“Dear Child,—After piety to God and to your parents, your morals will fall next under consideration; or, your duty towards yourself and your neighbour.
“I hope I need not say much of justice toward your neighbour. Its general rules are short and easy. ‘Doing as you would be done by, and loving your neighbour as yourself;’ principles which have been admired by wise and virtuous heathens when they have heard them from the gospel; and which are, indeed, inscribed on the hearts of all mankind as a part of the law—natural, though much obliterated by the lapse of our nature and vicious habits.
“As for the regiment of your passions, all the rest depend, in a great measure, on these two—love and hatred, or rather anger.
“As for love, I shall only say at present that whoever expects to become anything in the world must guard against anti-Platonic love in his youth, shut his eyes and heart against it, burn romances, have a care of plays, and keep himself fully employed in some honest exercise; and then, I think, he will be in no very great danger from it.
“But love takes in all desirable objects, or such as we fancy desirable; and here the rule is, first, that it be fixed upon a lawful object; and then, that it exceed not the due measure; since, if we offend against the former part of this rule, it unavoidably renders us criminal; if against the latter, at least ridiculous, imprudent, and unhappy. Indeed, there is but one object of our love where we cannot transgress in loving too much; and that is God. Even mediocrity is here a fault, which is both our wisdom and our virtue in all other cases.
“As for hatred, I can scarce tell how it is possible to have it in extremes against any one. For my own part, I have much ado to hate the devil himself. I am sure I have often pitied him; and I interpret those scriptures which speak of hating the wicked, &c., as relating chiefly to their vices, for which we ought always to have a just abhorrence.
“Anger, and some sort of aversion, I own to be more difficult to subdue, though even these have too often pride or interest at the bottom. There never was a truly great man who could not bridle his passions. This, my boy, is what I wish you would do, what I am sure you may do, and what would render you wiser and greater than most part of mankind. This mastery of yourself will cost you some pains before you can attain it; but it is richly worth all your labour, since this wise and Christian temper will be so far from inviting injuries, that you will have much fewer offered you in the course of your life; and if any should be so devilish as to do it, for that very reason, you will find they will glide very gently off, and leave little or no impression behind them.
“And thus much of the government of your passions.—Your affectionate father,
Such are a few of the godly letters that were written by the Epworth rector immediately after his release from Lincoln Castle. We are loathe to leave so much Christian serenity, fatherly affection, and manly sentiment, for the region of strife and contest; and yet, to do justice to the subject of these memoirs, we must.
It has been already shown how Samuel Wesley was, unintentionally on his part, involved in the Dissenting controversy. It was most unwarrantable conduct in Mr Clavel to publish a letter which the writer intended to be kept private; but, being published, and being so savagely attacked by Mr Palmer, there was nothing for it but for Samuel Wesley to defend himself. This he did in his pamphlet, published in 1704. In 1705, Palmer published his “Vindication,” in which Wesley was again offensively assailed. Immediately after this, he was subjected to all the disgraceful persecutions that have been narrated, and, as a climax to the whole, was thrust, by a revengeful spirit, into Lincoln Gaol. He had already begun his “Reply to Mr Palmer’s Vindication,” and, during his involuntary leisure within his prison-house, he finished it. It consists of 155 pages quarto, and was published “for Robert Clavel, at the Peacock, in St Paul’s Churchyard, in 1707.” It has on the title-page, for a motto, the following sentence from the writings of Defoe:—“How long must we see the reproaches of our Establishment and the insults of the laws, and be bound to silence, and to say nothing for peace’ sake? How long must their false prophets and dreamers of dreams abuse us, and we be obliged to hold our peace?”
The book consists of nine chapters and an introduction.
In the introduction, Wesley states that Palmer has charged him with publishing “scandalous, wicked, malicious, envious, spiteful, injurious, base, bold, daring, rampant, downright, positive, complicated, abominable falsehoods.” He says Palmer regales him by applying to him the epithets following:—“Cruel, unjust, wicked, silly, wretched, flagrant, spiteful, impertinent, insidious, scandalous, impudent, barefaced, perfidious, ingrate, sycophant, delator and informer.”
Wesley’s “Reply” was written at the request of his bishop, who offered to assist him with materials for the work, and revised part of it before it was printed.[190] It is elaborate and able; but a lengthened review of it, at this period, would be useless. We content ourselves, therefore, with giving a few matters of fact in the order in which the book contains them.
