We have already seen that Mr Wesley was seriously involved in debt. During his attendance at convocation he seems to have received considerable assistance. In a letter to Archbishop Sharpe, dated August 7, 1702, he mentions several sums which he had received from eminent persons: the Dean of Exeter, £10; Dr Stanley, £10; Archbishop of Canterbury, £10, 10s.; and, he adds:—“Even my lord Marquis of Normanby, by my good lady’s solicitations succeeding your Grace’s, did verily and indeed, with his own hand, give me twenty guineas, and my lady five. With these and other sums I made up about £60, and came home joyful enough,—thanked God,—paid as many debts as I could,—quieted the rest of my creditors,—took the management of my house into my own hands,—and had ten guineas left to take my harvest.”^[160]

What is meant by the last sentence but one, I hardly know. It is difficult to regard it as a reflection on the household management of his wife. Probably, on account of his wife’s feeble health, his domestic matters had been managed by his servant; but, be that as it might, the rector now, perhaps unwisely, took the management himself.

Still, however, the current of life was far from flowing smoothly. Soon after the removal from the miserable hut at South Ormsby to the spacious parsonage at Epworth, the rector’s barn fell down, and had to be rebuilt; and now, on July 31st, 1702, another disaster occurred, which was more serious than the former.

Mr Wesley shall tell his own story in the letter to Archbishop Sharpe already quoted. He writes:—“On the last of July 1702, a fire broke out in my house, by some sparks which took hold of the thatch, and consumed about two-thirds of it before it could be quenched. I was at the lower end of the town visiting a sick person, and went thence to R. Cogan’s. As I was returning, they brought me the news. I got one of his horses, rode up, and heard, by the way, that my wife, children, and books were saved; for which God be praised, as well as for what He has taken. They were all together in my study, and the fire under them. When it broke out, Mrs Wesley got two of the children in her arms, and ran through the smoke and fire; but one of them was left in the hurry, till the other cried for her, when the neighbours ran in, and got her out through the fire, as they did my books, and most of my goods; this very paper among the rest, which I afterwards found, as I was looking over what was saved.

“I find it is some happiness to have been miserable, for my mind has been so blunted with former misfortunes, that this scarce made any impression upon me. I shall go on, by God’s assistance, to take my tithe; and, when that is in, to rebuild my house, having, at last, crowded my family into what is left, and not missing many of my goods.

“I humbly ask your Grace’s pardon for this long, melancholy story, and leave to subscribe myself your Grace’s ever obliged and most humble servant, S. Wesley.”

It is a somewhat singular circumstance that the sheet of paper on which this letter was written, was one on which he had begun a letter to the archbishop six days before the fire broke out. About four square inches of the lower corner of the fly-leaf was burnt, and the whole was stained by the water that helped to put out the flames.

The good archbishop, to whom this account was sent, came forward both with his purse and influence; and this produced the following touching and characteristic letter:—

To a man with a large family, and who, if not at present, had recently been £300 in debt, the burning of his house was a dire disaster; but, alas! Samuel Wesley’s calamities did not end with this. During the winter of 1704, which was very shortly after the rebuilding of his house, another fire broke out, and burnt the whole of his flax; and, five years after that, a third fire utterly destroyed his recently re-erected rectory. But these are facts which, in chronological order, will have to be noticed anon.

In the year 1703, a small pamphlet was published, entitled, “A Letter from a Country Divine to his Friend in London, concerning the Education of Dissenters in their Private Academies in several parts of this Nation: Humbly offered to the consideration of the Grand Committee of Parliament for Religion, now sitting. London, 1703,” 4to., pp. 15.^[161] Samuel Wesley was the writer of this letter; but it was printed without either his consent or knowledge; and, as it led to a serious, prolonged, and ill-natured controversy, it behoves us to examine its history.

Up to the time that Mr Wesley went to Oxford University, he was a Nonconformist, the child, and the grandchild of expelled Nonconformist ministers, and a student trained in Nonconformist academics, and having none but Nonconformist acquaintances. His life at Oxford was retired, and, therefore, not likely to make him many friends of another description. On his return to London, in 1688, he not only kept up a friendship with some of his old Dissenting associates, but also began to become acquainted with several gentlemen of the Church of England. One of these, knowing that Wesley had been educated in a Dissenting academy, zealously, if not wisely, urged him to write an account of the inner life of such establishments. For some time Wesley resisted this request; but at length a circumstance happened which led him to comply. He tells us that he went, with some of his Dissenting acquaintances, to a Dissenting festival, held in a house in Leadenhall Street. The discourse of these festive Dissenters was so fulsome, profane, and lewd, that he was not able to endure it. In a little while they sat down to supper, and now they all began to rail against monarchy, and to blaspheme the memory of King Charles the martyr. These proceedings convinced Wesley that his old friends, who some years before had prompted him to “dabble in rhyming lampoons both on Church and State,” were as disaffected and disloyal as ever. He felt disgusted, and leaving the room, he went home, and, before he slept, wrote the letter, which was published some twelve or thirteen years afterwards.

But here we must pause. The festival, at which Wesley was present, was the anniversary of the notorious Calves-head Club, and a brief account of that infamous fraternity seems needful.

