequently ten or twelve) in 
 the day, alone. So there are few persons who 
 spend so many hours secluded from all company." 
 Thus it was that he found time to read much, and 
 write voluminously. After his eightieth year, he 
 went twice to Holland, a country in which Me- 
 thodism, as Quakerism had done before it, met 
 with a certain degree of success. Upon complet- 
 ing his eighty-second year, he says, " is any thing 
 too hard for God ? It is now eleven years since I 
 have felt any such thing as weariness. Many times I 
 speak till my voice fails, and I can speak no longer. 
 Frequently I walk till my strength fails, and I can 
 walk no farther; yet, even then, I feel no sensation 
 
WESLEY IN OLD AGE. 55J 
 
 of weariness, but am perfectly easy from head to 
 foot. I dare not impute this to natural causes- 
 It is the will of God." A year afterwards he says, 
 " I am a wonder to myself I I am never tired (such 
 is the goodness of God), either with writing, preach- 
 ing, or travelling. One natural cause, undoubtedly, 
 is, my continual exercise, and change of air. How 
 the latter contributes to health I know not ; but 
 certainly it does." In his eighty-fourth year, he 
 first began to feel decay ; and, upon commencing 
 his eighty-fifth, he observes, " I am not so agile as 
 I was in times past ; I do not run or walk so fast 
 as I did. My sight is a little decayed. My left 
 eye is grown dim, and hardly serves me to read. 
 I have daily some pain in the ball of my right eye, 
 as also in my right temple (occasioned by a blow 
 received some months since), and in my right 
 shoulder and arm, which I impute partly to a sprain, 
 and partly to the rheumatism. I find, likewise, 
 some decay in my memory with regard to names and 
 things lately past j but not at all with regard to 
 what I have read or heard twenty, forty, or sixty 
 years ago. Neither do I find any decay in my hear- 
 ing, smell, taste, or appetite, (though I want but a 
 third part of the food I did once,) nor do I feel 
 any such thing as weariness, either in travelling or 
 preaching. And I am not conscious of any decay 
 in writing sermons, which I do as readily, and, I 
 believe, as correctly as ever." He acknowledged, 
 therefore, that he had cause to praise God for bodily, 
 as well as spiritual blessings j and that he had suf- 
 fered little, as yet, by "the rush of numerous years." 
 
558 WESLEY IN OLD AGE. 
 
 Other persons perceived his growing weakness, 
 before he was thus aware of it himself ; the most 
 marked symptom was that of a frequent disposition 
 to sleep during the day. He had always been able 
 to lie down and sleep almost at will, like a mere 
 animal, or a man in little better than an animal 
 State, — a consequence, probably, of the incessant 
 activity of his life: this he himself rightly ac- 
 counted one of the causes of his excellent health, 
 and it was, doubtless, a consequence of it also : 
 but the involuntary slumbers which came upon 
 him in the latter years of his life, were indications 
 that the machine was wearing out, and would soon 
 come to a stop. In 1788, he lost his brother 
 Charles, who, during many years, had been his 
 zealous coadjutor, and, through life, his faithful 
 and affectionate friend. Latterly their opinions 
 had differed. Charles saw the evil tendency of 
 some part of the discipline, and did not hesitate 
 to say that he abominated the band-meetings, 
 which he had formerly approved; and, adhering 
 faithfully himself to the church, he regretted the 
 separation which he foresaw, and disapproved of 
 John's conduct, in taking steps which manifestly 
 tended to facilitate it. Indeed, Mr. Wesley laid 
 aside, at last, all those pretensions by which he had 
 formerly excused himself; and, in the year 1787* 
 with the assistance of two of his clerical coadju- 
 tors, Mr. Creighton and Mr. Peard Dickinson, he 
 ordained two of his preachers, and consecrated 
 Mather a bishop or superintendent. But this de- 
 cided difference of opinion produced no diminution 
 
DEATH OF CHARLES WESLEY. 559 
 
 of love between the two brothers. They had 
 agreed to differ ; and, to the last, John was not 
 more jealous of his own authority, than Charles 
 was solicitous that he should preserve it. " Keep 
 it while you live," he said, " and after your death, 
 detur digniori, or rather, dignioribus. You cannot 
 settle the succession : you cannot divine how God 
 will settle it." Charles, though he attained to his 
 eightieth year, was a valetudinarian through the 
 greatest part of his life, inconsequence, it is believed, 
 of having injured his constitution by close applica- 
 tion and excessive abstinence at Oxford. He had 
 always dreaded the act of dying; and his prayer was, 
 that God would grant him patience and an easy 
 death. A calmer frame of mind, and an easier pas- 
 sage, could not have been granted him ; the powers 
 of life were fairly worn out, and, without any dis- 
 ease, he fell asleep. By his own desire he was buried, 
 not in his brother's burying-ground, because it was 
 not consecrated, but in the churchyard of Mary-le- 
 bone, the parish in which he resided ; and his pall 
 was supported by eight clergymen of the Church 
 of England. 
 
 It was reported that Charles had said, his bro- 
 ther w r ould not outlive him more than a year. The 
 prediction might have been hazarded with suffi- 
 cient likelihood of its fulfilment ; for John was 
 then drawing near the grave. Upon his eighty- 
 sixth birthday, he says, " I now find I grow old. 
 My sight is decayed, so that I cannot read a small 
 print, unless in a strong light. My strength is de- 
 cayed j so that I walk much slower than I did 
 
560 WESLEY IN OLD AGE. 
 
 some years since. My memory of names, whether 
 of persons or places, is decayed, till I stop a little 
 to recollect them. What I should be afraid of is, 
 if I took thought for the morrow, that my body 
 should weigh down my mind, and create either 
 stubbornness, by the decrease of my understand- 
 ing, or peevishness, by the increase of bodily in- 
 firmities. But thou shalt answer for me, O Lord, 
 my God I" His strength now diminished so much, 
 that he found it difficult to preach more than 
 twice a-day ; and for many weeks he abstained from 
 his five o'clock morning sermons, because a slow 
 and settled fever parched his mouth. Finding 
 himself a little better, he resumed the practice, 
 and hoped to hold on a little longer ; but, at the 
 beginning of the year 1 790, he writes, " I am now 
 an old man, decayed from head to foot. My eyes 
 are dim ; my right hand shakes much ; my mouth 
 is hot and dry every morning ; I have a lingering 
 fever almost every day; my motion is weak and 
 slow. However, blessed be God ! I do not slack 
 my labours: I can preach and write still." In 
 the middle of the same year, he closed his cash 
 account-book with the following words, written 
 with a tremulous hand, so as to be scarcely legible : 
 " For upwards of eighty-six years I have kept my 
 accounts exactly : 1 will not attempt it any longer, 
 being satisfied with the continual conviction, that 
 I save all I can, and give all I can ; that is, all I 
 have." His strength was now quite gone, and no 
 glasses would help his sight. " But I feel no 
 pain," he says, " from head to foot -, only, it seems, 
 
 14 
 
DEATH OF WESLEY. 56l 
 
 nature is exhausted, and, humanly speaking, will 
 sink more and more, till 
 
 " The weary springs of life stand still at last." 
 
 On the 1st of February, 1791, he wrote his last 
 letter to America. It shows how anxious he was 
 that his followers should consider themselves as 
 one united body. " See," said he, " that you 
 never give place to one thought of separating from 
 your brethren in Europe. Lose no opportunity of 
 declaring to all men, that the Methodists are one 
 people in all the world, and that it is their full de- 
 termination so to continue." He expressed, also, 
 a sense that his hour was almost come. " Those 
 that desire to write," said he, " or say any thing to 
 me, have no time to lose ; for time has shaken me 
 by the hand, and death is not far behind ." — words 
 which his father had used in one of the last letters 
 that he addressed to his sons at Oxford. On 
 the 17th of that month, he took cold after preach- 
 ing at Lambeth. For some days he struggled 
 against an increasing fever, and continued to 
 preach till the Wednesday following, when he 
 delivered his last sermon. From that time he 
 became daily weaker and more lethargic, and on 
 the ^d of March, he died in peace ; being in the 
 eighty-eighth year of his age, and the sixty-fifth 
 of his ministry. 
 
 During his illness he said, " Let me be buried in 
 nothing but what is woollen ; and let my corpse 
 be carried in my coffin into the chapel." Some 
 years before, he had prepared a vault for himself, 
 
 vol. 11. o o 
 
562 wesley's funeral. 
 
 and for those itinerant preachers who might die in 
 London. In his will he directed that six poor 
 men should have twenty shillings each for carrying 
 his body to the grave ; "for I particularly de- 
 sire," said he, " there may be no hearse, no coach, 
 no escutcheon, no pomp except the tears of them 
 that loved me, and are following me to Abraham's 
 bosom. I solemnly adjure my executors, in the 
 name of God, punctually to observe this." At 
 the desire of many of his friends, his body was 
 carried into the chapel the day preceding the in- 
 terment, and there lay in a kind of state becoming 
 the person, dressed in his clerical habit, with gown, 
 cassock, and band ; the old clerical cap on his 
 head, a Bible in one hand, and a white hand- 
 kerchief in the other. The face was placid, and 
 the expression which death had fixed upon his 
 venerable features, was that of a serene and hea- 
 venly smile. The crowds who flocked to see him 
 were so great, that it was thought prudent, for 
 fear of accidents, to accelerate the funeral, and 
 perform it between five and six in the morning. 
 The intelligence, however, could not be kept 
 entirely secret, and several hundred persons at- 
 tended at that unusual hour. Mr. Richardson, 
 who performed the service, had been one of his 
 preachers almost thirty years. When he came 
 to that part of the service, " Forasmuch as it hath 
 pleased Almighty God to take unto himself the 
 soul of our dear brother" his voice changed, and 
 he substituted the word father; and the feeling 
 with which he did this was -such., that the congre- 
 14. 
 
CONCLUSION. 563 
 
 gation who were shedding silent tears, burst at 
 once into loud weeping. 
 
 Mr. Wesley left no other property behind him 
 than the copyright and current editions of his 
 works, and this he bequeathed to the use of the 
 Connection after his debts should have been paid. 
 There was a debt of one thousand six hundred 
 pounds to the family of his brother Charles ; and 
 he had drawn also for some years upon the fund 
 for superannuated preachers, to support those who 
 were in full employment. When he was told that 
 some persons murmured at this, he used to an- 
 swer " what can I do ? must the work stand still ? 
 the men and their families cannot starve. I have 
 no money. Here it is ; we must use it ; it is for 
 the Lord's work." The money thus appropriated 
 and the interest due upon it, amounted to a con- 
 siderable sum. In building chapels, also, the ex- 
 penses of the Connection outran its means, so that 
 its finances were left in an embarrassed state. The 
 number of his preachers at the time of his death 
 amounted in the British dominions to 318, in the 
 United States to 198, the number of members in 
 the British dominions was 76,968, in the United 
 States, 57,621. 
 
 Such was the life, and such the labours of John 
 Wesley ; a man of great views, great energy, and 
 great virtues. That he awakened a zealous spirit, 
 not only in his own community, but in a Church 
 which needed something to quicken it, is acknow- 
 
 oo^ 
 
564 CONCLUSION. 
 
 ledged by the members of that Church itself ; that 
 he encouraged enthusiasm and extravagance, lent 
 a ready ear to false and impossible relations, and 
 spread superstition as well as piety, would hardly 
 be denied by the candid and judicious among his 
 own people. In its immediate effects the powerful 
 principle of religion, which he and his preachers 
 diffused, has reclaimed many from a course of sin, 
 has supported many in poverty, sickness, and afflic- 
 tion, and has imparted to many a triumphant joy 
 in death. What Wesley says of the miracles 
 wrought at the tomb of the Abbe Paris, may fitly 
 be applied here ; "In many of these instances, 
 I see great superstition, as well as strong faith : 
 but God makes allowance for invincible ignor- 
 ance, and blesses the faith, notwithstanding the 
 superstition." Concerning the general and re- 
 moter consequences of Methodism, opinions will 
 differ. They who consider the wide-spreading 
 schism to which it has led, and who know that the 
 welfare of the country is vitally connected with its 
 church-establishment, may think that the evil over- 
 balances the good. But the good may endure, and 
 the evil be only for a time. In every other sect 
 there is an inherent spirit of hostility to the Church 
 of England^ too often and too naturally connected 
 with diseased political opinions. So it was in the 
 beginning, and so it will continue to be, as long as 
 those sects endure. But Methodism is free from 
 this. The extravagancies which accompanied its 
 growth are no longer encouraged, and will alto- 
 gether be discountenanced, as their real nature is 
 
 12 
 
CONCLUSION. 565 
 
 understood. This cannot be doubted. It is in the 
 natural course of things that it should purify itself 
 gradually from whatever is objectionable in its in- 
 stitutions. Nor is it beyond the bounds of rea- 
 sonable hope, that conforming itself to the original 
 intention of its founders, it may again draw to- 
 wards the establishment from which it has seceded, 
 and deserve to be recognized as an auxiliary insti- 
 tution, its ministers being analogous to the regulars, 
 and its members to the tertiaries and various confra- 
 ternities of the Romish Church. The obstacles to 
 this are surely not insuperable, perhaps not so diffi- 
 cult as they may appear. And were this effected, 
 John Wesley would then be ranked, not only 
 among the most remarkable and influential men of 
 his age, but among the great benefactors of his 
 country and his kind. 
 
 o o 3 
 
NOTES 
 
 AND 
 
 ILLUSTRAT IONS 
 
 O '!< 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 NOTE I. Page 27. 
 Charles Wesley accused of praying for the Pretender. 
 
 1 have read somewhere a more comical blunder upon 
 this subject : a preacher reading in Jeremiah, x. 22., " Be- 
 hold the noise of the bruit is come, and a great com- 
 motion from the North country," took it for granted that 
 the rebellion in Scotland was meant, and that the brute 
 was the Pretender. 
 
 NOTE II. Page 73. 
 