Wesley declares that the Dissenters were now “choosing lads of the most pregnant parts, and were educating them at the public schools of the Church, as St Paul’s and others, with the intention to transplant them thence to Dissenting academies, and from thence into a martial phalanx to attack the Church with greater success than their predecessors”predecessors” (p. 7.)
In the 15th page, Wesley strangely enough “thanks God that the Act of Uniformity is not repealed, and that all the strength of the Dissenters cannot prevail to repeal it!” Remembering what his father and his grandfather were made to suffer by that Act, one cannot help but think that there is hardly good taste in this.
Wesley says he can give the name of a famed Dissenting minister who was active in taking away all our legal securities, and caballed with those who were favourites at Court. He and his proselytes met at a house not far from the Poultry Church, whither many of the Dissenting ministers usually resorted. When Wesley had just returned to London from the university, those caballers used all the arguments they could think of to persuade him to join them; but he writes:—“I thank God I abhorred their proposals, and never saw them more, unless I accidentally met them,” (pp. 62 and 63.)
Palmer, in his “Vindication,” had alleged that Benjamin Bridgewater, the Calves-head poet, learned to sing “To Puss, Boys” in Trinity College, Cambridge, thereby intending to cast a slur upon the reputation of the Church. Wesley replies:—“I am sorry they won’t suffer poor Ben (my successor in the favours of the party) to be quiet in his grave.” He then proceeds to show that poor Ben, for bad behaviour, was forced to leave Cambridge University some years before the song “To Puss, Boys” was published, and that when he came to London he took sanctuary among Dissenters, and wrote the anthems of the Calves-head Club, by which he became the darling of the party, and was entertained and caressed at their houses,houses,(p. 65.)
Wesley declares that up to the time that his “letter” was published by Clavel, and he published his “Defence,” his best friends were all Dissenters, but that now he had lost their favour, because he could not comply with their proposals to retract the truths that he had written concerning Dissenting matters. He writes:—“You cannot say but that my behaviour towards you has been inoffensive during the many years which have elapsed since I left you. I have received common civilities from some of your persuasion, and have, in my turn, obliged them as occasion offered. I never desired your destruction, but your reformation. I showed no great fondness to engage against you. It was a mere accident that occasioned it, and I sent you fair warning long before I began to write my defence. I am of no party that I know of, unless you reckon those to be such who desire you should neither distress nor overtop the Establishment,” (p. 73.)
Wesley says Palmer accuses him of bowing and cringing to the Dissenters since he had joined the Church. He replies:—“I own this to be true, for I have often asked my father-in-law’s, and my mother’s blessing, and I did once bow down in the house of Rimmon; but for the rest nobody ever accused me that my knees were suppled,” (p. 99.)
Wesley relates a story to the effect that on January 31st, 1698, which happened to be Sunday, a clergyman near London was preaching a sermon, from 1 Peter, ii. 13, in reference to the martyrdom of King Charles, and that nine pupils from a neighbouring Dissenting Academy came to hear him. After the service, a deputation of two of them waited upon him and invited him to a noble entertainment to be given the same evening. The clergyman refused. They then began to quarrel with his sermon, and said Charles I. was “a cursed tyrant, and that his death was the just execution of a damned malefactor.” The next day, the same clergyman received a letter signed Timothy Greybeard, stating, that, if he had gone as invited to the supper on the night previous, they would have given him, as “the principal dish, the best calf’s-head they could have procured for love or money; and that, if he had been inclined to drink a health to the sanctified head, there would have been good humming liquor to have washed his conscience in a few gulps,” (p. 100.)
Wesley acknowledges that, when he was a pupil in the Dissenting Academy, three arch lasses made a fool of him by clothing him in a cloak, and sending him through St Paul’s Churchyard to ask for Rochester’s “Divine Poems;” but he indignantly denies that he ever kept any lewd company, though he says it was “one of the happiest providences of his life that he did not, and that he had a narrow escape from debauchery and ruin.” He adds, “Though I kept no such company, I know too many Dissenters that did, and know where they have made assignations with them, in your very meetings, though it is possible that, in twenty years, those ladies may be advanced to a more venerable character than they then possessed,” (pp. 139 and 140.) He further states that the majority of the Dissenters, with whom he had been acquainted, preferred a commonwealth to a monarchy, abhorred the memory of Charles I., and the name and race of the Stuarts; and that they could not deny that lewdness and debauchery were not uncommon in their academies as well as in other places, (p. 143.)