In the British Museum, there is a small quarto pamphlet of twenty-two pages, entitled “The Secret History of the Calves-head Club; or, The Republican Unmasked: Wherein is fully shown the religion of the Calves-head heroes, in their anniversary thanksgiving songs, on the 30th January, by them called anthems, for the years 1693 to 1697; now published to demonstrate the restless, implacable spirit of a certain party still among us, who are never to be satisfied, till the present establishment in Church and State is subverted. London: Printed and sold by the booksellers of London and Westminster, 1703.” From that pamphlet the following particulars are taken:—

The preface states, that, “the poems, or ribaldry, and trash following were composed and set to music for the use of the Calves-head Club, which was erected by an impudent set of people, who have their feasts of calves’ heads, in several parts of the town, on the 30th of January, in derision of that day, and in defiance of monarchy; at divers of which meetings the following compositions were sung, and which, in affront of the Church, were called anthems.”

The preface then descants on the persecutions and indignities suffered by King Charles I., and states that, “of all the indignities offered to the manes of the injured prince, nothing equals the inhumanity and profaneness of the Calves-head Club.”

It further alleges:—“That Milton and some other creatures of the commonwealth had instituted this club, in opposition to Bishop Juxon, Dr Sanderson, Dr Hammond, and other divines of the Church of England, who met privately every 30th of January, and, though it was during the time of the usurpation, compiled a private form of service for the day, not much different from what we now find in the Liturgy.”

It is stated further, that “after the Restoration, the eyes of the Government being upon the whole (Calves-head) party, they were obliged to meet with a great deal of precaution; but now, in the second year of the reign of King William, they meet almost in a public manner, and apprehend nothing.”

“A gentleman, about eight years ago, went out of mere curiosity to see their club, which was kept at no fixed house, but removed as they saw convenient. The place they met in, when he was with them, was in a blind alley about Moorfields; and the company wholly consisted of Independents and Anabaptists. The famous Jerry White, formerly chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, who, no doubt, came to sanctify with his pious exhortations the ribaldry of the day, said grace. After the table-cloth was removed, the anniversary anthem, as they impiously called it, was sung, and a calf’s head filled with wine, or other liquor, was placed before the company. Then a brimmer went about to the pious memory of those worthy patriots that had killed the tyrant, and had delivered the country from his arbitrary sway; and, last of all, a collection was made for the mercenary scribbler, who had composed the anthem, to which every man contributed according to his zeal for the cause, or the ability of his purse.”

Such are the principal statements contained in the edition of this curious and scarce pamphlet, published in 1703; but, in another edition, published two years afterwards, it is added: “That an axe was hung up in the club room; and that the bill of fare was a large dish of calves’-heads dressed in divers ways, a large pike with a small one in his mouth as an emblem of tyranny, a large cod’s head to represent the person of the king, and a boar’s head with an apple in its mouth to represent the king’s bestiality. After the repast, one of the elders of the club presented an Eikon Basilike, which, with great solemnity, was burnt upon the table whilst the anthem was being sung; and then another elder produced Milton’s ‘Defensio Populi Anglicani,’ upon which all laid their hands, and made a protestation, in form of an oath, for ever to stand by and to maintain it.”

The anthems for the years 1693 to 1697, inclusive, are then given in the pamphlet, and contain some things which it would be criminal to reprint. We subjoin the least objectionable specimens that we can give.

The anthem for 1693 consists of five verses of eight lines each, with a chorus. The following lines are taken from the third and fourth verses:—

The following infamous lines are taken from the anthem for 1694. After describing the “fall of the tyrant,” and the satisfaction of the nation, and their own celebration of the event, those bacchanalian revellers are made to sing:—

The anthem for 1695 consists of five verses; the first, the second, and the fourth verses are too profane and lewd to be reproduced. The following are the third and fifth. After describing the people hurrying to Church on the 30th of January, and asking what is meant by it, the foul-mouthed members sing:—

The greater part of the anthem for 1696 is filthy and profane to a horrible degree. The following are the last four lines, and the least exceptionable:—

The anthem for 1697 consists of ten verses. The following are the eighth and ninth:—

It is said that the author of these scurrilous productions was Benjamin Bridgewater, M.A., of Trinity College, Cambridge, “whose genius,” says Dunton, “was very rich, and ran much upon poetry; but, alas! wine and love were his ruin.” He was largely rewarded by the Calves-head Club for his profane and lewd effusions.

Assuming the above description of the Calves-head Club to be correct, no wonder that Samuel Wesley was disgusted with its proceedings; and, though this perhaps scarcely justifies the writing of the letter which was published in 1703, yet, it is some excuse for it. Wesley, in his letter, apologises for writing against a body among whom he was educated, to whom his ancestors belonged, and from whom he had received many personal favours. He declares that he feels no enmity against the party he had left; that he honoured some of them, and pitied others, but hated none. He states that his purpose is to relate the methods used by Dissenters to propagate a ministry in opposition to the Established Church; to describe what kind of schools and colleges they had set up, to supersede the necessity of going to the universities; and to show how these were maintained, what principles they taught, and what sort of arguments they used to confirm their pupils in their dissent, and to hinder them from going over to the communion of the Church.

But now, it may be asked, why was Wesley’s letter, after the lapse of so many years, given to the public in a printed form? It is somewhat difficult to answer this; and yet there are certain facts which will help to cast light upon it. In 1702, King William died, and Queen Anne, the patroness of the High Church party, succeeded to the throne. The Dissenters, who, for the last thirteen years, had received royal favours, were now the objects of royal abhorrence. Just at this juncture, Samuel Wesley’s letter respecting their academies was published. In the same year, 1703, the first part of Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion was printed, and dedicated to Queen Anne. In the dedication occurs the following paragraph:—“What can be the meaning of the several seminaries, and, as it were, universities, set up in divers parts of the kingdom, by more than ordinary industry, contrary to law, supported by large contributions, where the youth is bred up in principles directly contrary to monarchical and Episcopal government? What can be the meaning of the constant solemnizing by some men, the anniversary of that dismal thirtieth of January, in scandalous and opprobrious feasting and jesting, which the law of the land hath commanded to be perpetually observed in fasting and humiliation? It is humbly submitted to your Majesty whether this does not look like an industrious propagation of the rebellious principles of the last age, and whether it is not necessary that your Majesty should have an eye toward such unaccountable proceedings?”