 Lay Preachers- 
 
 The question whether, in the ancient Church, laymen 
 were ever allowed by authority to make sermons to. the 
 people, is investigated by Bingham with his usual eru- 
 dition. " That they did it in a private way, as catechists, 
 in their catechetick schools, at Alexandria and other places, 
 there is no question. For Origen read lectures in the ca- 
 techetick school of Alexandria, before he was in orders, 
 by the appointment of Demetrius ; and St. Jerome says, 
 there was a long succession of famous men in that school, 
 who were called ecclesiastical doctors upon that account. 
 But this was a different thing from their public preaching 
 in the church. Yet in some cases a special commission 
 was given to a layman to preach, and then he might do it 
 by the authority of the bishop's commission for that time. 
 Thus Eusebius says, Origen was approved by Alexander, 
 bishop of Jerusalem, and Theotistus of Caesarea, to preach 
 and expound the Scriptures publicly in the church, when 
 
570 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 he was only a layman . And when Demetrius of Alexandria 
 made a remonstrance against this, as an innovation that 
 had never been seen or heard of before, that a layman 
 should preach to the people in the presence of bishops, 
 Alexander replied in a letter, and told him he was much 
 mistaken ; for it was an usual thing in many places, where 
 men were well qualified to edify the brethren, for bishops 
 to intreat them to preach to the people." — Antiquities of 
 the Christian Church, book xiv. ch. 4. § 4. 
 
 NOTE III. Page 109. 
 
 Thomas Olivers. 
 
 " For four or five years," says this person, " I was 
 greatly entangled with a farmer's daughter, whose sister 
 was married to Sir I. P. of N — wt — n, in that country. 
 What 
 
 " Strange reverse of human fates !" 
 
 for one sister was wooed by, and married to a baronet, 
 who was esteemed one of the finest men in the country. 
 When she died, Sir I. was almost distracted. Presently 
 after her funeral, he published an elegy on her of a thousand 
 verses ! For some time he daily visited her in her vault, 
 and at last took her up, and kept her in his bed-chamber 
 for several years. 
 
 " On the other hand, her sister, who was but little inferior 
 in person, fell into the hands of a most insignificant young 
 man, who was a means of driving her almost to an untimely 
 end." 
 
 The Baronet whom Olivers alludes to was probably Sir 
 John Price of Buckland. A certain Bridget Bostock was 
 famous in the county of Cheshire, in his time, for perform- 
 ing wonderful cures, and he applied to her to raise his wife 
 from the dead. His letters upon this extraordinary subject 
 maybe found in the Monthly Magazine, vol. xxvi. pp. 30 ; 
 31. The person by whom they were communicated to that 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 571 
 
 journal says, that they exposed the writer to the severest 
 ridicule ; but in any good mind they would rather excite 
 compassion. Sir John fully believed that this woman 
 could work miracles, and reasoning upon that belief he 
 applied to her in full faith. 
 
 NOTE IV. Page 124. 
 
 What Haime saw was certainly a bustard. 
 
 " The following very curious and authentic account of 
 two bustards, was published in the Gentleman's Magazine 
 for the year 1805, by Mr. Tucker, school-master at Tils- 
 head. ' A man, about four o'clock in the morning, on 
 some day -in June, 1801, was coming from Tinhead to 
 Tilshead, when near a place called Askings Penning, one 
 mile from Tilshead, he saw over his head a large bird, 
 which afterwards proved to be a bustard. He had not pro- 
 ceeded far, before it lighted on the ground, immediately 
 before his horse, which it indicated an inclination to attack, 
 and in fact very soon began the onset. The man alighted, 
 and getting hold of the bird, endeavoured to secure it ; and 
 after struggling with it nearly an hour succeeded, and 
 brought it alive to the house of Mr. Bartlett, at Tilshead, 
 where it continued till the month of August, when it was 
 sold to Lord Temple for the sum of thirty-one guineas. 
 
 M About a fortnight subsequent to the taking this bus- 
 tard, Mr. Grant, a farmer residing at Tilshead, returning 
 from Warminster market, was attacked in a similar manner 
 near Tilshead Lodge, by another bird of the same species. 
 His horse being spirited, took fright and ran offj which 
 obliged Mr. Grant to relinquish his design of endeavouring 
 to take the bird. The circumstance of two birds (whose 
 nature has been always considered, like that of a turkey, 
 domestic) attacking a man and horse, is so very singular, 
 that it deserves recording ; and particularly as it is probably 
 the last record we shall find of the existence of this bird 
 upon our downs."— Sir Richard Hoare's Ancient Wiltshire > 
 p. 94. Note. 
 
572 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " The birds certainly had their nest near, and there is 
 nothing more wonderful in the fact, than what every sports- 
 man has seen in the partridge, when the mother attempts 
 to draw him away from her young. But it was with the 
 greatest pleasure that I recollected this anecdote in reading 
 the Life of John Haime, not merely as' explaining the in- 
 cident in the text, but as proving his veracity; for un- 
 doubtedly, without this explanation, many readers would 
 have supposed the story to be a mere falsehood, which 
 would have discredited the writer's testimony in every other 
 part of his narration. 
 
 NOTE V. Page 170. 
 
 The renewal of the image of God in the heart of man. 
 
 Mr. Toplady has a curious paper upon this subject. 
 
 " When a portrait painter takes a likeness, there must be 
 an original from whom to take it. Here the original are 
 God, and Christ. c When I awake up after thy like- 
 ness,' &c. ; and, we are c predestinated to be conformed to 
 the image of his Son.' 
 
 " The painter chooses the materials on which he will de- 
 lineate his piece. There are paintings on wood, on glass, 
 on metals, on ivory, on canvass. So God chooses and 
 selects the persons, on whom his uncreated spirit shall, 
 with the pencil of effectual grace, re-delineate that holy 
 likeness which Adam lost. Among these are some, whose 
 natural capacities, and acquired improvements, are not of 
 the first rate : there the image of God is painted on wood. 
 Others of God's people have not those quick sensibilities, 
 and poignant feelings, by which many are distinguished : 
 there the Holy Spirit's painting is on marble. Others are 
 permitted to fall from the ardour of their first love, and to 
 deviate from their stedfastness : there the Holy Spirit paints 
 on glass, which, perhaps, the first stone of temptation may 
 injure. But the Celestial Artist will, in time, repair those 
 breaches, and restore the frail, brittle Christian, to his 
 original enjoyments, and to more than his original purity ; 
 and, what may seem truly wonderful, Divine Grace restores 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 5J3 
 
 the picture by breaking it over again. It is the broken- 
 hearted sinner to whom God will impart the comforts of 
 salvation. - 
 
 " The ancients painted only in water-colours; but the 
 moderns (from about A. D. 1320) have added beauty and 
 durability to their pictures, by painting them in oil. Ap- 
 plicable to hypocrites and true believers. An hypocrite 
 may outwardly bear something that resembles the image 
 of God ; but it is only in fresco, or water-colours, which 
 do not last; and are, at best, laid on by the hand of dissi- 
 mulation. But (if I may accommodate so familiar an idea to 
 so high a subject) the Holy Spirit paints in oil ; he accom- 
 panies his work with unction and with power ; and hence it 
 shall be crowned with honours, and praise, and glory, at 
 Christ's appearing." — 
 
 The remainder of the paper is left apposite. 
 
 NOTE VI. Page 171. 
 The New Birth. 
 
 " The ground andreason of the expression," says Wesley, 
 " are easy to be understood. When we undergo this great 
 change, we may, with much propriety, be said to be born 
 again, because there is so near a resemblance between the 
 circumstances of the natural and of the spiritual birth; so 
 that to consider the circumstances of the natural birth, is 
 the most easy way to understand the spiritual. 
 
 1 ' The child which is not yet born subsists indeed by the 
 air, as does every thing which has life, but feels it not, nor 
 any thing else unless in a very dull and imperfect manner. 
 It hears little, if at all, the organs of hearing being as yet 
 closed up. It sees nothing, having its eyes fast shut, and 
 being surrounded with utter darkness. There are, it may 
 be, some faint beginnings of life, when the time of its birth 
 draws nigh ; and some motion consequent thereon, whereby 
 it. is distinguished from a mere mass of matter. But it has 
 no senses ; all these avenues of the soul are hitherto quite 
 
,574 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 shut up. Of consequence, it has scarcely any intercourse 
 with this visible world ; nor any knowledge, or conception, 
 or idea, of the things that occur therein. 
 
 " The reason why he that is not yet born is wholly a 
 stranger to the visible world, is, not because it is afar off; 
 it is very nigh ; it surrounds him on every side : but partly 
 because he has not those senses, they are not yet opened in 
 his soul, whereby alone it is possible to hold commerce with 
 the material world; and partly because so thick a veil is 
 cast between, through which he can discern nothing. 
 
 " But no sooner is the child born into the world than he 
 exists in a quite different manner. He now feels the air, 
 with which he is surrounded, and which pours into him from 
 every side, as fast as he alternately breathes it back to sustain 
 the flame of life, and hence springs a continual increase of 
 strength, of motion, and of sensation: all the bodily senses 
 being now awakened, and furnished with their proper 
 objects. 
 
 " His eyes are now opened to perceive the light, which 
 silently flowing in upon them, discovers not only itself, but 
 an infinite variety of things with which before he was 
 wholly unacquainted. His ears are unclosed, and sounds 
 rush in with endless diversity. Every sense is employed 
 upon such objects as are peculiarly suitable to it, and by 
 these inlets, the soul, having an open intercourse with the 
 visible world, acquires more and more knowledge of sen- 
 sible things, of all the things which are under the sun. 
 
 "So it is with him that is born of God. Before that 
 great change is wrought, although he subsists by him in 
 whom all that have life live, and move, and have their being, 
 yet he is not sensible of God ; he does not feel, he has 
 no inward consciousness of his presence. He does not 
 perceive that divine breath of life, without which he can- 
 not subsist a moment. Nor is he sensible of any of the 
 things of God. They make no impression upon his soul. 
 God is continually calling to him from on high, but he 
 heareth not ; his ears are shut, so that the « voice of the 
 charmer,' is lost on him, ' charm he ever so wisely.' He 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 5^5 
 
 seeth not the things of the Spirit of God, the eyes of his un- 
 derstanding being closed, and utter darkness covering his 
 whole soul, surrounding him on every side. It is true, he 
 may have some faint dawnings of life, some small beginnings 
 of the spiritual motion; but as yet he has no spiritual 
 senses capable of discerning spiritual objects; consequently 
 he discerneth not the things of the Spirit of God. He 
 cannot know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 
 " Hence he has scarce any knowledge of the invisible 
 world, as he has scarce any intercourse with it. Not that 
 it is afar off. No : he is in the midst of it : it encompasses 
 him round about. The other world, as we usually term it, 
 is not far from any of us. It is above, and beneath, and on 
 every side : only the natural man discerneth it not ; 
 partly because he hath no spiritual senses, whereby alone 
 we can discern the things of God ; partly because so thick 
 a veil is interposed, as he knows not how to penetrate. 
 
 (i But when he is born of God, born of the Spirit, how is 
 the manner of existence changed ! His whole soul is now 
 sensible of God, and he can say, by sure experience, 
 1 Thou art about my bed, and about my path ;' I feel thee 
 * in all my ways.' Thou besettest me behind and before, 
 and layest thy hand upon me. The spirit or breath of God 
 is immediately inspired, breathed into the new-born soul. 
 And the same breath, which comes from, returns to God : 
 as it is continually received by faith, so it is continually 
 rendered back by love, by prayer, and praise, and thanks- 
 giving ; love, and praise, and prayer, being the breath of 
 every soul which is truly born of God. And by this new 
 kind of spiritual respiration, spiritual life is not only sus- 
 tained, but increased day by day, together with spiritual 
 strength, and motion, and sensation. All the senses of 
 the soul being now awake, and capable of discerning spi- 
 ritual good and evil. 
 
 " The eyes of his understanding are now open, and he 
 seeth Him that is invisible. He sees whatis the exceeding 
 greatness of his power, and of his love towards them that 
 believe. He sees that God is merciful to him, a sinner, 
 
.576 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 that he is reconciled through the Son of his love. He 
 clearly perceives both the pardoning love of God and all 
 his exceeding great and precious promises. God, who 
 commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined, 
 and doth shine in his heart, to enlighten him with the 
 knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 
 All the darkness is now passed away, and he abides in the 
 light of God's countenance. 
 
 ';' His ears are now opened, and the voice of God no 
 longer calls in vain. He hears and obeys the heavenly 
 calling: he 'knows the voice of his Shepherd.' All his 
 spiritual senses being now awakened, he has a clear inter- 
 course with the invisible world. And hence he knows 
 more and more of the things which before ' it could not 
 enter into his heart to conceive.' He now knows what the 
 peace of God is : what is joy in the Holy Ghost, what the 
 love of God which is shed abroad in the hearts of them that 
 believe in him through Christ Jesus. Thus the veil being- 
 removed, which before intercepted the light and voice, the 
 knowledge and love of God, he who is born of the Spirit, 
 dwelling in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him." — 
 Wesley's Works, vol. vii. p. 268. 
 
 NOTE VII. Page 172. 
 
 He entangled himself in Contradictions. 
 
 " The expression being born again, was not first used 
 by our Lord in his conversation with Nicodemus. It was 
 in common use among the Jews when our Saviour ap- 
 peared among them. When an adult heathen was con- 
 vinced that the Jewish religion was of God, and desired to 
 join therein, it was the custom to baptize him first, before 
 he was admitted to circumcision. And when he was 
 baptized, he was said to be born again ; by which they 
 meant, that he who was before a child of the devil, was now 
 adopted into the family of God, and accounted one of his 
 children. — vol. vii. p. 296. 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 577 
 
 Yet, in the same sermon, Wesley affirms, " that Baptism 
 is not the New Birth, that they are not one and the same 
 thing. Many indeed seem to imagine that they are just 
 the same ; at least they speak as if they thought so ; but I 
 do not know that this opinion is publicly avowed, by any 
 denomination of Christians whatever. Certainly j it is not 
 by any within these kingdoms, whether of the Established 
 Church or dissenting from it. The judgment of the latter is 
 clearly declared in their large catechism : " Q. What are 
 the parts of a Sacrament ? A. The parts of a Sacrament are 
 two ; the one an outward and sensible sign, the other an in- 
 ward and spiritual grace signified. Q. What is Baptism? 
 A. Baptism is a sacrament, wherein Christ hath ordained 
 the washing with water to be a sign and seal of regeneration 
 by his Spirit." Here it is manifest, baptism, the sign, is 
 spoken of as distinct from regeneration, the thing signified." 
 
