Samuel Wesley was born two years after the restoration of Charles II. He lived throughout the reigns of Charles, of James II., of William III., and Queen Mary, of Queen Anne, and of George I., and during the first eight years of the reign of George II. This covers a period of English history which, in thrilling interest and importance, is not surpassed by any other period within the compass of English annals.
Queen Anne died in the year 1714, and her death led to the immediate accession of George, Electoral Prince of Hanover, the great-grandson of James I. After reigning thirteen years, he was succeeded, in 1727, by his son, George II.
The last twenty years of Mr Wesley’s life were full of great events. Lord Bolingbroke, Lord Oxford, and the Duke of Ormond, were all impeached of high crimes and misdemeanours; Oxford was committed to the Tower; Bolingbroke and Ormond escaped to France, and there intrigued for the restoration of the Stuarts. The Earl of Mar erected the standard of James, the Pretender, son of James II., at Braemar, in Scotland, and the three Earls of Hume, Wigtown, and Kinnoul, Lord Deskford, and others, were arrested and laid fast in Edinburgh Castle. Mr Forster and the Earl of Derwentwater raised an insurrection in Northumberland, and proclaimed the Pretender, at Warkworth, with sound of trumpet. The insurgents marched to Preston, in Lancashire, where they relinquished their arms, and Forster, Derwentwater, and many other persons of distinction, were taken prisoners. The gaols of the north were filled with non-juring Protestants, High Church divines, Popish priests and monks, Jacobite squires, Highland chiefs, and Lowland lairds. Not a few of these were shot in heaps, and the rest, above five hundred, were left to starve of hunger and of cold. Meanwhile, the Pretender himself landed at Peterhead, made his public entry into Dundee, held a council at Perth, and ordered the burning of all the towns, villages, corn, and forage between Perth and Stirling,—an order which was too terribly carried into execution, the poor inhabitants, women and children, the aged and the infirm, being exposed to the extremities of the season in one of the coldest winters that had been known for many generations. Numbers of the poor sufferers perished of cold and hunger, and mothers, with their infants at the breast, were found dead among drifts of snow. The Pretender ultimately made a cowardly escape to France, and the Earl of Derwentwater, and many others, were, executed for high treason.
In the meantime, George I. quarrelled with his son, the Prince of Wales, about the christening of a baby, upon which his Royal Highness, being arrested and ordered to quit St James’s Palace, fixed his residence at Leicester House, which became the resort of the disaffected of all classes, and the centre of an increasing turmoil and intrigue.
The South Sea Company Bill was passed by Parliament, and the whole nation became intoxicated with percentages, dividends, and transfers. The stock suddenly rose from 130 to above 1000 per cent. Bubble companies sprang up round the mighty original like mushrooms round a rotten tree, and prospectuses were issued for making salt water fresh, for extracting silver out of lead, for importing asses from Spain to improve the breed of mules, for fatting hogs, for a wheel for perpetual motion, and for a thousand other things besides. ’Change Alley was crammed from morning till night with dukes, lords, country squires, parsons, Dissenting ministers, brokers, and jobbers, and men of every possible colour and description. Even the Prince of Wales became a governor of a Welsh Copper Company, and made a gambling profit by the illegal transaction of not less than £40,000. The bubbles soon burst. The South Sea stock, which sold in August at 1000, in September sunk below 300, and in November fell down to 135. Terrible excitement followed; disgraceful facts were published, and thousands of persons beggared. One of the political results was a change of government. Sunderland had to resign the premiership, and Robert Walpole, Earl of Oxford, the high Tory, and one of the friends of Sacheverell, became prime minister, and, despite incessant attacks from political enemies of the most splendid talents, retained the high office for two and twenty years.
About the same time, the Polish wife of the Pretender gave birth to a son at Rome, in the presence of seven cardinals. The child, at a most royal christening, received the name of Charles Edward, and the event was proclaimed by the Jacobites in all parts of the United Kingdom. New plots against King George, and in favour of the Pretender and his infant child, were concocted, Bishop Atterbury being the chief of the intriguers. Atterbury and his friends engaged to get possession of the Tower, the Bank, and the Exchequer, and to proclaim King James III., simultaneously, in different parts of the country. The scheme exploded, and Lord North, Lord Orrery, and the Duke of Norfolk were arrested. Atterbury was brought before the Privy Council, and was committed to the Tower. The High Church party cried aloud against the sacrilegious arrest of a bishop. The clergy in London and Westminster offered public prayer for him. Alexander Pope, his bosom friend, was among Atterbury’s witnesses. The bishop was deprived of his bishopric, and banished from his country. He at once threw himself into the service of the Pretender, and became his confidential agent, first at Brussels, and afterwards at Paris. He died in exile in 1731.
George I. died of apoplexy, in 1727, whilst travelling with one of his mistresses, the Duchess of Kendal, to Hanover. At the time, the little, beggared, and vagabond court of the Pretender was distracted with all kinds of intrigues, jealousies, and animosities. Atterbury continued to cabal with priests, monks, and mistresses. James wished to make one more effort to obtain the throne of his fathers, but Atterbury could afford him no encouragement, and the scheme was dropped until it was revived by his son, Charles Edward, in 1745.
The principal ecclesiastical events which occurred during the decline of Mr Wesley’s life, were the censure pronounced by the Lower House of Convocation, in 1714, upon Dr Samuel Clark’s famous book, entitled, “The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity;” and the bitter and long-continued controversy arising out of Bishop Hoadley’s “Preservative against the Principles and Practices of the Nonjurors,” in the course of which Sherlock, Potter, and Hare took a prominent position, and not fewer than about seventy different publications were produced.