In 1704, a second part of Clarendon’s History was published, with another dedication to the same royal patroness, in which, in reference to the Dissenters, it is said:—“Let them clear themselves of that they were lately charged with before your Majesty, that there are societies of them which celebrate the horrid thirtieth of January, with an execrable solemnity of scandalous mirth; and that they have seminaries, and a sort of universities, in England, maintained by great contributions, where the fiercest doctrines against monarchical and Episcopal government are taught and propagated, and where they bear an implacable hatred to your Majesty’s title, name, and family.”

In the same year that Samuel Wesley’s letter was published, Queen Anne gave her first-fruits and tenths for augmenting the livings of the poorer clergy. In addition to this, the “Occasional Conformity Bill” was passed by the Commons and rejected by the Lords, and created great excitement in the nation. In the House of Peers, “Archbishop Sharpe said he apprehended danger from the increase of Dissenters, and particularly from the many academies set up by them, and moved that the judges might be consulted what laws were in force against such seminaries, and by what means they might be suppressed.”^[163]

It becomes an interesting inquiry to ask in what relation Mr Wesley’s letter stood to “The Secret History of the Calves-head Club,” to the strong language used in the dedicatory preface of Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion, to the bounty of Queen Anne, to the “Occasional Conformity Bill,” and to the speech of his faithful and affectionate friend, Archbishop Sharpe? This is a question which we cannot answer, but that his letter was deemed an important one is evident from the attention it attracted, and the excitement it occasioned.^[164]

Most of the facts contained in Mr Wesley’s letter have been already given in the third and fourth chapters of this work, and hardly anything can be added here.

One of Wesley’s most offensive assertions is that the Dissenters are “a sort of people none of the best-natured in the world,” though he admits that “all or most of his relations and acquaintances” belong to that denomination. He adds, that, he was deterred “writing lest he should be thought ungrateful to those from whom, for some years, he received his bread; and also, lest what he said should increase existing animosities.” He says he “honours some of the Dissenters and pities others, without hating any.” His statements must have been galling; but we are bound to say there is no appearance of an acrimonious spirit. Had his opponents possessed and evinced the same good-tempered moderation, the controversy would not have been so painful and discreditable as what it was.

Samuel Wesley’s first and chief antagonist was Samuel Palmer, an Independent minister of some repute, upon whom Dunton lavishes the highest praise. He tells us that he was educated by Dr Kerr, and pursued his studies at the rate of seventeen hours a-day; that his temper was open and sincere, and that he abhorred all trick and flattery; that he was a man of great generosity, very charitable, and very humble; that he never courted the rich, and was always ready to attend the poor; that he preached without notes, and that his delivery, voice, and style were excellent; that he took great pains with the rising generation, and that his catechetical lectures were plain, easy, and full; that he was well-beloved by all the clergy and gentlemen of the Church of England who knew him, and that he was well skilled in law and politics—

Samuel Palmer, as Dunton intimates, pursued his academical studies under Dr Kerr, a gentleman of considerable reputation for classical learning, who was first a tutor in Ireland, but was driven thence by the tyranny of the Earl of Tyrconnel, and then settled at Bethnal Green, where he met with great encouragement, and trained several Dissenting ministers, who were ornaments to religion and learning. Palmer entered upon the ministry at Grave Lane Chapel, Southwark, in 1698. His first two publications were his replies to Wesley, published respectively in 1703 and 1705, and which were accounted very able performances, and procured the author considerable reputation. Within a year or two after the second of these publications, he, like Wesley, left the Dissenters, and took orders in the Church of England, and had conferred upon him the living of Malden in Essex. It is said that this conversion to the Church of England arose out of his disappointment at not being rewarded according to his apprehended merit for his pamphlets against Wesley. It is further said, that, after he joined the Establishment, he grew lax in his morals until his conduct became scandalous. We are not informed as to the time and place of his decease; but, in 1710 he published an octavo volume, entitled “Moral Essays, founded upon English, Scotch, and Foreign Proverbs.”^[166] Such was Wesley’s principal antagonist.

Mr Wesley’s letter gave the Dissenters great offence, but the reader must not forget the circumstances under which it was written, and the dishonourable way in which it was afterwards published. About the year 1690, Wesley was introduced to the meeting of the Calves-head Club already mentioned. Rightly or wrongly, Wesley regarded Charles I. as a “royal martyr,” for thus he emphatically speaks of him in the dedication he prefixed to his “History of the Old and New Testaments in Verse;” but, at the meeting at which he was now present, the name and memory of Charles were treated with even profane derision and contempt. Is it surprising that this spirited young man should leave the place with a feeling of disgust, and that, in the heat of the moment, he should sit down to write what he had often been solicited to write, an account of the “Education of the Dissenters in their private academies”? He tells us that he began to write his letter as soon as he left the club, and that he finished it before five o’clock next morning. He then went to bed, placing his manuscript beneath his pillow. While he slept, a Dissenting friend, who had seen him thoughtful, came and stealthily took the manuscript away and read it. Such behaviour was highly dishonourable, and can be excused only on the ground of supposing that Wesley and this Dissenter were intimate and confidential friends. Be that as it may, when Wesley awoke and missed his letter, he charged the Dissenter with having it. The purloiner produced the missing manuscript, said he had read it, and that there was nothing in it but what was true. Still he was doubtful respecting the expediency of divulging such revelations, and persuaded Wesley not to send the letter to the person for whom it was intended.