 Where was Wesley's logic ? or where, his fairness ? Can 
 anything be more evident, than that this catechism de- 
 scribes regeneration as the inward and spiritual grace, and 
 the act of baptism (sprinkling or immersion) as the outward 
 and visible sign. What follows is as bad. 
 
 " In the Church Catechism likewise, the judgment of our 
 Church is declared with the utmost clearness. e Q. What 
 meanest though by this word Sacrament ? A. I mean an 
 outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. 
 Q. What is the outward part or form in baptism ? A. 
 Water, wherein the person is baptised in the name of the 
 Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Q. What is the inward 
 parts, or thing signified ? A. A death unto sin, and a new 
 birth unto righteousness.' Nothing therefore is plainer, 
 than that, according to the church of England, baptism is 
 not the New Birth." 
 
 I do not believe that an instance of equal blindness or 
 disingenuity (whichever it may be thought) can be found in 
 all the other parts of Wesley's works. So plain is it that 
 the words of the catechism mean precisely what Wesley 
 affirms they do not mean, that, in the very next page, he 
 contradicts himself in the clearest manner, and says, (( it is 
 
 VOL. II. pp 
 
578 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS, 
 
 Certain, our church supposes, that all who are baptized in 
 their infancy are at the same time born again. And it is 
 allowed, that the whole office for the baptism of infants pro- 
 ceeds upon this supposition. Nor is it an objection of any 
 weight against this, that we cannot comprehend how this 
 work can be wrought in infants." Vol.. vii. p. 302. 
 
 NOTE VIII. Page 174. 
 Instantaneous Conversion. 
 
 "An observation," says Toplady, " which I met with in 
 reading Downmane's Christian Warfare, struck me much : 
 speaking of the Holy Spirit as the sealer of the Elect, he 
 asks, how is it possible to receive the seal without feeling 
 the impression." 
 
 " Lord," says Fuller in one of his Scripture Observations, 
 " I read of my Saviour, that when he was in the wilderness, 
 then the devil leaveth Mm, and behold angels came and minis- 
 tered unto him. A great change in a little time. No twi- 
 light betwixt night and day. No purgatory condition be- 
 twixt hell and heaven, but instantly, when out devil, in 
 angel. Such is the case of every solitary soul. It will make 
 company for itself. A musing mind will not stand neuter a 
 minute, but presently side with legions of good or bad 
 thoughts. Grant, therefore, that my soul, which ever will 
 have some, may never have bad company." i 
 
 NOTE IX. Page 175. 
 
 Salvation not to besought by Works. 
 
 This doctrine is stated with perilous indiscretion in one 
 of the Moravian hymns. 
 
 When any, thro' a beam of light, 
 Can see and own they are not right, 
 But enter on a legal strife, 
 Amend their former course of life, 
 ,, And work and toil, and sweat from day to day. 
 
 Such, to their Saviour quite mistake the way. 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 579 
 
 NOTE X. Page 177. 
 
 Faith, 
 
 In methodistical and mystical biography, the reader will 
 sometimes be reminded of these lines in Ovid. 
 
 In prece totus eram, ccelestia numina sensi, 
 Lcstaque purpy,rea luce refulsit humus. , 
 
 Non equidem vidi valeant mendacia vatum !) 
 Te Dea ; necfueras adspicienda viro. 
 
 Sed qvus nescieram, quorumque errore tenebar, 
 Cognita sunt nullo prcecipiente mihi. 
 
 Ovid, Fast. vi. 351— -a54» 
 
 NOTE XL Page 181, 
 
 Assurance. 
 
 There is a good story of assurance in Belknap's History 
 of New Hampshire. iC A certain captain, John Underfill!, 
 in the days of Puritanism, affirmed, that having long lain 
 under a spirit of bondage, he could get no assurance ; till 
 at length, as he was taking a pipe of tobacco, the Spirit set 
 home upon him an absolute promise of free grace, with such 
 assurance and joy, that he had never since doubted of his 
 good estate, neither should he, whatever sins he might fall 
 into. And he endeavoured to prove, ' that as the Lord 
 was pleased to convert Saul while he was persecuting, so 
 he might manifest himself to him while making a moderate 
 use of the good creature tobacco !' This was one of the 
 things for which he was questioned, and censured by the 
 
 elders at Boston." Vol. i. p. 42. 
 
 " Another," says South, " flatters himself, that he has 
 
 lived in full assurance of his salvation for ten or twenty, 
 
 or, perhaps, thirty years ; that is, in other words, the man 
 
 has been ignorant and confident very long." 
 
 ?p2 
 
580 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 NOTE XII. Page 182. 
 
 Perfection. 
 
 The Gospel Magazine contains a likely anecdote con- 
 cerning this curious doctrine. " A lady of my acquaint- 
 ance," says the writer, " had, in the early stage of her reli- 
 gious profession, very closely attached herself to a society 
 of avowed Arminians, she had imbibed all their notions, 
 and, among the rest, that of sinless perfection. What she 
 had been taught to believe attainable, she at last concluded 
 she had, herself, attained as perfectly as any of the perfect 
 class in Mr. Wesley's societies ; and she accordingly went 
 so far as to profess she had obtained what they call the 
 " second blessing," that is, an eradication of all sin and a 
 heart filled with nothing but pure and perfect love. A 
 circumstance, however, not long after occurred, which gave 
 a complete shock to her self-righteous presumption, as well 
 as to the principles from whence it sprung. Her husband 
 having one day contradicted her opinion and controuled 
 her will, in a matter where he thought himself authorised 
 to do both one and the other, the perfect lady felt herself 
 so extremely angry, that, as she declared to me, she could 
 have boxed his ears, and had great difficulty to refrain from 
 some act declarative of the emotions of rising passion and 
 resentment. Alarmed at what she felt, and not knowing 
 how to account for such unhallowed sensations in a heart, 
 in which, as she thought, all sin had been done away, she 
 ran for explanation to the leader of the perfect band. To 
 her she related ingenuously all that passed in the interview 
 with her husband. The band-leader, instructed in the 
 usual art of administering consolation, though at the ex- 
 pense of truth and rectitude, replied, ( What you felt on 
 that occasion, my dear, was nothing but a little animal 
 nature !' My friend being a lady of too much sense, and 
 too much honesty to be imposed upon by such a delusory 
 explanation, exclaimed, e Animal nature ! No ; it was 
 animal devil !' From that moment she bid adieu to per- 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 581 
 
 fection, and its concomitant delusions, as well as to those 
 who are led by them." 
 
 (( Gnat-strainers," says Toplady in one of his sermons, 
 " are too often camel-swallowers ; and the Pharisaical mantle 
 of superstitious austerity is, very frequently, a cover for a 
 cloven foot. Beware then, of driving too furiously at first 
 setting out. Take the cool of the day. Begin as you can 
 hold on. I knew a lady, who to prove herself perfect, 
 ripped off her flounces, and would not wear an ear-ring, a 
 necklace, a ring, or an inch of lace. Ruffles were Baby- 
 lonish. Powder was Anti-christian. A riband was carnal. 
 A snuff-box smelt of the bottomless pit. And yet, under 
 all this parade of outside humility, the fair ascetic was — 
 but I forbear entering into particulars : suffice it to say, 
 that she was a concealed Antinomian. And I have known, 
 too many similar instances." 
 
 NOTE XIII. Page 186. 
 
 Ministry of Angels. 
 
 Upon this subject Charles Wesley has thus expressed? 
 himself, in a sermon upon Psalm xci. 11. " He shall give 
 Ms Angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy >ways" 
 
 Ci By these perfections, strength and wisdom, they are 
 well able to preserve us either from the approach (if that 
 be more profitable for us) or in the attack of any evil. Bv 
 their wisdom they discern whatever either obstructs or pro- 
 motes our real advantage : by their strength they effectually 
 repel the one and secure a free course to the other : by the 
 first, they choose means conducive to these ends ; by the 
 second, they put them in execution. One particular method 
 of preserving good men, which we may reasonably suppose 
 these wise beings sometimes choose, and by their strength 
 put in execution, is the altering some material cause that 
 would have a pernicious effect ; the purifying (for instance) 
 tainted air, which would otherwise produce a contagious 
 distemper. And this they may easily do, either by in- 
 
 pp3 
 
582 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 creasing the current of it, so as naturally to cleanse its- 
 putridity ; or, by mixing with it some other substance, so 
 to correct its hurtful qualities, and render it salubrious to 
 human bodies. Another method they may be supposed to 
 adopt when their commission is not so general ; when they 
 are authorized to preserve some few persons from a common 
 calamity. It then is probable that they do not alter the 
 cause, but the subject on which it is to work; that theydb 
 not lessen the strength of the one, but increase that of the 
 other. Thus, too, where they are not allowed to prevent, 
 they may remove* pain or sickness ; thus the angel restored 
 Daniel in a moment* when neither strength or breath re- 
 mained in him. 
 
 " By these means, by changing either our bodies or the 
 material causes that use to affect them, they may easily 
 defend us from all bodily evils, so far as is expedient for 
 us. A third method they may be conceived to employ to 
 defend us from spiritual dangers, by applying themselves 
 immediately to the soul to raise or allay our passions ; and, 
 indeed, this province seems more natural to them than 
 either of the former. How a spiritual being can act upon 
 matter geems more unaccountable than how it can act on 
 spirit : that one immaterial being, by touching another, 
 should increase or lessen its motion ; that an angel should 
 retard or quicken the channel wherein the passions of 
 angelic substance flow, no more excites our astonishment 
 than that one piece of matter should haVe the same effect 
 on its kindred substance; or that a flood-gate, or other 
 material instrument, should affect the course of a river : 
 rather, considering how contagious the nature of the pas- 
 sions is, the wonder is on the other side ; not how they can 
 avoid to affect him at all, but how they can avoid affecting 
 them more ; how they can continue so near us, who are 
 so subject to catch them, without spreading the flames 
 which burn in themselves. And a plain instance of their 
 power to allay human passions is afforded us in the case 
 of Daniel, when he beheld that gloriously terrible mi- 
 nister, whose ' face was as the appearance of lightning, 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 583 
 
 and his eyes as lamps of fire; his arms and feet like 
 polished brass, and his voice as the voice of a multitude,' 
 X. 6. ; when the tears and sorrows of the Prophet were 
 turned so strong upon him, that he was in a deep sleep, 
 void of sense and motion. Yet this fear, these turbulent 
 passions, the angel allayed in a moment ; when they were 
 hurrying on with the utmost impetuosity, he checked them 
 in their course ; so that immediately after we find Daniel 
 desiring the continuance of that converse which before he 
 was utterly unable to sustain. 
 
 " The same effect was, doubtless, wrought on all those 
 to whom these superior beings, on their first appearance, 
 used this salutation — ' Fear not ;' which would have been 
 a mere insult and cruel mockery upon human weakness, 
 had they not, with that advice, given the power to follow 
 it. Nearly allied to this method of influencing the passions, 
 is the last I intend to mention, by which the angels (it is 
 probable) preserve good men, especially in or from spiritual 
 dangers. And this is by applying themselves to their 
 reason, by instilling good thoughts into their hearts ; either 
 such as are good in their own nature, as tend to our 
 improvement in virtue, or such as are contrary to the sug- 
 gestions of flesh and blood, by which we are tempted to 
 vice. It is not unlikely that we are indebted to them, not 
 only for most of those reflections which suddenly dart into 
 our minds, we know not how, having no connection with 
 any thing that went before them; but for many of those also 
 which seem entirely our own, and naturally consequent 
 from the preceding." 
 
 NOTE XIV. Page 187. 
 
 Agency of evil Spirits. 
 
 " Let us consider," says Wesley, ci what may be the 
 employment of unholy spirits from death to the resur- 
 rection. We'cannot doubt but the moment they leave the 
 body, they find themselves surrounded by spirits of their 
 
 pp4 
 
584 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 own kind, probably human as well as diabolical. What 
 power God may permit these to exercise over them, we do 
 not distinctly know. But it is not improbable, he may 
 suffer Satan to employ them, as he does his own angels, in 
 inflicting death, or evils of various kinds, on the men that 
 know not God. For this end they may raise storms by 
 sea or by land ; they may shoot meteors through the air ; 
 they may occasion earthquakes : and, in numberless ways, 
 afflict those whom they are not suffered to destroy. 
 Where they are not permitted to take away life, they may 
 inflict various diseases : and many of these, which we may 
 judge to be natural, are undoubtedly diabolical. I believe 
 this is frequently the case with lunatics. It is observable 
 that many of these, mentioned in Scripture, who are called 
 lunatics, by one of the Evangelists, are termed demoniacs 
 by another. One of the most eminent physicians I ever 
 knew, particularly in cases of insanity, the late Dr. Deacon, 
 was clearly of opinion, that this was the case with many, 
 if not with most lunatics. And it is no valid objection to 
 this, that these diseases are so often cured by natural 
 means ; for a wound inflicted by an evil 'spirit might be 
 cured as any other ; unless that spirit were permitted to 
 repeat the blow. 
 
 " May not some of these evil spirits be likewise em- 
 ployed, in conjunction with evil angels, in tempting wicked 
 men to sin, and in procuring occasions for them ? Yea, 
 and in tempting good men to sin, even after they have 
 escaped the corruption that is in the world- Herein, 
 doubtless, they put forth all their strength, and greatly glory 
 if they conquer." Vol. xi. p. 31. 
 