In closing the controversy, Mr Wesley says, that when he was last in London, in January and February 1705, he was often ruffled by being urged to retract, or at least palliate his charges against the Dissenters; and that, as he was about to receive the sacrament, he wrote the following protestation, and sent it to the clergyman who was to officiate:—
“I take this opportunity solemnly to declare, that what I have written in relation to the Dissenters, in my letter, and the defence of it, is strictly true, and that I have not wilfully charged them with anything that is otherwise.”
HeHeadds, “After the delivery of this, I bless God I received with as great quiet and satisfaction as I hope I should die with, if God should call me to witness to the truth with my last breath.”
“If in the heat of controversy I have unadvisedly used any expressions in this or in any other of my writings, that either may reflect too severely on a whole body of men, among whom I doubt not there are many who fear God and have a zeal for Him, though I think it is not according to knowledge, or which have not been agreeable to the spirit of Christianity and the example of my great Master, I do heartily, very heartily, ask pardon both of God and them, as I desire the same for my greatest enemies; and having written this, and again and again reviewed and weighed it, I am not much concerned for the consequence of it as to this world, but shall conclude as our Church does one part of our Litany, ‘In all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth, in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment—good Lord, deliver us.’”
We now subjoin two letters written by Mr Wesley in the year in which his last controversial work was published. Both were addressed to his son Samuel, now King’s Scholar, in Westminster School:—
“Dear Sam,—Read the histories of Joseph, of Daniel, and of Lot; and, if you please, the thirteenth satire of Juvenal.
“Remember, God sees, and will punish and reward.
“If you can get no other time to say your prayers, you may do it as you seem to be reading, for done it must be, or you know what follows! But have not you time when you sit up to watch?
“That God may evermore preserve you, is the prayer of your affectionate father,
“Dear Child,—I was pleased to see in your last that you expressed an inclination to repose a more than ordinary confidence in me. I have endeavoured to show that I really value your affection, and I should be very well satisfied if you looked upon me as your friend, as well as your father. Sammy, believe it, there are but few in the world that are fit to be trusted with our weaknesses and most private thoughts; and yet it is exceedingly convenient to have some one to whom one might safely communicate them, especially in youth, when first launching into the world. I know there are not many who would choose a father for this; but since you are inclined to do it, perhaps it shall not be the worse for you, and I will promise you so much secrecy, that even your mother shall know nothing but what you have a mind she should, for which reason it may be convenient you should write to me still in Latin.
“It is agreed by all that a pure body and a chaste mind are an acceptable sacrifice to infinite Purity and Holiness; and that, without these, a thousand hecatombs would never be accepted. How happy are those who preserve their first purity and innocence; and how much easier is it to abstain from the first acts, than not to reiterate them and sink into inveterate habits! There is no parleying with the temptation to this sin, which is nourished by sloth and intemperance. You have not wanted repeated warnings, and I hope they have not been altogether in vain. The shortness, the baseness, the nastiness of the pleasure would be enough to make one nauseate it did not the devil and the flesh unite in their temptations to it. However, conquered it must be, for we must part with that or heaven! Ah, my boy, what sneaking things does vice make us! What traitors to ourselves, and how false within! And what invincible courage, as well as calmness, attends virtue and innocence!
“Now, my boy, (it is likely,) begins that conflict whereof I have so often warned you, and which will find you warm work for some years. Now vice or virtue, God or Satan, heaven or hell, which will you choose? What, if you should fall on your knees this moment, or as soon as you can retire, and choose the better part? If you have begun to do amiss, resolve to do better. Give up yourself solemnly to God and to His service. Implore the mercy and gracious aid of your Redeemer, and the blessed assistance (perhaps the return) of the Holy Comforter. You will not be cast off. You will not want strength from above, which will be infinitely beyond your own, or even the power of the enemy. The holy angels are spectators, and will rejoice at your conquest. Why should you not make your parents’ heart rejoice. You know how tenderly they are concerned for you, and how fain they would have you virtuous and happy.
“I cannot close my letter without adding something remarkable that has lately happened in our town (though it is not over-fruitful in adventures) which may afford you some useful remarks.