That person was Robert Clavel, a respectable and extensive dealer in books, master of the Company of Stationers, and whom Dr Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln, used to call “the honest bookseller.” By some means, Clavel became possessed of Wesley’s letter. Wesley never intended it for the public eye. He declares that he wrote it as a “private letter to a particular friend, and had not the least thought of its being published.” Clavel kept the letter in his private possession for about a dozen years. The Dissenters were rapidly rising into power. The High Church party took alarm, and Queen Anne became a tool for the accomplishment of their purposes. Just at this juncture Clavel, without Wesley’s consent, and even without consulting him, took upon himself to print the letter which Wesley, at a single sitting, had written some twelve years before, and, to give it more importance, actually dedicated it to the House of Commons, at that time most hostile to the Dissenters, and eager to do something for their suppression.

What was the result? Wesley’s letter was published anonymously, but as it contained a biographical sketch of the early history of the writer, there was no difficulty in detecting the author. Accordingly there appeared, almost immediately, a small quarto pamphlet of twenty-four pages, with the following title:—“A Defence of the Dissenters’ Education in their Private Academies, in an answer to Mr W——y’s disingenuous and unskilful Reflections upon ’em; in a Letter to a Noble Lord.—London, 1703.” This was by Mr Palmer.

Mr Palmer’s defence is full of bitterness. He speaks of Wesley’s “impotent malice,” “trifling stories,” and “unchristian and ungentlemanly insinuations.” He says that Wesley’s accusation, that Mr Morton’s pupils vindicated the murder of Charles I., is “scandalous and false;” that “the Dissenters universally abhor the king-killing doctrines;” and that they “have not opposed any king, nor defended any tyrant.” He also denies that the Dissenters were “undutiful to the Church and injurious to the Universities;” for “Dr Owen himself required Wesley to go to the University.” He alleges that Wesley, in his letter, has “acted unbecoming a scholar, a gentleman, and a Christian;” that he “has betrayed the private conversations of his best friends, and insulted the works of great and excellent scholars,” and yet Palmer admits that Wesley’s “charges might be true, at least in part;” but thinks the things “were excusable, considering the provocations the Dissenters received at that period.” He says, Wesley “endeavoured, by artful and false insinuations, to expose Dissenters to contempt;” speaks of his letter as “perfidious;” and states that he had received “many favours from Dissenters even since he conformed to the Church of England, and that, till the appearance of his invidious letter, the whole Dissenting party expressed for him, on all occasions, universal esteem.” He says, Wesley’s works “are saved from contempt only by the adorable name of Jesus which they bear, and the lovely memory of that bright saint, the Queen; both of which names, the best poets think, are injured by his trifling management.” Much of this is not only abusive, but false.

Mr Palmer’s defence was written at the request of the nobleman to whom it is addressed; and, besides rude reproaches, contains an account of the academy in which he himself had been trained for the Christian ministry. Dr Kerr, his tutor, was “a great and polite scholar, a curious critic, a penetrating philosopher, a deep and rational divine, and an accurate historian.” He never “heard him make one unhandsome reflection on the Church of England; and he never offered to impose controverted points upon his pupils. No man living could perform academical readings better; and his pupils, in proportion to their number, were equal in learning and virtue to those of any University in Europe.”

The course adopted by Dr Kerr was for his students to begin with logic, then proceed to metaphysics, and then to natural philosophy. They disputed every other day, in Latin, upon the several philosophical controversies; and, “on Saturdays, all the superior classes declaimed by turns, four and four, on noble and useful subjects.” On Mondays and Fridays they read divinity; and every day, after dinner, they read Greek and Latin authors. They also went through the Greek Testament once a year. Dr Kerr began the scholastic exercises of every morning with public prayer, sometimes in English, and sometimes in Latin. At divinity lectures the eldest pupils prayed, and those of inferior genius were allowed forms of prayer, either of their own composing, or others, as they thought proper. Prayer in the family was most punctually observed, and nine o’clock at night was the latest hour for any pupil to be out of doors. Obscene or profane discourse, if known, would have been punished with expulsion; though Palmer admits that some of the students broke the rules, and gives an account of one or two who became rakes, had to leave, and entered the Established Church. He adds, that the rule among Dissenters was for every candidate for the ministry to have five years of preparatory training, and that, before they were recommended to a pastorship, they had to be examined as to learning, probity, and virtue, and to have certificates from their tutors. Such is the substance of Mr Palmer’s defence.

In 1704, Mr Wesley replied to this. His second pamphlet is entitled, “A Defence of a Letter concerning the Education of Dissenters in their Private Academies, with a more full and satisfactory account of the same, and of their morals and behaviour towards the Church of England; being an Answer to the Defence of the Dissenters’ Education. By Samuel Wesley: London, 1704;” with this remarkable motto—

The pamphlet consists of sixty-four pages, besides eight of title, preface, and contents.

In his preface, Mr Wesley gives an account of the writing and publication of his former letter, which he solemnly declares was printed without his consent or knowledge.

He then states, that, the reason why he now writes this “Defence” is, because Palmer, by broad inuendos, has charged him with immoral and scandalous practices while he lived among the Dissenters.

Wesley’s pamphlet chiefly consists of three parts:—1. The reasons which induced him to write the letter which Clavel had published, and which had “lost him the good graces of his old friends.” 2. A consideration of Palmer’s defence of his party. 3. A refutation of the scandalous charges brought against himself. The pamphlet is written with great smartness.