 " The ingenious Dr. Cheyne," says one of Mr. Wesley's 
 correspondents, " reckons all gloomy wrong- headedness, 
 and spurious free-thinking, so many symptoms of bodily 
 diseases: and, I think, says, the human organs, in some 
 nervous distempers, may, perhaps, be rendered fit for the 
 actuation of demons : and advises religion as an excellent 
 remedy. Nor is this unlikely to be my own case ; for a 
 nervous disease of some years' standing, rose to its height 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 585 
 
 in 1748, and I was attacked in proportion by irreligious 
 opinions. The medicinal part of his advice, a vegetable 
 diet, at last, cured my dreadful distemper. It isnatural to 
 think the spiritual part of his advice equally good : and 
 shall I neglect it, because I am now in health ? God 
 forbid ! — John Walsh.'''' Arminian Magazine, vol. ii. p. 433. 
 
 NOTE XV. Page 191. 
 Immortality of Animals. 
 
 On this point Wesley's bitterest opponent agreed with 
 him. se I will honestly confess," says Toplady, " that I 
 never yet heard one single argument urged against the 
 immortality of brutes which, if admitted, would not, mutatis 
 mutandis, be equally conclusive against the immortality of 
 man." 
 
 NOTE XVI. Page 207. 
 
 Itinerancy. 
 
 There are some things in the system of the Methodists 
 which very much resemble certain arrangements proposed 
 by John Knox and his colleagues in the First Book of Dis- 
 cipline. i( It was found necessary, says Dr. M'Crie, to 
 employ some persons in extraordinary and temporary 
 charges. As there was not a sufficient number of ministers 
 to supply the different parts of the country, that the people 
 might not be left altogether destitute of public worship and 
 instruction, certain pious persons who had received a com- 
 mon education, were appointed to read the Scriptures and 
 the Common Prayers. These were called Readers. In 
 large parishes persons of this description were also em- 
 ployed to relieve the ministers from a part of the public 
 service. If they advanced in knowledge, they were en- 
 couraged to add a few plain exhortations to the reading of 
 the Scriptures. In that case they were called Exhorters ; 
 but they were examined and admitted^ before entering upon 
 this employment. 
 
586 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " The same cause gave rise to another temporary ex- 
 pedient. Instead of fixing all the ministers in particular 
 charges it was judged proper, after supplying the principal 
 towns, to assign to the rest the superintendance of a large 
 district, over which they were appointed regularly to travel 
 for the purpose of preaching, of planting churches, and in- 
 specting the conduct of ministers, exhorters, and readers. 
 These were called Superintendants. The number originally 
 proposed was ten ; but owing to the scarcity of proper per- 
 sons, or rather to the want of necessary funds, there were 
 never more than six appointed. The deficiency was sup- 
 plied by Commissioners or Visitors, appointed from time 
 to time by the General Assembly." 
 
 Life of Knox, vol. ii. pp. 6, 7- 
 
 e< We were not the first itinerant preachers in England," 
 says Wesley ; " twelve were appointed by Queen Elizabeth 
 to travel continually, in order to spread true religion through 
 the kingdom. And the office and salary still continues, 
 though their work is little attended to. Mr. Milner, late 
 Vicar of Chipping, in Lancashire, was one of them." 
 
 Itinerant preaching (without referring to the obvious 
 fact, that the first preachers of Christianity in any country 
 must necessarily have been itinerant) is of a much earlier 
 origin than Wesley has here supposed. It was the especial 
 business of the Dominicans, and was practised by the other 
 mendicant orders, and by the Jesuits. And it was practised 
 long before the institution of these orders. 
 
 St. Cuthbert used to itinerate when he was abbot of 
 Melrose, as his predecessor St. Boisil had done before him : 
 and Bede tells us, that all persons eagerly flocked to listen 
 to these preachers. " Nee solum ipsi monasterio regularis 
 nitce monita, simul fy exempla prabebat ; sed et vulgus circum- 
 positum longe lateque a vita stultce consuetudinis ad ccelestium 
 gaudiorum convertere curabat amorem. Nam et multijldem 
 quam habebant, iniquisprofanabant operibus ; et aliqui etiam 
 tempore mortalitatis neglectisfldei sacramentis (quibus erant 
 imbutij ad erratica idololatrice medicamina concurrebant, 
 quasi missam a Deo conditore plagam, per incantafiones, vel 
 
 9 
 
#OTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 587 
 
 philacteria, vel alia qucelibet dcemoniacte artis arcana, coki* 
 here valerent. Ad utrorumqUe ergo corrigendum errorem, 
 crebro ipse de monasterio egressus, aliquotiens equo sedens, 
 sed sapius pedibus incedens, circumpositas veniebat ad villas, 
 et viam veritatis prcedicabat errantibus ; quod ipsum etiavt 
 Boisil suo tempore Jacere consueverat. Erat quippe moris 
 eo tempore popidis Anglorum, ut veniente in villam clerico 
 vel prresbytero, cuncti ad ejus impe?-ium, verbum audituri con- 
 Jluerent, libenter ea quce dicerentur audirent, libentius ea quae 
 audire et intelligere potcrant operando sequerentur. — Solebat 
 autem eamaximeloca peragrare, et illis prcedicare in viculis, 
 qui in arduis asperisque montihus procul positi, aliis horrori 
 erant ad visendum 3 et paupertate pariter ac rusticitate sua 
 doctorum prohibebant accessum : quos tamen ille, pio libentei* 
 mancipatus labori, tanta doctrina excolebat industrid, ut de 
 monasterio egrediens, scepe hebdomadd integrd, aliquando 
 duabus vel tribus, nonnunquam etiam mense pleno domum non 
 rediret : sed demoratus in montanis, plebem rusticam verbo 
 pradicationis simul et exemplo virtutis ad ccelestia vocaret." 
 
 Beda, 1. 4. c. 27= 
 
 St. Chad used to itinerate on foot. " Consecratus ergo in 
 episcopatum Ceadda, maximam mox ccepit Ecclesiastics veri- 
 tati et castitati curam impendere ; humilitati, contincntice, 
 lectioni operant, dare ; oppida, rura, casas, vicos, castella, 
 propter evangelizandum non equitando, sed Ap^stolorum more 
 pedibus incedendoperagrare." (Beda, 1.3. c. 28.) In this 
 he followed the example of his master Aidan, till the 
 primate compelled him to ride : Et quia moris erat eidem 
 reverendissimo antistiti opus Evangelii magis ambulando per 
 loca, quam equitando perjicere, jussit eum Theodorus, ubi- 
 cumque longius iter instarel, equitare ; multumque renitentem 
 studio et amove pii laboris, ipse eum manu sw levavit in 
 equum ; quia nimirum sanctum virum esse ccmperit, atque 
 equo vehi quo esset necesse, compulii. — Beda, 1. 4. c 3. 
 
5B8 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 NOTE XVII. Page 214. 
 
 The Select Bands. 
 
 " The utility of these meetings appears from the follow- 
 ing considerations. St. John divides the followers of God 
 into three classes, (1 St. John, ii. 12.) St. Paul exhorts 
 ministers to give every one his portion of meat in due 
 season. And there were some things which our Lord did 
 not make known to his disciples till after his ascension, 
 when they were prepared for them by the descent of the 
 Holy Ghost. These meetings give the preachers an op- 
 portunity of speaking of the deep things of God, and of 
 exhorting the members to press after the full image of 
 God. They also form a bulwark to the doctrine of Christian 
 perfection. It is a pity that so few of the people embrace 
 this privilege, and that every preacher does not warmly 
 espouse such profitable meetings." — Myles's Chronological 
 'History of the Methodists, p. 34. 
 
 The following letter upon this subject (transcribed from 
 the original, which was written by Mr. Wesley a few weeks 
 only before his death) shows how easily a select society was 
 disturbed by puzzling questions concerning the perfection 
 which the members professed. 
 
 l( To Mr. Edward Lewly, Birmingham. 
 
 f My Dear Brother, London, Jan. 12, 1791.. 
 
 "I do not believe a single person in your select society 
 
 scruples saying, 
 
 Every moment Lord I need 
 The merit of thy death. 
 
 This is clearly determined in the "Thoughts upon Perfec- 
 tion." But who expects common people to speak accurately? 
 And how easy is it to entangle them in their talk ! I am 
 afraid some have done this already. A man that is 
 not a thorough friend to Christian Perfection will easily 
 puzzle others, and thereby weaken, if not destroy, any select 
 society. I doubt this has been the case with you. That 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 589 
 
 society was in a lively state, and well united together, when 
 I was last at Birmingham. My health has been better for 
 a few days than it has been for several months. Peace be 
 with all your spirits. I am your affectionate Brother, 
 
 « J. Wesley.'* 
 
 NOTE XVIII. Page 221. 
 
 Psalmody. 
 
 " About this time, David's Psalms were translated into 
 English metre, and (if not publicly commanded) generally 
 permitted to be sung in all churches. The work was per- 
 formed by Thomas Sternhold, (an Hampshire man, esquire, 
 and of the privy-chamber to King Edward the Sixth, who 
 for his part translated thirty-seven selected psalms,) John 
 Hopkins, Robert Wisedome, &c, men, whose piety was 
 better than their poetry ; and they had drank more of Jor- 
 dan than of Helicon. These Psalms were therefore trans- 
 lated to make them more portable in people's memories, 
 (verses being twice as light as the self-same bulk in prose,) 
 as also to raise men's affections, the better to enable them 
 to practise the Apostle's precept, c Is any merry ? let 
 him sing psalms.' Yet this work met afterwards with some 
 frowns in the faces of great clergymen, who were rather 
 contented, than well pleased, with the singing of them 
 in churches. I will not say, because they misliked so 
 much liberty should be allowed the laity (Rome only can 
 be guilty of so great envy) as to sing in churches: rather, 
 because they conceived these singing-psalms erected in 
 conviviality and opposition to the reading-psalms, which 
 were formerly sung in cathedral churches; or else, the 
 child was disliked for the mother's sake ; because, such 
 translators, though branched hither, had their root in 
 Geneva. 
 
 Since, later men have vented their just exceptions against 
 the baldness of the translation, so that sometimes they make 
 the Maker of the tongue to speak little better than barbarism; 
 
590 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 and have in many verses such poor rhime, that two ham- 
 mers on a smith's anvil would make better music. Whilst 
 others (rather to excuse it, than defend it) do plead, that 
 English poetry was then in the non-age, not to say, infancy 
 thereof; and that, match these verses for their age, they 
 shall go abreast with the best poems of those times. Some, 
 in favour of the translators, allege, that to be curious 
 therein, and over-descanting with wit, had not become the 
 plain song, and simplicity of an holy style. But these 
 must know, there is great difference between painting a 
 face and not washing it. Many since have far refined these 
 translations, but yet their labours therein never generally 
 received in the church ; principally, because un-book- 
 learned people have conned by heart, many psalms of the 
 old translation, which would be wholly disinherited of their 
 patrimony, if a new edition were set forth. However, it 
 is desired, and expected by moderate men, that, though 
 the fabric stand unremoved for the main, yet some bad 
 contrivance therein may be mended, and the bald rhimes 
 in some places get a new nap, which would not much dis- 
 compose the memory of the people." — Fuller's Church 
 History, Cent. XVI., book vii. p. 406. 
 
 In a letter of Jewel's, written in 1560, he says, " that a 
 change appeared now more visible among the people. 
 Nothing promoted it more than the inviting the people to 
 sing psalms, That was begun in one church in London, 
 and did quickly spread itself, not only through the city, 
 but in the neighbouring places. Sometimes at Paul's Cross 
 there will be six thousand people singing together. This 
 was very grievous to the Papists." — Burnet's Reformation, 
 partiii. p. 290. 
 
 M There are two things," says Wesley, ee in all modern 
 pieces of music, which I could never reconcile to common 
 sense. One is, singing the same words ten times over* 
 the other, singing different words by different persons, at 
 one and the same time ; and this in the most solemn ad- 
 dresses to God, whether by way of prayer or of thanks- 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 591 
 
 giving. This can never be defended by all the musicians 
 in Europe, till reason is quite out of date." — Journal, xiii. 
 p. 56. 
 
 And again, officiating in the church at Neath, he says : 
 *' I was greatly disgusted at the manner of singing. First, 
 Twelve or fourteen persons kept it to themselves and quite 
 shut out the congregation. Secondly, These repeated the 
 same words, contrary to all sense and reason, six, eight, or 
 ten times over. Thirdly, According to the shocking custom 
 of modern music, different persons sung different words at 
 one and the same moment — an intolerable insult on com- 
 mon sense, and utterly incompatible with any devotion." — 
 Journal, xv. p. 24. 
 
 " From the first and apostolical age, singing was always 
 a part of divine service, in which the whole body of the 
 church joined together ; which is a thing so evident, that 
 though Cabassutius denies it, and in his spite to the reformed 
 churches, where it is generally practised, calls it only a pro- 
 testant whim ; yet Cardinal Bona has more than once not only 
 confessed, but solidly proved it to have been the primitive 
 practice. The decay of this first brought the order of 
 psalmist ce or singers into the church. For when it was 
 found by experience, that the negligence and unskilfulness 
 of the people rendered them unfit to perform this service, 
 without some more curious and skilful to guide and assist 
 them, then a peculiar order of men were appointed and set 
 over this business, with a design to retrieve and improve the 
 ancient psalmody, and not to abolish or destroy it." — Bing- 
 ham, b. iii. c. 7. § 2. 
 
 Whitefield was censured once for having some of his 
 hymns set to profane music, and he is said to have replied, 
 " Would you have the devil keep all the good tunes to 
 himself ?" 
 
 NOTE XIX. Page 223. 
 Service of the Methodists. 
 Mr. Wesley prided himself upon the decency of worship 
 in his chapels. He says : " The longer I am absent from 
 
592 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 London, and the more I attend the service of the church 
 in other places, the more I am convinced of the unspeak- 
 able advantage which the people called Methodists enjoy. 
 I mean, even with regard to public worship, particularly 
 on the Lord's Day. The church where they assemble is 
 not gay or splendid ; which might be an hindrance on the 
 one hand : nor sordid or dirty, which might give distaste on 
 the other ; but plain as well as clean. The persons who 
 assemble there are not a gay, giddy crowd, who come 
 chiefly to see and be seen ; nor a company of goodly, for- 
 mal, outside Christians, whose religion lies in a dull round 
 of duties; but a people, most of whom know, and the rest 
 earnestly seek to worship God in spirit and in truth. Ac- 
 cordingly, they do not spend their time there in bowing 
 and curtseying, or in staring about them : but in looking 
 upward and looking inward, in hearkening to the voice of 
 God, and pouring out their hearts before him. 
 