“Your worthy schoolmaster, John Holland, whose kindness you wear on your knuckles, after having cost his father, Thomas Holland, two or three hundred pounds at the University, in hopes he would live to help his sister and brothers, and for want of which the poor old man now lies in Lincoln Gaol, without any hopes of liberty unless death should set him free; after having been in thirteen places, and pawned his gown and clothes almost as often, being thrown out wherever he came for his wickedness and lewdness—was making homewards about a month or six weeks since, and got within ten or a dozen miles of Epworth, where he fell sick, out of rage or despair, and was brought home to the parish in a cart, and has lain almost mad since he came hither. Peter Forster, the Anabaptist preacher, gave him twopence to buy some brandy, and thought he was very generous. His mother fell a-cursing God when she saw him. She has been with me to beg the assistance of the parish for him. What think you of this example?—I am, your affectionate father,
The above letter is a beautiful example of the loving confidence which ought to exist between a father and his children. It also affords incidental evidence, which refutes the commonly-received opinion, that the early education of the Wesley children was devolved exclusively on the mother. There can be no doubt that Susannah Wesley educated her children up to a certain point, but who taught the sons and some of the daughters the elements of Greek and Latin? From the foregoing letter, it is undeniable that, though Susannah Wesley was a thorough master of the English language, and had a respectable knowledge of the French, she was not so familiar with Latin as to be able to read it without difficulty; and, if so, there can be little question that, whatever knowledge the sons, and two or three of the daughters had of the classic tongues, was communicated by their father; for, though Samuel seems to have had a half brutalized tutor for a time, there is no evidence that any other of the children had a like provision. In the first place, the rector could not afford it; and, secondly, there was no need of it, for he himself was one of the best classical scholars of his day.
Wesley had now eight children, and two more were intrusted to him afterwards. We have already sketched all that were born up to the year 1697. In 1701 the rector’s wife had twins, both of whom died in infancy. In 1702 occurred the birth of their daughter Anne. At the age of about twenty-three she married Mr John Lambert, a land-surveyor at Epworth. Lambert was an educated man, and was particularly careful to collect the early pamphlet publications of his father-in-law, Mr Samuel Wesley, from which collection, and from Lambert’s manuscript notes, Dr Adam Clarke derived considerable assistance in his compilation of the Memoirs of the Wesley Family. Mr and Mrs Lambert, in 1737, were residing at Hatfield, where they were visited by Charles Wesley. Lambert was betrayed into drinking habits by his brother-in-law, the wretched Wright; but Charles Wesley laboured to reclaim him, and it is hoped with good effect.
In the eventful year 1703, when Mr Wesley’s unfortunate letter was published by Mr. Clavel, his son John was born; but of him we need say nothing.
In 1705, the year that Mr Wesley was imprisoned, another child was born; and, as already stated, was smothered by its nurse, and thrown dead into its mother’s arms.
In 1707, the year in which Wesley wrote the preceding letters to his son Samuel, his daughter Martha was given him. Martha was reputed, by her sisters, to be the mother’s favourite; and certainly Martha loved and almost idolised her mother. From her infancy she was remarkable for deep thoughtfulness, for equanimity of temper, and for serious deportment. Her brothers and sisters would use all kinds of witty mischief to ruffle her; but in vain. The likeness between herself and her brother John was so exact, that Dr Clarke declares, if he had seen them dressed in the same attire, he could not have distinguished the one from the other. Their disposition also was the same; and even their hand-writing was so much alike that the one might be easily mistaken for the other. At the age of thirteen, she went to live with her uncle Matthew in London, and remained with him for the space of a dozen years.[193] Here she became acquainted with Westley Hall, who was one of the pupils of her brother John, at Lincoln College. Hall, at that time, was a man of agreeable person, pleasing manners, and good property. He fell in love with Martha, and made her an offer of marriage. Without consulting any of her family she accepted him. Within a week he went with her brothers John and Charles to Epworth, where he grew enamoured of her younger sister Kezziah, made an engagement to marry her, and was on the point of leading her to the altar, when a sudden qualm of conscience reminded him of his previous engagement, and he came back to Martha. They were married in 1735, (the year in which her father died;) and her uncle Matthew gave her a dowry of £500. Hall, for a time, behaved like a gentleman and a Christian, and honourably fulfilled his duties as a curate of the Church of England at Salisbury. He then became a Moravian and Quietist, an Antinomian, a Deist, if not an Atheist, and a Polygamist, which last he defended in his teaching, and illustrated by his practice. While a curate at Salisbury, he seduced one of his servants, and was afterwards guilty of many similar infidelities. Once when Charles Wesley was preaching at Bristol, and had his sister Patty for a hearer, Hall came into the room and took her off with him. On another occasion at Salisbury, he turned both her and her brother John out of doors. Samuel Wesley, jun., never liked him. In a letter to John he says—“I never liked the man from the first time I saw him. His smoothness never suited my roughness. He appeared always to dread me as a wit. This, with me, is a sure sign of guilt and hypocrisy. He was afraid I should see it, if I looked keenly into his eye.”[194] After being the father of ten children by his wife, nine of whom lie buried at Salisbury, Hall abandoned his family, went off to the West Indies with one of his mistresses, lived with her there till she died, and afterwards returned to England, where, professing penitential sorrow, he was cordially received by his injured and incomparable wife, who showed him every Christian attention till his death, which took place at Bristol, Jan. 6, 1776. John Wesley buried him, and says—“God had given him deep repentance.”