In 1705, Palmer published an answer to Wesley’s second pamphlet, entitled, “A Vindication of the Learning, Loyalty, Morals, and most Christian Behaviour of the Dissenters towards the Church of England; in answer to Mr Wesley’s Defence of his Letter concerning the Dissenters’ Education in their Private Academies; and to Mr Sacheverell’s injurious Reflections upon them. By Samuel Palmer: London, 1705.”

Palmer, in his preface, states that in his former pamphlet he had charged Wesley with giving a perverse and invidious turn to some of the Dissenters’ innocent actions; with an ungenerous betrayal of private confidence, by reflecting upon private conversations; with insulting the works of great and excellent scholars; and with base ingratitude to his Dissenting friends. He also speaks most contemptuously of Wesley’s reply to his previous production, and says he did not think Wesley was “capable of writing so rash, impertinent, and virulent a piece.”

Palmer’s vindication, which consists of 115 closely—printed quarto pages, is written with great ability, and is divided into nine chapters. The first is intended to prove that the Dissenters have a right to have private academies. The second shows that such academies are no injury to the prerogatives of Queen Anne, and that their tutors are not guilty of perjury. The third vindicates the ability of such tutors, and assigns reasons why the Dissenters have published so few learned works. The fourth gives the reasons why the Dissenters did not write more against Popery during the reign of James II. The fifth asserts that the principles and behaviour of the Dissenters are loyal. The sixth defends the addresses which the Dissenters presented to James II. The seventh justifies the personal and public behaviour of Dissenters towards the Church of England. The eighth vindicates the moral principles and conversation of Dissenters. And the ninth shows the value which Dissenters place upon external worship, upon the sacraments, and upon ordination.

Two years after this, Mr Wesley wrote a long and elaborate reply to this second pamphlet of Mr Palmer’s; but, for the present, we must pause in our narrative to glance at other matters now transpiring. It was a period of intense excitement, and the dissenting controversy was the great question of the day.

A few weeks after the accession of Queen Anne, the famous Henry Sacheverell began the war by preaching his furious sermon, at Oxford, on “political union;” in which, says Defoe, “he dooms all Dissenters to destruction, without either bell, book, or candle.”^[167] In this celebrated sermon, Sacheverell lays it down as a principle, that “religion and government, Church and State, make up one entire compounded constitution, sharing the same fate and circumstances, twisted and interwoven into the very being and principles of each other, both alike jointly assisting and being assisted; and, like the philosopher’s twins, they communicate to each other their mirth or sorrow, and equally suffer or rejoice. A ruined Church and prosperous Government are irreconcilable contradictions in experience, confronted and confuted by the universal testimony of all ages and histories, sacred and profane.”^[168] Having attempted to illustrate and to establish this principle, he then makes his doctrine to bear upon English Dissenters, and uses language the most violent. The following are specimens:—

The Dissenters are “a confused swarm of sectarists gathered about the body of the Church of England, not to partake of its communion, but to disturb its peace,” (p. 20.)

Men like Tillotson, who were in favour of the scheme for comprehending the Dissenters within the pale of the Established Church, are designated “false and perfidious members, who, under the hypocritical disguise of charity and moderation, would have taken down the fence of the Church of England, and removed its landmark, to make way for men to enter, who would have debauched its doctrines, overrun its discipline, and subverted its constitution. These shuffling, treacherous latitudinarians ought to be stigmatised, and treated equally as dangerous enemies to government, as well as Church,” (p. 20.)

Again: “Presbytery and Republicanism go hand in hand. They are but the same disorderly, levelling principles, in the two different branches of our state, equally implacable enemies to monarchy and Episcopacy. They were the same hand that were guilty both of regicide and sacrilege, that divided the king’s head and crown, and that made our churches stables and dens of beasts, as well as thieves,” (p. 20.)

Again, in reference to Tillotson’s comprehension scheme, this firebrand orator exclaims: “And yet this Church must open her injured arms to receive this sly and insidious viper into her bosom. Her sacred enclosures must be laid open, that this boar out of the wood might waste it. Her partition wall must be broken down, and the veil of her temple rent in twain, to make way for that adversary to enter, whom no reason ever yet could convince; no kindness ever yet could win; no condescension ever yet could oblige; and whom nothing but the corruption of our doctrine, the destruction of our discipline, and the sequestration of our estates and revenues, can satisfy,” (p. 21.)

“The Dissenting party have more than once been joined with the Papists, in their arms and counsels, as well to extirpate our government as to subvert our Church. They were at first the bastard spawn of Papists, and have ever since been the instruments of their malice, the propagators of their schism, and the panders of that cursed train of mischief, that was originally hatched in a conclave, and afterwards brought forth and nursed up in a conventicle. They are not to be looked upon as a religious sect, but as a political faction in our State, uneasy under its laws, affronting its authority, denying its legal power, endeavouring to supplant its jurisdiction, and to wrest the reins of dominion out of our rulers’ hands,” (p. 22.)

The fiery preacher thus concludes:—“It is an amazing contradiction to our reason, and the greatest scandal upon our Church, that any, pretending to be her true sons, pillars, and defenders, should turn such apostates and renegadoes to their oaths and professions, such false traitors to their trusts and offices as to strike sail with a party that is such an open and avowed enemy to our communion, and against whom every man that wishes its welfare ought to hang out the bloody flag and banner of defiance. Is this the people for whom, at the expense of hazarding our eternal safety, we must give up our ancient faith, constitution, and form of worship? If the Church of England can have no other way of showing her charity than by prostituting her purity, and debauching her religion, I hope they will pardon her if she imitate her blessed Author and Founder, under a temptation not unlike it, who, with scorn and disdain, turned His back upon the devil when he asked Him to fall down and worship him. We must watch against these crafty, faithless, and insidious persons, who can creep to our altars, and partake of our sacraments, that they may be qualified more secretly and powerfully to undermine us. This is such a religious piece of political hypocrisy as even no heathen government would have endured; and, blessed be God, there is now a person on the throne, who so justly weighs the interest of Church and State as to remove so false an engine that visibly overturns both,” (p. 24.)