 " It is also no small advantage that the person who reads 
 prayers (though not always the same) yet is always one, 
 who may be supposed to speak from his heart ; one whose 
 life is no reproach to his profession ; and one who performs 
 that solemn part of divine service, not in a careless, harrying, 
 slovenly manner, but seriously and slowly, as becomes 
 him who is transacting so high an affair between God and 
 man. 
 
 iC Nor are their solemn addresses to God interrupted 
 either by the formal drawl of a parish clerk, the screaming 
 of boys, who bawl out what they neither feel nor under- 
 stand, or the unreasonable and unmeaning impertinence of 
 a voluntary on the organ. When it is seasonable to sing 
 praise to God, they do it with the spirit, and with the un- 
 derstanding also : not in the miserable, scandalous dog- 
 grel of Hopkins and Sternhold, but in psalms and hymns 
 which are both sense and poetry : such as would sooner 
 provoke a critic to turn Christian, than a Christian to turn 
 critic. What they sing is therefore a proper continuation 
 of the spiritual and reasonable service ; being selected for 
 tfiat end, (not by a poor hum-drum wretch, who can scarce 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 593 
 
 read what he drones out with such an air of importance, 
 but, by one who knows what he is about, and how to con- 
 nect the preceding with the following part of the service : 
 nor does he take just ' two staves,' but more or less as may 
 best raise the soul to God, especially when sung in well- 
 composed and well-adapted tunes; not by a handful of wild 
 unawakened striplings, but by a whole serious congregation; 
 and then not lolling at ease, or in the indecent posture of 
 sitting, drawling out one word after another, but all stand- 
 ing before God, and praising him lustily, and with a good 
 courage." 
 
 NOTE XX. Page 238. 
 
 Strong feelings expressed with levity. 
 
 Fuller relates a remarkable example of this : — " When 
 worthy master Samuel Hern, famous for his living, preach- 
 ing, and writing, lay on his death bed, (rich only in good- 
 ness and children,) his wife made much womanish lament- 
 ation what should hereafter become of her little ones. 
 * Peace, sweet-heart,' said he ; ' that God who feedeth the 
 ravens will not starve the Herns.' A speech, censured as 
 light by some, observed by others as prophetical, as in- 
 deed it came to pass that they were well disposed of." — 
 Fuller's Good Thoughts. 
 
 NOTE XXI. Page 255. 
 
 Methodism in Scotla?id. 
 
 The Methodists thus explain the cause of their failure 
 in that country : — " There certainly is a very wide difference 
 between the people of Scotland, and the inhabitants of 
 England. The former have, from their earliest years, 
 been accustomed to hear the leading truths of the Gospel, 
 mixed with Calvinism, constantly preached, so that the 
 truths are become quite familiar to them ; but, in general, 
 they know little or nothing of Christian experience ; and 
 
 VOL. II. Q Q 
 
594 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 genuine religion, or the life and ponsoer of godliness, is in a 
 very low state in that country. I am fully satisfied that it 
 requires a far higher degree of the Divine influence, 
 generally speaking, to awaken a Scotchman out of the 
 dead sleep of sin, than an Englishman. So greatly are 
 they bigoted to their own opinions, their mode of church 
 government, and way of worship, that it does not appear 
 probable, that our preachers will ever be of much use to 
 that people : and, in my opinion, except those who are 
 sent to Scotland exceed their own ministers in heart- 
 searching, experimental preaching, closely applying the 
 truth to the consciences of the hearers, they may as well 
 never go thither." — Pawson. 
 
 NOTE XXII. Page 258. 
 
 Effects of the Reformation upon Ireland. 
 
 " Ireland, and especiallie the ruder part, is not stored 
 with such learned men as Germanie is. If they had sound 
 preachers, and sincere livers, that by the imbalming of 
 their carian soules with the sweet and sacred flowers of 
 holie writ, would instruct them in the feare of God, in 
 obeieng their princes, in observing the lawes, in under- 
 propping in ech man his vocation the weale publike; I 
 doubt not but, within two or three ages, M. Critabolus 
 his heires should heare so good a report run of the re- 
 formation of Ireland, as it would be reckoned as civill as 
 the best part of Germanie. Let the soile be as fertile and 
 betle as anie would wish, yet if the husbandman will not 
 manure it, sometime plow and eare it, sometime harrow it, 
 sometime till it, sometime marie it, sometime delve it, some- 
 time dig it, and sow it with good and sound corne, it will 
 bring foorth weeds, bind-corne, cockle, darnell, brambles, 
 briers, and sundrie wild shoots. So it fareth with the rude 
 inhabitants of Ireland ; they lacke universities ; they want 
 instructors ; they are destitute of teachers ; they are with- 
 out preachers ; they are devoid of all such necessaries as 
 apperteine to the training up of youth : and, notwithstand- 
 15* 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 595 
 
 ing all these wants, if anie would be so frowardlie set as to 
 require them to use such civilitie, as other regions, that are 
 sufficientlie furnished with the like helps, he might be ac- 
 counted as unreasonable as he that would force a creeple 
 that lacketh both his legs to run, or one to pipe or whistle 
 a galiard that wanteth his upper lip." — Stani/mrst, in 
 Holinshed's Chronicles, vol. vi. p. 14. 
 
 The ecclesiastical state of Ireland in 1576, is thus de- 
 scribed by John Vowell alias Hooker, the Chronicler : — 
 " The temples all ruined, the parish-churches, for the 
 most part, without curates and pastors, no service said, 
 no God honoured, nor Christ preached, nor sacraments 
 ministered : many were born which never were christened : 
 the patrimony of the church wasted, and the lands em- 
 bezzled. A lamentable case, for a more deformed and a 
 more overthrown Church there could not be among 
 Christians." — Holinshed' 's Chronicles, vol. vi. p. 382. 
 
 " The Kernes, or natural wild Irish, (and many of the 
 better sort of the nation also,) either adhere unto the Pope, 
 or their own superstitious fancies, as in former times. 
 And, to say truth, it is no wonder that they should, there 
 being; no care taken to instruct them in the Protestant 
 religion, either by translating the Bible, or the English 
 Liturgy, into their own language, as was done in Wales ; 
 but forcing them to come to church to the English service, 
 which the people understand no more than they do the mass. 
 By means whereof, the Irish are not only kept in continual 
 ignorance, as to the doctrine and devotions of the Church 
 of England, and others of the Protestant churches, but 
 those of Rome are furnished with an excellent argument 
 for having the service of the church in a language which 
 the common hearers do not understand. And, therefore, 
 I do heartily commend it to the care of the State (when 
 these distempers are composed) to provide that they may 
 have the Bible, and all other public means of Christian in- 
 struction, in their natural tongue." — Heylyn's Cosmography, 
 p. 341. 
 
 I transcribe from the " Letters of Yorick," (Dublin, 
 g o 2 
 
596 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 1817.) this " description of a parish in the county of 
 Waterford :" — " Kilbarry is a lay impropriation. Mr. 
 Fox, of Bramham Hall, Yorkshire, the patron and pro- 
 prietor, maintains no curate, nor any other service than 
 that of the occasional duties, for which he allows 3l. 16s. 3d. 
 per annum. The lands are set- tithe-free. There is but 
 one Protestant family in the parish, Mr. Carew's, of Balli- 
 namona. The church is in ruins, but is accommodated 
 with a churchyard." 
 
 NOTE XXIII. Page 248. 
 
 Wesley's political Conduct. 
 
 Itt a letter Written in 1782, Mr. Wesley says, " Two or 
 three years ago, when the kingdom was in imminent 
 danger, I made an offer to the Government of raising 
 some men. The Secretary of War, by the King's order, 
 wrote me word ' that it was not necessary : but if it ever 
 should be necessary, His Majesty would let me know.' I 
 never renewed the offer, and never intended it. But Cap- 
 tain Webb, without my knowing any thing of the matter, 
 went to Colonel B. the new Secretary of War, and re- 
 newed that offer. The Colonel (I verily believe to avoid 
 his importunity) asked him l how many men he could 
 raise ?' But the Colonel is out of place ; so the thing is at 
 an end." 
 
 NOTE XXIV. Page 303. 
 
 Wesley's Separation from his Wife. 
 
 The separation between Mr. and Mrs. Wesley is repre- 
 sented by all his biographers as final. Yet, in his journal 
 for the ensuing year, 1772, she is mentioned as travelling 
 with him: "Tuesday, June 30. Calling at a little inn on 
 the moors, I spoke a few words to an old man there, as 
 my wife did to the woman of the house. They both ap- 
 peared to be deeply affected. Perhaps Providence sent us 
 to this house for the sake of those two poor souls." 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 597 
 
 NOTE XXV. Page 362. 
 Trevecca. 
 
 The following curious account of a society instituted 
 partly in imitation of Lady Huntingdon's College, is taken 
 from the preface to a tract entitled " The Pre-existence 
 of Souls, and Universal Restitution considered as Scripture 
 Doctrines. Extracted from the Minutes and Correspond- 
 ence of Burnham Society," Taunton, 1798. The editor 
 was a singular person, whose name was Locke. Mr. Wesley 
 used to preach in the Society's room in the course of his 
 travelling; and Mr. Fletcher, John Henderson, Sir Richard 
 Hill, and the Rev. Sir George Stonhouse were among the 
 corresponding members. 
 
 " The small college, or rather large school, established 
 at Trevecca, in Wales, for the maintenance and education 
 of pious young men, of different religious * sentiments, 
 suggested the idea of constituting a religious society at 
 Burnham, in the county of Somerset, upon a similar plan, 
 with regard to the difference of opinion. It was intended 
 to ensure to its members not only all the advantages en- 
 joyed by common benefit-clubs, from their weekly contri^ 
 butions, but to raise a fund sufficient to enable those who 
 attended the monthly meetings to enjoy all the pleasures 
 of one of Addison's Social Convivial Societies, subject, how- 
 ever, to a heavy fine for drinking to excess, because the 
 entertainment was to be conducted upon the principles of 
 a primitive Love-Feast, which was to enjoy all things in 
 common. 
 
 "As the first or chief business of this society was to study 
 philosophy and polemic divinity, and debate on the differ- 
 ence of religious opinions, in brotherly love; so ancient 
 
 * Lady Huntingdon, the founder, leaned to the Supralapsarians ; the 
 Rev. Walter Shirley, the president, to the Sublapsarians ,- the Rev. 
 John Fletcher, the superintendent master, defended the Acminian 
 tenets of John Wesley ; and John Henderson, teacher of the higher 
 classics, was an Universalist, after Stonhouse. 
 
 22 3 
 
598 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 and modern controversy was to be introduced, and, of 
 course, candidates, of any religious denomination, admitted 
 as members of this philosophical society. But in order 
 that religious controversy should not operate as a check 
 upon the general good humour of the members, all per- 
 sonal reflections or invectives, tart or sour expressions, 
 harsh severe speeches, with every other impropriety of 
 conduct, either by word, look, or gesture, contrary to 
 patience, meekness, and humility, were punishable by fines 
 and penalties; and for non-compliance, the delinquents 
 were either to be sent to Coventry, or excluded. 
 
 " The resolution entered into of living in brotherly love, 
 in the same manner as we conceive angels would live, were 
 they to sojourn with men, and the liberal and rational plan 
 upon which this society was founded, gathered to it up- 
 wards of five hundred members ; upon whieh a resolution 
 was made, that no speaker should harangue more than five 
 minutes at one time, supposing any other member arose to 
 speak. Hence arose the necessity for disputants to con- 
 clude their debates in writing, with references to authors, 
 who had written upon the subject, in order for the society 
 to deliver their opinions upon the question under consider- 
 ation. 
 
 " These debates, papers, and references to books, disclosed 
 to the members (as their minds became more and more 
 enlightened) a variety of indirect roads and byepaths, in 
 the exploring of which they lost themselves ; for, however 
 firmly they were united in acts of brotherly conformity in 
 the service of one common Lord, they gradually returned 
 to their old customs — some to the worship of their family 
 gods — a few to the service of their aim gods — others paid 
 obedience to an unknown god - — but most neglected the 
 service of every god. 
 
 " This will account for the gradual desertion of members, 
 and the apparent necessity of permitting this once famous 
 society to degenerate into a mere benefit-club, which is 
 now kept together by a freehold estate (of twenty pounds 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 699 
 
 per annum neat) purchased by the President from the 
 surplus contributions of members." 
 
 " You formed a scheme," says Toplady to Mr. Wesley, 
 " of collecting as many perfect ones as you could to live 
 under one roof. A number of these flowers were accordingly 
 transplanted, from some of your nursery beds, to the hot- 
 house. And an hot-house it soon proved. For, would wa 
 believe it ! the sinless people quarrelled in a short time at 
 so violent a rate, that you found yourself forced to disband 
 the whole regiment." — Toplady' s Works, vol. v. p. S42. 
 
 Does this allude to the Burnham Society ? 
 
 NOTE XXVI. Page 365. 
 
 Whitefield. 
 
 The device upon Whitefield's seal was a winged heart 
 soaring above the globe, and the motto Astra petamus. 
 The seal appears to have been circular, and coarsely cut. 
 A broken impression is upon an original letter of his in 
 my possession, for which I am obliged to Mr. Laing, the 
 bookseller, of Edinburgh. 
 
 Mr. William Mason writes from Newbury- Port, near 
 Boston, to the Gospel Magazine, and contradicts " an 
 account which was prevalent in London a few years past, 
 and asserted with direct possitivity in the Evangelical Ma- 
 gazine ;" namely, " that the body of the late Rev. Mr. 
 George Whitefield, buried in this port, was entire and un- 
 corrupted. From whence such a falsehood could have 
 arisen it is impossible to decide. About five years past, 
 (he writes in 1801,) a few friends were permitted to open 
 the tomb wherein the remains of that precious servant of 
 Christ were interred. After some difficulty in opening the 
 coffin, we found the flesh totally consumed. The gown, 
 cassock, and band, with which he was buried, were almost 
 the same as if just put into the coffin. I mention this par- 
 ticular as a caution to Editors, especially of a religious 
 work, to avoid the marvellous, particularly when there is 
 no foundation for their assertions." 
 