Such was poor Patty’s worthless and vagabond husband; and yet, in the midst of all her trials, she acted the part of a perfect Christian. Out of sheer pity, she actually gave money to one of her husband’s abandoned concubines; and, on another occasion, when he, with frontless inhumanity, brought home one of his illegitimate infants, and commanded his wife to take charge of it till he could make other provision for it, she ordered a cradle to be brought, placed the babe in it, and continued to perform for it all the requisite acts of humanity.
Mrs Hall often dined with Dr Johnson at Bolt Court; he ardently admired her, and always treated her with great reverence and respect. In many cases, her conversation supplied to Johnson the place of books; for her memory was a repository of the most striking events of past centuries; and she had the best parts of all the English poets by heart. Of wit she used to say, she was the only one of the family without it; and her brother Charles remarked that “Sister Patty was always too wise to be witty.” One of her peculiarities was, she could never be induced to behold a corpse, “Because,” said she, “it is beholding sin sitting upon his throne.” Mrs Hall died on the 12th of July 1791, her last words being, “I have the assurance which I have long prayed for. Shout!” She was the last survivor of the original Wesley family; her father, mother, brothers, and sisters having all died before her. In all respects, she was a remarkable woman; but, in Christian charity, was pre-eminent. Her brother Charles was accustomed to say, “It is in vain to give Pat anything to add to her comforts, for she always gives it away to some person poorer than herself.” In the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1791, p. 684, there is the following obituary notice:—“July 12, in the City Road, in her eighty-fourth year, Mrs Martha Hall, widow of the Rev. Mr H., and last surviving sister of the Rev. John and Charles Wesley. She was equally distinguished by piety, understanding, and sweetness of temper. Her sympathy for the wretched, and her bounty even to the worthless, will eternise her name in better worlds than this.”[195]
In the year 1708, Charles Wesley was born, and two years afterwards Kezziah, the youngest of the rector’s children that survived the days of infancy.
Throughout life Kezziah Wesley’s health was delicate, in consequence of which she was prevented from improving a mind that seems to have been capable of high cultivation. When she was about nineteen years of age, she became a teacher in a boarding-school in Lincoln, where she complains of the want of clothes and of money, but wishes to remain for the purpose of completing her education. She had an insatiable thirst for knowledge, both divine and human; but her bad health rendered her almost incapable of close mental application. We refrain from again adverting to the distressing acquaintance with Westley Hall; suffice it to say, that after this she for a time was boarded at the house of the venerable Vicar of Bexley, the Rev. Mr Piers. She afterwards was domiciled with an aunt at Islington, and her brother Samuel offered her a home at Tiverton. It was not long that she needed the kindness of her friends, for, at the age of thirty-one, she peacefully expired. Her brother Charles gives the following account of her death:—“Yesterday morning, March 9, 1741, 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.”[196]
Such were the members of the Wesley family. “Such a family,” writes Dr Clarke, “I have never read of, heard of, or known; nor since the days of Abraham and Sarah, and Joseph and Mary, has there ever been a family to which the human race has been more indebted.”
Charles Wesley tells us that he has heard his father say, “God had shown him he should have all his nineteen children about him in heaven;”[197] and there is little doubt that, for more than seventy years past, this hope of the rector has been realised.