Such was the way in which the High Church party began their campaign, and four months afterwards their representatives, in the House of Commons, brought in and passed their pet “Occasional Conformity Bill.”

The Dissenters, at this period, were an influential and important community. They were, generally speaking, men of trade and industry, and the moneyed interests of England were, to a great extent, in their hands. Such was their consequence in the State, that, the parliamentary discussions of the “Occasional Conformity Bill” seriously influenced the money market, and the prices of stocks rose or fell just as the bill was likely to be passed or to be rejected.^[169] And yet, notwithstanding their number and importance, they were, with a few exceptions, extremely reasonable in their demands. Defoe, himself a Dissenter,^[170] expounds them in a pamphlet published at the time, and we presume that his exposition may be considered tolerably correct and just. He suggests that if Dissenters are to be excluded from all places of profit, trust, and honour, they ought to be excused from all places attended with charge, trouble, and loss of time; that if a Dissenter be pressed as a sailor to fight at sea, or be enlisted as a soldier to fight on shore, he ought not to be declared incapable of preferment; and that if Dissenters must not only maintain their own clergy and their own poor, but also join in maintaining the clergy and the poor of the Established Church,—if they must pay the same taxes and the same duties that Churchmen pay, it is somewhat hard that they are to be treated with so much suspicion as not to be thought worthy of being trusted to set a drunkard in the stocks.^[171]

Defoe further declares, that, so far as it respects himself, he has not the least objection to the “Occasional Conformity Bill” becoming law. He has no notion of “Christians of an amphibious nature, who have such preposterous consciences that they can believe one way of worship to be right, and yet serve God another way themselves. This is a strange thing in Israel! It is like a ship with her sails set, some back and some full. It is like a workman that builds with one hand, and pulls down with another. It is like everything which signifies nothing. To say that a man can be of two religions is a contradiction, unless there be two Gods to worship, or he has two souls to save. If it be unlawful for me to dissent, I ought to conform; but if it be unlawful for me to conform, I must dissent. To say that you take the sacrament as a civil act in a church, and as a religious act in a chapel, is playing bo—peep with God Almighty.”^[172]

Such were the sentiments of Defoe, and he declares that nine—tenths of the Dissenters, numbering altogether about two millions, entertained the same opinions.^[173] All he asks for is, what the Queen had recommended to parliament, peace and union. In such a case, “the concerns of conscience would never make a rupture in civil society; men would be gentlemen as well as Christians; they would be Dissenters, and yet not Dissenters; and there would be conformity in civil ceremonies, though none in religious. This would make the devil out of love with the English climate, and the people would get to heaven with the less interruption.”^[174]

Defoe was very far from being one of the mildest and most moderate of Dissenters; and yet, who can carp at sentiments like these?

There can be no doubt that blackguards, calling themselves Dissenters, annually joined in the profane, bacchanalian revelries of the Calves—head Club; but, on the other hand, it is equally certain that some of the High Church party, with a direct reference to the death of King William being said to have been immediately occasioned by his horse stumbling over a mole—hill, were accustomed to drink a health to the “little gentleman dressed in velvet,”^[175] and to the horse which so fatally stumbled over the insignificant heap of earth that had been raised by his proboscisproboscis.^[176]

Defoe complains that the same party “endeavoured, by calumny and reproach, to blacken the Dissenters with crimes of which they were innocent;”^[177] that “railing pamphlets, buffooning them and dressing them up in the bear’s skin for all the dogs in the street to bait them,” were published; “and that railing sermons, exciting the people to hate them,” were preached. He says “they were threatened with the repeal of the Toleration Act, blackened with slanders, and bullied with bloody flags, defiances, and Billingsgate language from the press and from the pulpit; their meeting houses were represented as houses of sedition, and they daily suffered from the indignities of harebrained priests, buffooning poets, and clubs of insolent pamphleteers.”^[178]

What was the result of all this? The greatest bitterness was created, and pamphlets, full of scurrility and violence, literally swarmed. Among the writers of these productions, Daniel Defoe was the most eminent. The pamphlet which, above all others, occasioned the greatest commotion, was his “Shortest Way with Dissenters; or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church.” This was published anonymously, and pretended to be written by one of the High Church party, and to set forth their complaints and wishes. The Church is said to have harboured Dissenters too long, and to have nourished the viperous brood till they hissed and flew in the face of the mother that had cherished them. The Church had been huffed and bullied by the Act of Toleration, and canting synagogues had been set up at its very doors. The Dissenters had butchered one king, deposed another, and made a mock monarch of a third, and yet expected to be employed by the fourth. If James I. had sent all the Puritans in England away to the West Indies, the Church of England would have been kept undivided and entire; but these Puritans, to requite the lenity of the father, took up arms against the son, put to death God’s anointed, and set up a sordid impostor who had neither the title nor the understanding to manage the nation. Coming into power, they shared the church lands among their soldiers, and turned the clergy out to starve. During the reign of their own King William, they had crept into all places of trust and profit, and had been preferred to the highest posts in England; while, in Scotland, they had trampled down the sacred orders, suppressed the Episcopacy, and made an entire conquest of the Church. For such reasons, they ought to be rooted out from the face of the land, and never would the nation enjoy uninterrupted union and tranquillity till their spirit of Whiggism, faction, and schism were melted down like the old money. It was true, that Queen Anne had promised them toleration, but she had also promised to protect and defend the Church; and if she could not effectually do that without the destruction of the Dissenters, she must, of course, dispense with one promise in order to fulfil the other. The Parliament, protected and encouraged by a Church of England queen, had now the opportunity to suppress the spirit of enthusiasm, and to free the nation from the vipers that had so long sucked the blood of their mother. If they were permitted to remain, they would corrupt posterity, plunder the estates of the members of the Church, drag their persons to gaols, gibbets, and scaffolds, and swallow up the Church itself in schism, faction, and enthusiasm. If one severe law were made and executed, that all found at a conventicle should be transported, and their preacher be hanged, they would soon all come to church, and an age would make all parties one again. Why should an enthusiast be less a criminal than a Jesuit? Why should the Papist, with his seven sacraments, be worse than a Quaker, with no sacrament at all? Why should religious houses be more intolerable than meeting—houses? What with Popery on the one hand, and schismatics on the other, the Church of England had been crucified between two thieves. Now, let the thieves be crucified, and let the foundations of the Church be established on the destruction of her enemies.