 22 * 
 
600 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 The report, though it was as readily accredited by many 
 persons as the invention of a saint's body would be in a 
 Catholic country, seems not to have originated in any in- 
 tention to deceive. Some person writing from America, 
 says, " One of the preachers told me the body of Mr. 
 Whitefield was not yet putrified. But several other corpses 
 are just in the same state at Newbury- Port, owing to vast 
 quantities of nitre with which the earth there abounds." 
 
 Whitefield is said to have preached eighteen thousand 
 sermons during the thirty-four years of his ministry. The 
 calculation was made from a memorandum-book in which 
 he noted down the times and places of his preaching. This 
 would be something more than ten sermons a-week. 
 
 Wesley tells us himself (Journal, xiii. p. 121.) that he 
 preached about eight hundred sermons in a year. In fifty- 
 three years, reckoning from the time of his return from 
 America, this would amount to forty-two thousand four 
 hundred. But it must be remembered that even the hun- 
 dreds in this sum were not written discourses. 
 
 Collier says, that, Dr. Litchfield, Rector of All Saints, 
 Thames Street, London, who died in 1447, left three 
 thousand and eighty-three sermons in his own hand. — ■ 
 Eccl. Hist. vol. ii. p. 187. 
 
 NOTE XXVII. Page 372. 
 Conference isoith the Calvinists. 
 
 " I was at Bristol," says Mr. Badcock, " when the 
 Hon. Mr. Shirley, by the order of my Lady Huntingdon, 
 called him (Mr. Wesley) to a public account for certain 
 expressions which he had uttered in some charge to his 
 clergy, which savoured too much of the Popish doctrine of 
 the merit of good works. Various speculations were formed 
 as to the manner in which Mr. Wesley would evade the 
 charge. Few conjectured right ; but all seemed to agree 
 in one thing, and that was that he would some how or other 
 baffle his antagonist : and baffle him he did ; as Mr. Shirley 
 afterwards confessed in a very lamentable pamphlet, which 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 601 
 
 he published on this redoubted controversy. In the crisis 
 of the dispute, I heard a celebrated preacher, who was one 
 of Whitefield's successors, express his suspicion of the 
 event : for, says he, " I know him of old : he is an eel ; take 
 him where you will, he will slip through your fingers." — 
 Nichols's Anecdotes, vol. v. p. 224. 
 
 NOTE XXVIII. Page 374. 
 Berridge of Eve?-ton. 
 
 This person (who was of Clare Hall) called himself a 
 riding pedlar, because, he used to say, his master em- 
 ployed him to serve near forty shops in the country, be- 
 sides his own parish. 
 
 If the Poems in the Gospel Magazine, with the signature 
 of Old Everton, are his, as I suppose them to be, the fol- 
 lowing slanderous satire upon Mr. Wesley must be ascribed 
 to him ; for it comes evidently from the same hand : — - 
 
 The Serpent and the Fox ; or, an Interview between old Nick 
 and old John. 
 
 There's a fox who resideth hard by, 
 The most perfect, and holy, and sly, 
 That e'er turn'd a coat, or could pilfer and lie. 
 
 As this reverend Reynard one day, 
 Sat thinking what game next to play, 
 Old Nick came a seas'nable visit to pay. 
 
 O, your servant, my friend, quoth the priest, 
 Tho' you carry the mark of the beast, 
 I never shook paws with a welcomer guest. 
 
 Many thanks, holy man, cry'd the fiend, 
 'Twas because you're my very good friend 
 That I dropt in, with you a few moments to spend. 
 
 JOtttf. 
 
 Your kindness requited shall be ; 
 There's the Calvinist-Methodists, see, 
 Who're eternally troublous to you and to me. 
 
602 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Now I'll stir up the hounds of the whore 
 That's call'd scarlet, to worry them sore, 
 And then roast 'em in Smithfield, like Bonner of yore. 
 
 O, a meal of the Calvinist brood 
 Will do my old stomach more good, 
 Than a sheep to a wolf that is starving for food. 
 
 When America's conquer'd, you know, 
 ('Till then we must leave them to crow,) 
 I'll work up our rulers to strike an home-blow. 
 
 An excellent plan, could you do it j 
 But if all the infernals too knew it, 
 They'd be puzzled, like me, to tell how you'll go through it- 
 
 When they speak against vice in the Great, 
 I'll cry out, that they aim at the State, 
 And the Ministry, King, and the Parliament hate. 
 
 Thus I'll still act the part of a liar, 
 Persecution's blest spirit inspire, 
 And then " Calmly Address" 'em with faggot and fire. 
 
 Ay, that's the right way, I know well : 
 
 But how lies with perfection can dwell, 
 
 Is a riddle, dear John, that would puzzle all hell. 
 
 Pish ! you talk like a doating old elf; 
 Can't you see how it brings in the pelf; 
 And all things are lawful that serve a man's self. 
 
 As serpents, we ought to be wise : 
 Is not self-preservation a prize ? 
 For this did not Abram the righteous tell lies ? 
 
 I perceive you are subtle, tho' small : 
 You have reason, and scripture, and all i 
 So stilted, you never can finally fall. 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 60S 
 
 JOHN. 
 
 From the drift of your latter reflection, 
 I fear you maintain some connection 
 With the crocodile crew that believe in Election. 
 
 NICK. 
 
 i i 
 
 By my troth, I abhor the whole troop; 
 With those heroes I never could cope : 
 I should chuckle to see 'em all swing in a rope. 
 
 JOHN. 
 
 Ah, could we but set the land free 
 From those bawlers about the Decree, 
 Who're such torments to you, to my brother, and me ! 
 
 As for Whitefield, I know it right well, 
 He has sent down his thousands to hell ; 
 And, for aught that I know, he's gone with 'em to dwell. 
 
 I grant, my friend John, for 'tis true, 
 That he was not so perfect as you ; 
 Yet (confound him !) I lost him, for all I could do. 
 
 Take comfort ! he's not gone to glory; 
 Or, at most, not above the first story : 
 For none but the perfect escape purgatory. 
 
 At best, he's in limbo, I'm sure, 
 And must still a long purging endure, 
 Ere, Hkeme, he's made sinless, quite holy, and pure. 
 
 Such purging my Johnny needs none ; 
 
 By your own mighty works it is done, 
 
 And the kingdom of glory your merit has won. 
 
 Thus wrapt in your self-righteous plod, 
 And self-raised when you throw off this clod, 
 You shall mount, and demand your own seat, like a god. 
 
 You shall not in paradise wait, 
 But climb the third story with state ; 
 While your Whitefields and Hills are turn'd back from the gate. 
 
604 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. [ 
 
 Old John never dreamt that he jeer'd ; 
 So Nick turn'd himself round, and he sneer'd, 
 And then shrugg'd up his shoulders, and strait disappeared. 
 
 The priest, with a simpering face, 
 Shook his hair-locks, and paus'd for a space; 
 Then sat down to forge lies with his usual grimace. 
 
 AUSCULTATOK. 
 
 NOTE XXVIII. Page 375. 
 
 Calvinism. 
 
 " Some pestilent and abominable heretics there be,' y 
 says the Catholic Bishop Watson, " that, for excusing of 
 themselves, do accuse Almighty God, and impute their 
 mischievous deeds to God's predestination ; and would per- 
 suade that God, who is the fountain of all goodness, were 
 the author of all mischief; not only suffering men to do 
 evil by their own wills, but also inforcing their wills to the 
 same evil, and working the same evil in them. I will not 
 now spend this little time (for it was near the end of his 
 sermon) in confuting their pestilent and devilish sayings, 
 for it is better to abhor them than to confute them." — Hol- 
 some and Catholyhe Doctryne, p. 124. 1558. 
 
 Dr. Beaumont has two good stanzas upon this subject in 
 his Psyche, which is one of the most extraordinary poems 
 in this or in any other language. 
 
 O no ! may those black mouths for ever be 
 
 Damm'd up with silence and with shame, which dare 
 
 Father the foulest, deepest tyranny 
 
 On Love's great God; and needs will make it clear 
 
 From his own Word ! thus rendering him at once 
 
 Both Cruelty's and Contradiction's Prince. 
 
 A prince whose mocking law forbids, what yet 
 
 Is his eternally -resolved will ; 
 Who woos and tantalizes souls to get 
 
 Up into heaven, yet destines them to hell ; 
 Who calls them forth whom he keeps locked in ; 
 Who damns the sinner, yet ordains the sin. 
 
 Canto 10. st. 71,72. 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 605 
 
 In the Arminian Magazine, Wesley has published the 
 Examination of Tilenus before the Triers, in order to his 
 intended settlement in the office of a public preacher in 
 the Commonwealth of Eutopia; written by one who was 
 present at the Synod of Dort. The names of the Triers are 
 very much in John Bunyan's style. They are — Dr. Absolute, 
 Chairman, Mr. Fatality, Mr. Praeterition, Mr. Fry-babe, 
 Dr. Damn-man, Mr. Narrow Grace, Mr. Efficax, Mr. Inde- 
 fectible, Dr. Confidence, Dr. Dubious, Mr. Meanwell, 
 Mr. Simulans, Mr. Take-o'Trust, Mr. Know-little, and 
 Mr. Impertinent. 
 
 If the Abbe Duvernet may be trusted, (a writer alike 
 liable to suspicion for his ignorance and his immorality,) 
 Jansenius formally asserts in his Augustinus, that there are 
 certain commandments which it is impossible to obey, and 
 that Christ did not die for all. He refers to the Paris 
 edition, vol. hi. pp. 138. 165. 
 
 NOTE XXX. Page 382. 
 
 Fletcher's Illustrations of Calvinism. 
 
 " I suppose you are still upon your travels. s You come 
 to the borders of a great empire, and the first thing that 
 strikes you, is a man in an easy carriage going with folded 
 arms to take possession of an immense estate, freely given 
 him by the king of the country. As he flies along, you 
 just make out the motto of the royal chariot in which he 
 dozes, — ' Free Reward.' Soon after, you meet five of the 
 king's carts, containing twenty wretches loaded with irons ; 
 and the motto of every cart is, ' Free Punishment.' You in- 
 quire into the meaning of this extraordinary procession, 
 and the sheriff attending the execution answers : Know, 
 curious stranger, that our monarch is absolute ; and to show 
 that sovereignty is the prerogative of his imperial crown, 
 and that he is no respecter of persons, he distributes every 
 day free rewards and free punishments, to a certain number 
 
606 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 of his subjects. ' What ! without any regard to merit or 
 demerit, by mere caprice?' Not altogether so; for he 
 pitches upon the worst of men, and chief of sinners, and upon 
 such to choose, for the subjects of his rewards. (Elisha Coles, 
 p. 62.) And that his punishments may do as much honour 
 to free sovereign wrath, as his bounty does to free sovereign 
 grace, he pitches upon those that shall be executed before 
 they are born. ' What ! have these poor creatures in 
 chains done no harm ?' * O yes,' says the sheriff, ' the king 
 contrived that their parents should let them fall, and break 
 their legs, before they had any knowledge ; when they came 
 to years of discretion, he commanded them to run a race 
 with broken legs, and because they cannot do it, 1 am 
 going to see them quartered. Some of them, besides this, 
 have been obliged to fulfil the king's secret will, and bring 
 about his purposes ; and they shall be burned in yonder 
 deep valley, called Tophet, for their trouble.' You are 
 shocked at the sheriff's account, and begin to expostulate 
 with him about thejreeness of the wrath which burns a man 
 for doing the king's will; but all the answer you can get 
 from him is, that which you give me in your fourth letter, 
 page 23, where, speaking of a poor reprobate, you say, 
 c such an one is indeed accomplishing the king's,' you say, 
 ' God's decree ;' but he carries a dreadful mark in his fore- 
 head, that such a decree is, that he shall be punished with 
 everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord of 
 the country. You cry out, ( God deliver me from the 
 hands of a monarch, who punishes with everlasting destruc- 
 tion such as accomplish his decree !' and while the ma- 
 gistrate intimates that your exclamation is a dreadful mark, 
 if not in your forehead, at least upon your tongue, that you 
 yourself shall be apprehended against the next execution, 
 and made a public instance of the king's free wrath ; your 
 blood runs cold; you bid the postilion turn the horses; 
 they gallop for your life ; and the moment you get out of 
 the dreary land, you bless God for your narrow escape." — 
 Fletcher's Works, vol. iii. p. 26. 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 607 
 
 " You * decry illustrations/ and I do not wonder at it ; 
 for they carry light into Babel, where it is not desired. 
 The father of errors begets Darkness and Confusion. From 
 Darkness and Confusion springs Calvinism, who, wrap- 
 ping himself up in some garments, which he has stolen 
 from the Truth, deceives the nations, and gets himself re- 
 verenced in a dark temple, as if he were the pure and free 
 Gospel. 
 
 " To bring him to a shameful end, we need not stab him 
 with the dagger of ' calumny,' or put him upon the rack 
 of persecution. Let him only be dragged out of his obscu- 
 rity, and brought unmasked to open light, and the silent 
 beams of truth will pierce him through ! Light alone will 
 torture him to death, as the meridian sun does a bird of 
 night, that cannot fly from the gentle operation of its 
 beams. 
 
 "May the following illustration dart at least one luminous 
 beam into the profound darkness in which your venerable 
 Diana delights to dwell ! And may it show the Christian 
 world, that we do not ' slander you,' when we assert, you 
 inadvertently destroy God's law, and cast the Redeemer's 
 crown to the ground : and that when you say, ' in point 
 of justification,' (and consequently of condemnation,) 'we 
 have nothing to do with the law ; we are under the law 
 as a rule of life,' but not as a rule of judgment ; you might 
 as well say, ' we are under no law, and consequently no 
 longer accountable for our actions.' 
 