Such is the substance of Defoe’s notorious pamphlet. For a time, and to some extent, the High Church party believed it to be a genuine production; and one of them, in a letter, declared that, next to the Holy Bible and Sacred Comments, it was the most valuable thing that his library contained, and he earnestly prayed that God would put it into the heart of Queen Anne to carry its proposals into execution.^[179] It is certain that there was nothing in Defoe’s pamphlet but what had been substantially enunciated from scores of High Church pulpits; but now that it was published, and a national commotion was created, and especially, as soon as it was suspected that the writer was not a Churchman, but a despicable Dissenter, there was a pretence of the most terrible indignation, and threats of the severest punishment to be inflicted upon the audacious author.

Defoe was suspected, and had to flee for safety. He was advertised in the London Gazette, and £50 was offered by Government for his apprehension. The advertisement describes him as “a middle—sized, spare man, about forty years old, of a brown complexion, and dark—brown coloured hair, but wears a wig; has a hooked nose, a sharp chin, gray eyes, and a large mole near his mouth.” This advertisement is dated January 10, 1703, the year in which Wesley’s letter was published.

Six weeks after, the House of Commons passed a resolution, “That this book (Defoe’s) being full of false and scandalous reflections on parliament, and tending to promote sedition, be burnt by the hands of the common hangman in New Palace Yard.”

Meantime, Defoe was arrested, and, in July 1703, was brought to trial. His sentence was to pay a fine to the Queen of two hundred marks; to stand three times in the pillory; to be imprisoned during the Queen’s pleasure, and to find sureties for his good behaviour for seven years.

In accordance with this sentence, on July 29, Defoe was placed in the pillory before the Royal Exchange; on July 30, near the Conduit in Cheapside; and on July 31, at Temple Bar. Such pillory exhibitions had seldom been witnessed. On each of the three days, thousands of sympathisers accompanied the condemned scribe from Newgate prison to his place of shame, to protect him from hurt or insult, whilst his very pillory was hung with garlands woven by the fingers of his friends.

The pen of Defoe was never plied more busily than while he was in prison. He wrote more church defiances during his year of confinement in Newgate than in any other year of his chequered life. Other persons were equally busy, and in all forms of pamphlet, tract, and broadsheet, the press poured forth its volumes of contention. All classes of society seemed to catch the contagion. Dean Swift, in London at the time, declared that the contention between Church and Dissent was so universal, that the dogs in the streets took it up, and the cats debated the question by night on the tops of the houses; yea, the very ladies were so split asunder into High Church and Low Church, and were so warm in their disputes, as to have no time to say their prayers.

It was in the midst of this excitement that Samuel Wesley’s letter was published by Clavel, and that his controversy with Palmer took place.

But besides having Palmer for an antagonist, Wesley was attacked by his old schoolfellow, the redoubtable Daniel Defoe. This was in a pamphlet published in 1704, and which was probably written in Newgate prison. It was entitled “More Short Ways with the Dissenters.” The Queen having been obliged to dismiss her High Church Cabinet, on account of the storm that had been raised by their attempts to pass the “Occasional Conformity Bill,” and thereby to suppress the Dissenters, Defoe alleges that now another scheme was being concocted for the accomplishment of the self—same purpose. The “new attempt struck at the root of the Dissenters’ interest. It would effectually destroy the succession of them in the nation; for it was intended to prevent them educating their children in their own opinions.”opinions.”

He then adds, in reference to Wesley, “If I should say that a mercenary renegado was hired to expose the private academies of the Dissenters, as nurseries of rebellious principles, I should say nothing but what is in too many mouths to remain a secret. The Reverend Mr Wesley, author of two pamphlets calculated to blacken our education in the academies of the Dissenters, ingenuously confesses himself guilty of many crimes in his youth, and is the willinger to confess them, as he would lay them at the door of the Dissenters and their schools, among whom he was educated; though I humbly conceive, it is no more a proof of the immorality of the Dissenters in their schools that he was a little rakish among them, or that he found others among them like himself, than the hanging five students of Cambridge, for robbing on the highway, should prove that padding is a science taught in that university. He takes a great deal of pains to prove, that in these academies were or are taught anti—monarchical principles; but the author of these sheets happens to be one that was educated under the same master that he was taught by, viz., Mr Charles Morton of Newington Green; and I have now by me the manuscripts of science, the exercises of Mr Morton’s school, and, among the rest, those of politics in particular; and I must do that learned gentleman’s memory the justice to affirm, that neither in his system of politics, government, and discipline, nor in any other of the exercises of his school, was there anything taught or encouraged that was antimonarchical, or destructive to the government or constitution of England. Allow, then, that Mr Wesley fell into ill company afterwards; allow we had, and still have worse rakes among us than himself, does this prove that our schools teach men thus, and that the Dissenters, in general, profess principles destructive of monarchy?”

Defoe then proceeds to say, that the reason why Dissenters have erected and opened private academies, to teach their children by themselves, is because the Church party, by imposing unreasonable terms, have shut them out of theirs. He states that, if they will admit the youth of the Dissenters into their universities, without imposing upon them unfair oaths and obligations, the Dissenters, though objecting to “university morals, as to the trifles of drunkenness and lewdness,” yet, would engage to have always as many as two thousand of their young people students in these seats of learning.

The remainder of Defoe’s pamphlet is devoted to a violent refutation of Sacheverell’s second sermon at Oxford; a sermon in which, he declares, there are fourteen positive untruths, to the reproach of the preacher’s coat, and the scandal of his ministerial function.

Mr Wesley, in his first reply to Mr Palmer, used the Latin line as his motto, Noli irritare crabones. He wished not to irritate the wasps; but whether he wished it or not, the thing itself was done. We have seen what Palmer and Defoe say of him and of his unlucky letter; and, we are bound to add, that others have been not less pointed and severe. Dunton writes—“Mr Wesley’s first piece was a most unkind satire. The world had not known him unless he had thought to make himself public. I am afraid Mr Wesley’s vein has almost spent itself; the dregs come the last. His taxing the morals and behaviour of the Dissenting ministers was a malicious falsehood, published on purpose to carry favour with the High Flyers, and to enlarge his preferments.” Chadwick, in his Life of Defoe, broadly asserts that Samuel Wesley himself published his letter respecting dissenting academies; and that his traducing the Dissenters “was intended, through the royal patronage, to send this time—serving flatterer into the archbishopric of Canterbury, upon the back of that unprincipled miscreant, Dr Sacheverell.” Milner, in his “Life and Times of Dr Isaac Watts,” observes—“It is difficult to shield Mr Wesley from the charge of seeking to further the designs of tyranny by private slander; and of endeavouring to enlarge a scanty income by gratifying the heads of the Church, in vilifying the seceders from its communion. There is too much reason to fear that hopes of preferment led him to join the party of Sacheverell in the work of abuse and defamation. Mr Southey says, the reason why he left the Dissenters, was his falling in with bigoted and ferocious men, who defended the execution of King Charles, and shocked and disgusted him by their Calves—head Club. The only authority for this extraordinary assertion is the evidence of Samuel Wesley, the younger, a violent Jacobite; and Mr Southey introduces the statement into his pages as if no suspicion was to be entertained of the truth of the facts it expresses. It may be true that Mr Wesley was a member of the Calves—head Club; it may be true that he frequented the blind alley, near Moorfields, on the 30th of January; but it is not true that any other cause beside his own imprudence introduced him into such society; it is not true that the scenes he there witnessed led to his secession from the Dissenters; for they had no more to do with such disgraceful proceedings than their accusers; so that, the only inference we can derive from the representation of Mr Southey is, that the elder Wesley, in his youth, associated with a band of profligates; and, as extremes in politics often meet, the furious republican became at last a blind worshipper of the royal prerogative.”

In these extracts, the reader has before him the substance of all the charges which Dissenting ignorance and hatred have brought against the character of this venerable man. It is scarce worth while to refute them; for they are all in flat contradiction to the facts published in the previous pages of this narrative; and yet, perhaps, a brief reply may be of service:—

We have thus fully stated all the hard things which Mr Wesley’s enemies have thought fit to say against him, and, in this summary way, have replied to them. Those who wish for further refutations must refer again to the pages they have already read. Defoe’s accusation is calumnious slander of the worst description. Chadwick is a man whose vulgar ravings are hardly worthy of being noticed. The life of a man like Dr Watts is blurred and blotted by such utterly false, if not malignant, charges as those which the writer has brought against Mr Wesley. We have no quarrel with Mr Milner on account of his attempt to show that the Calves-head Club was an infamous association, which the Dissenting body, as a whole, condemned; but he had no right to impeach the veracity of Mr Wesley, and, by a mean insinuation, to try to cast upon him the disgrace of the possibility that he himself was a member of this godless gang. That is an ungenerous reproach, which none but an irritated man would have ventured to employ. The barbarous Calves-head Club was a disgraceful association, of which the great bulk of the Dissenters totally disapproved; for it is cheerfully acknowledged that some classes of the Dissenters were deeply averse to the murder of King Charles I., and were among the first to welcome his son Charles II., to the English monarchy; but while all this is most readily allowed, we submit that this is no refutation of the statement that the members of that abominable club declared themselves to be Dissenters; nor is it any excuse for Mr Milner’s attack on Mr Wesley’s veracity, and especially for his unworthy suggestion that Mr Wesley himself might be an associate of the profligate fellows of which the Calves-head Club consisted.

Believing Mr Wesley to be unimpeachable in the painful business that has been here discussed, and feeling that his character and rank in society make it of some importance to keep his fair fame without a blot, we offer no apology for this lengthened, and, perhaps, tedious chapter in his history. Dr Adam Clarke sums up the whole in terms to which we find it impossible to assent. He writes: “In the heat of his zeal for the Church, after his conversion from dissenting principles, Mr Samuel Wesley, in his controversial writings, often overstepped the bounds of Christian moderation.” Did he? We have read the whole of his controversial writings; and, finding no proof of this, we respectfully doubt it.