 " ' The king,' whom I will suppose is in love with your 
 doctrines of free-grace and free-*wrath, by the advice of a 
 predestinarian council and parliament, issues out a Gospel- 
 proclamation, directed ' to all his dear subjects, and elect 
 people, the English.' By this evangelical manifesto they 
 are informed, i that in consequence of the Prince of 
 Wales's meritorious intercession, and perfect obedience to 
 the laws of England, all the penalties annexed to the 
 breaking of those laws are now abolished with respect to 
 Englishmen : that his majesty freely pardons all his sub- 
 jects, who have been, are, or shall be guilty of adultery, 
 
60S NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 murder, or treason : that all their crimes * past, present, and 
 to come, are for ever and for ever cancelled :' that never- 
 theless, his loving subjects, who remain strangers to their 
 privileges, shall still be served with sham-warrants accord- 
 ing to law, and frightened out of their wits, till they have 
 learned to plead, they are Englishmen, (i. e. elect :) and 
 then, they shall also set at defiance all legalists ; that is, all 
 those who shall dare to deal with them according to law : 
 and that, excepting the case of the above-mentioned false 
 prosecution of his chosen people, none of them shall ever 
 be molested for the breach of any law. 
 
 " By the same supreme authority it is likewise enacted, 
 that all the laws shall continue in force against foreigners, 
 (i. e. reprobates,) whom the King and the Prince hate widi 
 everlasting hatred, and to whom they have agreed never to 
 show mercy : that accordingly they shall be prosecuted to 
 the utmost rigour of every statute, till they are all hanged 
 or burned out of the way : and that, supposing no per- 
 sonal offence can be proved against them, it shall be 
 lawful to hang them in chains for the crime of one of 
 their forefathers, to set forth the king's wonderful jus- 
 tice, display his glorious sovereignty, and make his cho- 
 sen people relish the better their sweet distinguishing 
 privileges as Englishmen. 
 
 " Moreover, his Majesty, who loves order and har- 
 mony, charges his loving subjects to consider still the 
 statutes of England, which are in force against foreign- 
 ers, as very good rules of life, for the English, which they 
 shall do well to follow, but better to break ; because 
 every breach of those rules will work for their good, and 
 make them sing louder the faithfulness of the king, the 
 goodness of the prince, and the sweetness of this Gospel- 
 proclamation." 
 
 " Again, as nothing is so displeasing to the king as 
 legality, which he hates even more than extortion and 
 whoredom ; lest any of his dear people, who have acted 
 the part of a strumpet, robber, murderer, or traitor, 
 should, through the remains of their inbred corruption, 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 60$ 
 
 and ridiculous legality, mourn too deeply for breaking 
 some of their rules of life, our gracious monarch so-, 
 lemnly assures them, that though he highly disapproves 
 of adultery and murder, yet these breaches of rules are 
 not worse in his sight than a wandering thought in speak- 
 ing to him, or a moment's dulness in his service : that 
 robbers, therefore, and traitors, adulterers, and murderers, 
 who are free-born Englishmen, need not at all be un- 
 easy about losing his royal favour; this being utterly 
 impossible, because they always stand complete in the 
 honesty, loyalty, chastity, and charity of the prince. 
 
 " Moreover, because the king changes not, whatever 
 lengths the English go on in immorality, he will always 
 look upon them as his pleasant children, his dear people, 
 and men after his own heart ,■ and that, on the other hand, 
 whatsoever lengths foreigners go in pious morality, his gra- 
 cious majesty is determined still to consider them as hypocrites, 
 vessels of wrath, and cursed children, for whom is reserved 
 the blackness of darkness for ever ,- because he always views 
 them completely guilty, and absolutely condemned in a 
 certain robe of unrighteousness, woven thousands of years 
 ago by one of their ancestors. This dreadful sanbenito 
 his majesty hath thought fit to put upon them by im- 
 putation, and in it, it is his good pleasure that they shall 
 hang in adamantine chains, or burn in fire unquench- 
 able. 
 
 " Finally, as foreigners are dangerous people, and may 
 stir up his majesty's subjects to rebellion, the English are 
 informed, that if any one of them, were he to come over 
 from Geneva itself, shall dare to insinuate, that his most 
 gracious gospel -proclamation is not according to equity) 
 morality and godliness, the first Englishman that meets 
 him, shall have full leave to brand him as a papist, without 
 judge or jury, in the forehead or on the back, as he thinks 
 best ; and that, till he is farther proceeded with according 
 to the utmost severity of the law, the chosen people shall 
 be informed, in the Gospel Magazine, to beware of him, 
 as a man e who scatters firebands, arrows, and deaths,' 
 
 VOL. II. R R 
 
610 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 and makes universal havoc of every article of this sweet 
 gospel-proelamation. Given at Geneva, and signed by 
 four of his majesty's principal secretaries of state for the 
 predestinarian department." 
 
 John Calvin, Dr. Crisp, 
 
 The Author of P. O. Rowland Hill. 
 
 Fletcher's Works, Vol. iii. page 282. 
 
 NOTE XXXI. Page 383. 
 Arminianism described by the Calvinists. 
 
 " Scarce had our first parents made their appearance, 
 when Satan, the Jirst Arminian, began to preach the perni- 
 cious doctrine of free-will to them ; which so pleased the old 
 gentleman and his lady, that they (like thousands of their 
 foolish offspring in this our day) adhered to the deceitful 
 news, embraced it cordially, disobeyed the command of 
 their Maker ; and by so doing, launched their whole pos- 
 terity into a cloud of miseries and ills. But some perhaps 
 will be ready to say that Arminianism, though an error, 
 cannot be the root of all other errors ; to which I answer, 
 that if it first originated in Satan, then I ask, from whence 
 springs any error or evil in the world ? Surely Satan 
 must be the first moving cause of all evils that ever did, do 
 now, or ever will, make their appearance in this world : 
 consequently he was the first propagator of that cursed 
 doctrine above-mentioned. Hence Arminianism begat 
 Popery, and Popery begat Methodism, and Methodism 
 begat Moderate Calvinism, and Moderate Calvinism be- 
 gat Baxterianism, and Baxterianism begat Unitarianism, 
 and Unitarianism begat Arianism, and Arianism begat 
 Universalism, and Universalism begat Deism, and Deism 
 begat Atheism ; and living and dying in the embracement 
 of every of the above evils or isms, where Christ is, they 
 never can come. Thus I consider that Arminianism is 
 the original of all the pernicious doctrines that are propa- 
 
 13 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 611 
 
 gated ill the world, and Destructionism will close the whole 
 of them." — Gospel Magazine, 1807, p. 16. 
 
 " Of the two (says Huntington the S. S.) I would rather 
 be a Deist than an Arminian ; for an established Deist sears 
 his own conscience, so that he goes to hell in the easy chair 
 of insensibility ; but the Arminian, who wages war with 
 open eyes against the sovereignty of God, fights most of 
 his battles in the very fears and horrors of hell." — Hunt" 
 ington's Works, vol. i. p. 363. 
 
 " The sons of bondage," says a red-hot Antinomian, 
 who signs himself Rufus, " like Satan and his compeers, 
 are unsatisfied with slavery themselves, unless they can 
 entice others into the same dilemma. They are for ever 
 forging their accursed fetters for the sons of God in the 
 hot flames of Sinai's fiery vengeance ; and in the hypocri- 
 tical age of the nineteenth century, pour forth whole troops 
 of work-mongers, commonly known by the name of Mode- 
 rate Cahinists, who, under an incredible profession of sanc- 
 tity, lie in wait to deceive ; and by their much fair speeches 
 entrap the unwary pilgrims into the domains of Doubting 
 castle, binding them within those solitary ruins to the legal 
 drudgery of embracing the moral or preceptive law, as the 
 rule of their lives." 
 
 Upon the subject of election, there is a tremendous rant 
 by a writer who calls himself Ebenezer. 
 
 " Before sin can destroy any one of God's elect, it must 
 change the word of truth into a lie — strip Jesus Christ of 
 all his merit — render his blood inefficacious — pollute his 
 righteousness — contaminate his nature — conquer his om- 
 nipotence — cast him from his throne — and sink him in 
 the abyss of perdition ; it must turn the love of God into 
 hatred — nullify the council of the Most High — destroy 
 the everlasting covenant — and make void the oath of Je- 
 hovah — nay, it must raise discord amongst the divine 
 attributes — make Father, Son, and Spirit, unfaithful to 
 each other, and set them at variance — change the divine 
 nature — wrest the sceptre from the hand of the Almighty 
 — dethrone him -r- and put a period to his existence. Till 
 
 r r 2 
 
612 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 it has done all this, we boldly say unto the redeemed, fear 
 not, for we shall not be ashamed ; neither be dismayed, for 
 you shall not be confounded." — Gospel Magazine, 1804- 
 p. 287. 
 
 NOTE XXXII. Page 401. 
 
 Young Grimsha'w. 
 
 " He too," says Mr. Wesley, i( is now gone into eter- 
 nity ! So, in a few years, the family is extinct. I preached 
 in a meadow, near the house, to a numerous congregation; 
 and we sang with one heart — 
 
 Let sickness blast and death devour, 
 If Heaven will recompense our pains; 
 
 Perish the grass, and fade the flower, 
 Since firm the word of God remains. 
 
 NOTE XXXIII. Page 421. 
 
 Wesley's Doctrine concerning Riches. 
 
 Upon this subject Mr. Wesley has preserved a fine 
 anecdote. " Beware," he says " of forming a hasty judg- 
 ment concerning the fortune of others. There may be se- 
 crets in the situation of a person, which few but God are 
 acquainted with. Some years since, I told a gentleman, 
 Sir, I am afraid you are covetous. He asked me, What is 
 the reason of your fears ? I answered, A year ago, when I 
 made a collection for the expense of repairing the Foundery, 
 you subscribed five guineas. At the subscription made this 
 year you subscribed only half-a-guinea. He made no 
 reply; but after a time asked, Pray, Sir, answer me a 
 question : — why do you live upon potatoes, (I did so 
 between three and four years.) I replied, It has much 
 conduced to my health. He answered, I believe it has. 
 But did you not do it likewise to save money. I said, 
 I did, for what I save from my own meat, will feed an- 
 other that else would have none. But, Sir, said he, if 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 613 
 
 this be your motive, you may save much more. I know a 
 man that goes to the market at the beginning of every 
 week. There he buys a pennyworth of parsnips, which he 
 boils in a large quantity of water. The parsnips serve him 
 for food, and the water for drink the ensuing week, so 
 his meat and drink together cost him only a penny a week. 
 This he constantly did, though he had then two hundred 
 pounds a year, to pay the debts which he had contracted, 
 before he knew God ! — And this was he, whom I had set 
 down for a covetous man." 
 
 To this affecting anecdote I add an extract from Wes- 
 ley's Journal, relating to the subject of property. 
 
 " In the evening one sat behind me in the pulpit at 
 Bristol, who was one of our first masters at Kingswood. 
 A little after he left the school, he likewise left the society. 
 Riches then flowed in upon him ; with which, having no 
 relations, Mr. Spencer designed to do much good — after 
 his death. But God said unto him, Thou fool ! Two hours 
 after he died intestate, and left all his money to be scrambled 
 for. 
 
 "Reader! if you have not done it already, make your 
 will before you deep." — Journal, xix. 8. 
 
 I know a person, who upon reading this passage took 
 the advice. 
 
 NOTE XXXIV. Page 512. 
 
 The Covenant. 
 
 If proof were wanting to confirm the opinion which I 
 have advanced of the perilous tendency of this fanatical 
 practice, William Huntington, S. S., a personage suffi- 
 ciently notorious in his day, would be an unexceptionable 
 evidence. He thus relates his own case, in his " King- 
 dom of Heaven taken by Prayer." 
 
 " Having got a little book that a person had lent me, 
 which recommended vows to be made to God, I accord- 
 ingly stripped myself naked, to make a vow to the Al- 
 mighty, if he would enable me to cast myself upon him. 
 
 r r 3 
 
614 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Thus I bound my soul with numerous ties, and wept over 
 every part of the written covenant which this book con- 
 tained. These I read naked on my knees, and vowed to 
 perform all the conditions that were therein proposed. 
 Having made this covenant, I went to bed, wept, and 
 prayed the greatest part of that night, and arose in the 
 morning pregnant with all the wretched resolutions of 
 fallen nature. I now manfully engaged the world, the 
 flesh, and the devil in my own strength ; and I had bound 
 myself up with so many promised conditions, that, if I 
 failed in one point, I was gone for ever, according to the 
 tenour of my own covenant, provided that God should 
 deal with me according to my sins, and reward me accord- 
 ing to mine iniquity. 
 
 " But, before the week was out, I broke through all 
 these engagements, and fell deeper into the bowels of de- 
 spair than ever I had been before. And now, seemingly, 
 all was gone : I gave up prayer, and secretly wished to 
 be in hell, that I might know the worst of it, and be de- 
 livered from the fear of worse to come. I was now again 
 tempted to believe that there is no God, and wished to 
 close in with the temptation, and be an established or con- 
 firmed atheist ; for I knew, if there was a God, that I 
 must be damned ; therefore I laboured to credit the tempt- 
 ation, and fix it firm in my heart. But, alas ! said I, how 
 can I ? If I credit this, I must disbelieve my own exist- 
 ence, and dispute myself out of common sense and feeling, 
 for I am in hell already. There is no feeling in hell but 
 what I have an earnest of. Hell is a place where mercy 
 never comes : I have a sense of none. It is a separation 
 from God : I am without God in the world. It is a hope- 
 less state : I have no hope. It is to feel the burthen of 
 sin : I am burthened as much as mortal can be. It is to 
 feel the lashes of conscience : I feel them all the day long. 
 It is to be a companion for devils ; I am harassed with 
 them from morning till night. It is to meditate distract- 
 edly on an endless eternity : I am already engaged in this. 
 It is to sin and rebel against God : I do it perpetually. It 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 6\5 
 
 Is to reflect upon past madness and folly : this is the daily 
 employ of my mind. It is to labour under God's unmixed 
 wrath : this I feel continually. It is to lie under the tor- 
 menting sceptre of everlasting death : this is already begun. 
 Alas ! to believe there is no God, is like persuading my- 
 self that I am in a state of annihilation." 
 
 Huntington's Works, vol. i. p. 193. 
 
 NOTE XXXV. Page 516. 
 
 The Value of a good Conscience. 
 
 Upon this subject the Methodist Magazine affords a 
 good illustration. A poor Cornishman, John Nile by 
 name, had been what is called under conviction twelve 
 months, — in a deplorable state, walking disconsolate, 
 while his brethren were enjoying their justification. One 
 night, going into his fields, he detected one of his neigh- 
 bours in the act of stealing his turnips, and brought the 
 culprit quietly into the house with the sack which he had 
 nearly filled. He made him empty the sack, to see if any 
 of his seed turnips were there, and finding two or three 
 large ones which he had intended to reserve for that pur- 
 pose, he laid them aside, bade the man put the rest into the 
 sack again, helped him to lay it on his back, and told him 
 to take them home, and if at any time he was in distress, 
 to come and ask and he should have ; but he exhorted him 
 to steal no more. Then shaking him by the hand, he said, 
 I forgive you, and may God for Christ's sake do the same. 
 What effect this had upon the thief is not stated; but 
 John Nile was that night " filled with a clear evidence of 
 pardoning love," with an assurance, " that having forgiven 
 his brother his trespasses, his heavenly Father also had 
 forgiven him." — Did the feeling proceed from Ills faith, or 
 his good works ? 
 
 " The Scriptures," says Priestley, " uniformly instruct us 
 to judge of ourselves and others, not by uncertain and 
 undescribable feelings, but by evident actions. As our 
 
 r r 4 
 
616 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Saviour says, < by their fruits shall ye know men.' For 
 where a man's conduct is not only occasionally, but uni- 
 formly right, the principle upon which he acts must be 
 good. Indeed the only reason why we value good prin- 
 ciples, is on account of their uniform operation in producing 
 good conduct. This is the end, and the principle is only 
 the means." — Preface to Original Letters by Wesley and his 
 Friends. 
 
 MR. WESLEY'S EPITAPHS. 
 
 ON THE TOMB-STONE. 
 
 To the Memory of 
 
 The Venerable John Wesley, A. M. 
 
 Late Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. 
 
 This Great Light arose 
 
 (By the singular Providence of God) 
 
 To enlighten these Nations, 
 
 And to revive, enforce, and defend, 
 
 The Pure, Apostolical Doctrines and Practices of 
 
 The Primitive Church : 
 
 Which he continued to do, by his Writings and his 
 
 Labours, 
 
 For more than Half a Century : 
 
 And, to his inexpressible Joy, 
 
 Not only beheld their Influence extending, 
 
 And their Efficacy witnessed, 
 
 In the Hearts and Lives of Many Thousands, 
 
 As well in the Western World as in these 
 
 Kingdoms : 
 
 But also, far above all human Power or Expectation, 
 
 Lived to see Provision made by the singular Grace of 
 
 God 
 
 For their Continuance and Establishment, 
 
 To the Joy of Future Generations ! 
 
 Reader, if thou art constrained to bless the Instrument 
 
 Give God the Glory ! 
 
 sifter having languished a few days, he at length finished 
 
 his Course and his Life together ; gloriously 
 
 triumphing over Death, March 2. An. 
 
 Jhm. 1791, in the Eighty eighth Year 
 
 Of his Age. 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 617 
 
 IN THE CHAPEL. 
 
 Sacred to the Memory 
 
 Of the Rev. John Weslet, M. A. 
 
 Some time Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. 
 
 A Man, in Learning and sincere Piety, 
 
 Scarcely inferior to any : 
 
 In Zeal, Ministerial Labours, and extensive Usefulness, 
 
 Superior (perhaps) to all Men 
 
 Since the days of St. Paul. 
 
 Regardless of Fatigue, personal Danger, and Disgrace, 
 
 He went out into the highways and hedges, 
 
 Calling Sinners to Repentance, 
 
 And Preaching the Gospel of Peace. 
 
 He was the Founder of the Methodist Societies ; 
 
 The Patron and Friend of the Lay- Preachers, 
 
 By whose aid he extended the Plan of Itinerant preaching 
 
 Through Great Britain and Ireland, 
 
 The West Indies and America, 
 
 With unexampled Success. 
 
 He was born June 1 7th, 1703, 
 
 And died March 2d, 1791, 
 
 In sure and certain hope of Eternal Life, 
 
 Through the Atonement and Mediation of a Crucified Saviour. 
 
 He was sixty-five Years in the Ministry, 
 
 And fifty -two an Itinerant Preacher : 
 
 He lived to see in these Kingdoms only, 
 
 About three hundred Itinerant, 
 
 And a thousand Local Preachers, 
 
 Raised up from the midst of his own People ; 
 
 And eighty thousand Persons in the Societies under his care. 
 
 His Name will ever be had in grateful Remembrance 
 
 by all who rejoice in the universal Spread 
 
 Of the Gospel of Christ, 
 
 Soli Deo Gloria. 
 
 Not long after Mr. Wesley's death a pamphlet was pub- 
 lished, entitled, An Impartial Review of his Life and 
 Writings. Two love-letters were inserted as having been 
 written by him to a young lady in his eighty-first year ; 
 and, " to prevent all suspicion of their authenticity," the 
 author declared that the original letters, in the hand- 
 writing of Mr. Wesley, were then in his possession, and 
 
618 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 that they should be open to the inspection of any person 
 who would call at a given place to examine them. " With 
 this declaration," says Mr. Drew, " many were satisfied ; 
 but many who continued incredulous, actually called. Un- 
 fortunately, however, they always happened to call, either 
 when the author was engaged, or when he was from home, 
 or when these original letters were lent for the inspection 
 of others ! It so happened, that though they were always 
 open to examination, they could never be seen." In the 
 year 1801, however, the author, a Mr. J. Collet, wrote to 
 Dr. Coke, confessing that he had written the letters himself, 
 and that most of the pretended facts in the pamphlet were 
 equally fictitious. 
 
 The Ex-Bishop Gregoire has inserted one of these 
 forged letters in his History of the Religious Sects of the 
 last Century. He reckons among the Methodists Mr. 
 Wilberforce, who, he says, has defended the principles of 
 Methodism in his writings, and le jpoete Sir Richard Hill, 
 Baronnet. But the most amusing specimen of the Ex- 
 Bishop's accuracy is, where enumerating among the con- 
 troverted subjects of the last century, La Re forme du Symbole 
 Athanasien, he adds, a cette discussion se rattache la Con- 
 troverse Blagdonienne entre le cure de Blagdon, pres de 
 Bristol, et Miss Hannah More. 
 
 ADDITIONAL NOTES 
 
 ■ CONCERNING MR. WESLEY' S FAMILY. 
 
 Bartholomew Wesley is said to have been the fanatical 
 minister of Charmouth, in Dorsetshire, who had nearly 
 been the means of delivering Lord Wilmot and Charles II. 
 to their enemies. L/ord Clarendon's account, however, 
 differs from this ; he says that the man was a weaver, and 
 had been a soldier : but Mr. Wesley had received an 
 University education. 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 6lQ 
 
 Samuel Wesley, the elder, was a student in a dissenting 
 academy, kept by Mr. Veal, at Stepney ; and, according to 
 John Dunton, was " educated upon charity" there; an 
 invidious expression, meaning nothing more than that the 
 friends of his parents assisted in giving him an education 
 which his mother could not have afforded. He distin- 
 guished himself there by his facility in versifying ; and the 
 year after his removal to Oxford, published a volume 
 entitled, " Maggots, or poems on several subjects never 
 before handled." A whimsical portrait of the anonymous 
 author was prefixed, representing him writing at a table, 
 crowned with laurel, and with a maggot on his forehead : 
 underneath are these words : — 
 
 In's own defence the author writes, 
 Because when this foul maggot bites 
 
 He ne'er can rest in quiet, 
 Which makes him make so sad a face, 
 He'd beg your worship or your grace 
 
 Unsight, unseen to buy it. 
 
 It was by the profits of this work, and by composincr 
 elegies, epitaphs, and epithalamiums, for his friend John 
 Dunton, who traded in these articles, and kept a stock by 
 him ready made, that Mr. Wesley supported himself at 
 Oxford : not as I have erroneously stated (after Dr. White- 
 head) by what he earned in the University itself. i( He 
 usually wrote too fast," says Dunton, "to write well. 
 Two hundred couplets a-day are too many by two-thirds 
 to be well furnished with all the beauties and the graces of 
 that art. He wrote very much for me both in prose and 
 verse, though I shall not name over the titles, in regard I 
 am altogether as unwilling to see my name at the bottom 
 of them, as Mr. Wesley would be to subscribe his own." 
 
 Dunton and Wesley were brothers-in-law, and when the 
 former wrote his <s Life and Errors," they were not upon 
 amicable terms. Dunton could not forgive him for having 
 published a letter concerning the education of the Dissenters 
 in their private academies. It appears, however, by his 
 own account, that Mr. Wesley, little as he had to spare, 
 
620 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 had lent him money in his distresses; and Dunton, even 
 while he satirizes him, acknowledges that he was a generous, 
 good-humoured, and pious man. 
 
 Mr. Nichols (Literary Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 84.) says 
 that Mr. Wesley's house was burnt twice. John, how- 
 ever, only says, that the villains several times attempted 
 to burn it. He had made great progress in his laborious 
 work upon the Book of Job, having collated all the copies 
 he could meet with of the original, and the Greek and 
 other versions and editions. All these labours were de- 
 stroyed : but in the decline of life he resumed the task, 
 though oppressed with gout and palsy through long habit 
 of study. Among other assistances he particularly ac- 
 knowledges that of his three sons, and his friend Maurice 
 Johnson. 
 
 The book was printed at Mr. Bowyer's press. How 
 much is it to be wished that the productions of all our 
 great presses had been recorded with equal diligence ! 
 
 The Dissertationes in Librum Jobi, I have never seen ; 
 but I learn from Mr. Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, (vol. v. 
 p. 212.) that a curious emblematical portrait of the author 
 is prefixed to the volume. It " represents Job in a chair 
 of state, dressed in a robe bordered with fur, sitting be- 
 neath a gateway, on the arch of which is written Job Pa- 
 triarcha. He bears a sceptre in his hand, and in the 
 back-ground are seen two of the Pyramids of Egypt. His 
 position exactly corresponds with the idea given us by the 
 Scriptures in the book of Job, chap. xxix. 7. : ' When I 
 went out to the gate through the city, when I prepared my 
 seat in the street :• according to the custom of those times 
 of great men sitting at the gate of the city to decide causes. 
 The^subscription on a tablet beneath his feet, An. cetat. cir- 
 citer LXX. Quis mihi tribuat? mark it out as the 
 quaint device of a man in years who thought himself neg- 
 lected." 
 
 Garth and Swift have mentioned Wesley with con- 
 tempt : and Pope introduced him in the Dimciad, in com- 
 pany with Watts. Both names were erased in the subse- 
 
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 621 
 
 quent editions. Pope felt ashamed of having spoken inju- 
 riously of such a man as Dr. Watts, who was entitled not 
 only to high respect for his talents, but to admiration for 
 his innocent, and holy life : and he had become intimate 
 with Samuel Wesley the younger. That excellent man 
 exerted himself in every way to assist his father, when 
 the latter had lost all hope of the preferment which he 
 once had reason to expect. 
 
 " Time," says Mr. Badcock, " had so far gotten the 
 better of his fury against Sir Robert, (Walpole,) as to 
 change the satirist into the suppliant. I have seen a copy of 
 verses addressed to the great Minister, in behalf of his 
 poor and aged parent. But I have seen something much 
 better. I have in my possession a letter of this poor and 
 aged parent, addressed to his son Samuel, in which he 
 gratefully acknowledges his filial duty in terms so affecting, 
 that I am at a loss which to admire most, the gratitude of 
 the parent, or the affection and generosity of the child. It 
 was written when the good old man was nearly fourscore, 
 and so weakened by a palsy as to be incapable of directing 
 a pen, unless with his left hand. I preserve it as a curi- 
 ous memorial of what will make Wesley applauded when his 
 wit is forgotten." Literary Anecdotes, vol. v. p. 220. 
 
 The only works of the elder Wesley which I have met 
 with, are the two following, which were probably his most 
 successful publications. 
 
 The History of the Old Testament in Verse, with one 
 hundred and eighty Sculptures, in two volumes, dedicated 
 to her most sacred Majesty. Vol. i. From the Creation 
 to the Revolt of the Ten Tribes from the House of David. 
 Vol. ii. From that Revolt to the End of the Prophets. — 
 Written by Samuel Wesley, A.M. Chaplain to his Grace 
 John, Duke of Buckingham and Marquis of Normanby, 
 Author of the Life of Christ, an Heroic Poem. The Cuts 
 done by J. Sturt. London : printed for Cha. Harper, at 
 the Flower-de-luce, over against St. Dunstan's Church, in 
 Fleet-street. 1704. 12mo. 
 
622 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 The History of the New Testament, representing the 
 Actions .and Miracles of our Blessed Saviour and his 
 Apostles: attempted in Verse, and adorned with 152 
 Sculptures. Written by Samuel Wesley, A. M. Chap- 
 lain to the Most Honourable the Lord Marquis of Nor- 
 manby, and Author of the Life of Christ, an Heroic 
 Poem. The cuts done by J. Sturt. London : printed 
 for Cha. Harper, at the Flower-de-luce, over-against St. 
 Dunstan's Church, in Fleet-street. 1701. 12mo. 
 
 The elder Wesley had a clerk, who was a Whig, like 
 his master, and a poet also, of a very original kind. " One 
 Sunday, immediately after Sermon, he said, with an au- 
 dible voice, Let us sing to the praise and glory of God, 
 a hymn of my own composing. It was short and sweet, 
 and ran thus ; 
 
 King William is come home, come home, 
 
 King William home his come ! 
 Therefore let us together sing 
 
 The hymn that's call'd Te D'um." 
 
 Wesley's Remarks on Mr. Hill's Farrago Double- 
 distilled. Works, vol. xv. p. 109. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Primed by A. and R. Spottiswoode, 
 Pfiiitcrs-Street, London. 
 
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