The social, moral, and religious condition of the country was still far from satisfactory. Gentlemen wore tie-wigs, and, instead of swords, carried large oak sticks, with great heads and ugly faces carved thereon; while ladies, when walking out of doors, wore masks, hooped petticoats, and scarlet cloaks. Places of political resort, called mug-houses, were established in all parts of London, where citizens and tradesmen attacked the Tories with such bitterness, under the double inspiration of ale and patriotism, that at length the mug-houses had to be suppressed by Act of Parliament. Royal mistresses were maintained at court, as a state appendage, and thereby public immorality was kept in countenance. The mercantile classes grew in wealth, and all who were of any respectability had the title of esquire appended to their names, so that Steele complains that England had now become a nation of esquires. The streets of London were still, for the most part, unpaved, and the kennels on both sides were usually choked up with all sorts of garbage. Pickpockets were numerous, and purses, snuff-boxes, and watches disappeared with a facility incomprehensible to the owners. The metropolis could boast of not more than a thousand lamps, which were kept burning only till midnight, and that for only one-half of the year. Prize fights were frequent, the gladiators, who mangled themselves with swords and daggers for the amusement of the crowd, subsisting upon the subscription purses and the admittance fees. In the country, the monotonous toils of the peasantry were enlivened chiefly by wakes and fairs, thronged with puppet shows, pedlars’ stalls, raffling tables, and drinking booths. Among the favourite competitions at fairs, were grinning matches, in which the candidates grinned most hideously through a horse’s collar; and trials in whistling, where the person who could whistle through a whole tune without being put out by the drolleries of a merry-Andrew that were played off before him, was the victor. At Christmas, trials of yawning for a Cheshire cheese took place at midnight, and he who gave the widest and most natural yawn, so as to set the whole company agape in sympathy, carried off the cheese in triumph. Young damsels, anxious to know something of their future husbands, were directed to run until they were out of breath, as soon as they heard the first notes of the cuckoo, after which, on pulling off their shoes, they would find in them a hair of the same colour as that of their future mates. On May-day, a girl had only to bring home a snail, and lay it upon the ashes of the hearth, and, in crawling about, the reptile would mark the initial letter of her true love’s name. It is true, that the belief in antique rites like these was fast departing, but still such spells were practised in many a peasant’s hut and farmer’s home long after Mr Wesley’s death.
Towards the end of the reign of George I. the wages of a farm bailiff were not above £6 a year; and of other farm-servants, from £2 10s. to £5. The wages of female servants were from thirty to fifty shillings yearly. Masons, carpenters, and plumbers received a shilling a day without meat, or sixpence a day with it. Wheat sold for about five shillings a bushel, but the great bulk of the people were too poor to purchase it. Even families that were reputed rich used not more than a peck of wheat a year, and that was used at Christmas. Bread loaves and pie crusts were made of barley-meal, and puddings and dumplings, made of oatmeal and suet, were a common dish at rural entertainments. The price of beef and mutton was about 2½d. per pound, of butter, about 5d., and of Cheshire cheese, about 3d.[235]
The period which we are now sketching had a fair average of men of genius and learning. Wake was Archbishop of Canterbury. Kennett, an intense student, presided over the diocese of Peterborough. Edmund Gibson, a man of great natural abilities, filled the see of London. John Potter, the son of a Yorkshire linen-draper, worked his way up to the primacy. Hoadley, the Bishop of Winchester, was described as the greatest Dissenter that ever wore a mitre. William Sherlock was writing his celebrated “Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus.” Daniel Waterland was defending the doctrine of the Trinity against the attacks of Samuel Clarke, and the truth of revealed religion against Tindal, the infidel. Bishop Butler was composing his “Analogy of Religion.” Warburton was equiping himself for a diocese, and for the writing of his “Divine Legation.” Dean Prideaux was composing his “Connexion of the Old and New Testaments.” Bishop Lowth was busy with his invaluable works on Hebrew poetry, &c. Thomas Stackhouse was preparing his “History of the Bible.” George Lavington was developing the talents which he afterwards employed in writing “The Enthusiasm of the Papists and Methodists Compared,” and William Law, the well-known author of the “Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life,” had abandoned the pulpit, and become tutor to Edward Gibbon, the father of the great historian.
Among Dissenters, Edmund Calamy was preaching and writing almost unceasingly. Isaac Watts was an inmate of Abney House, and was composing hymns which have been sung by myriads. Nathaniel Lardner was completing his “Credibility of the Gospel History.” Samuel Chandler was lecturing at the Old Jewry Chapel. Philip Doddridge had opened his Dissenting Academy at Northampton. Daniel Neal was publishing his “History of the Puritans;” and John Leland was answering Tindal’s “Christianity as Old as the Creation.”
Belonging to other classes of distinguished men living at this period, are Sir Isaac Newton, who, in 1727, was buried with great magnificence in Westminster Abbey; Edmund Halley, who was Newton’s highly respected friend; Sir Hans Sloane, who succeeded Newton as the President of the Royal Society; Nicholas Saunderson, the son of a Yorkshire exciseman, blind from infancy, and yet one of the most illustrious mathematical professors that the University of Cambridge ever had; William Emerson, who, with a dirty wig half off his head, his shirt buttoned behind, and inexpressibles that disdained the aid of braces, wrote books connected with almost every branch of the science of mathematics; Richard Bentley, the son of a Yorkshire blacksmith, who rose to the high office of Regius Professor of Divinity, and of whom Stillingfleet remarked, that “had he but the gift of humility, he would be the most remarkable man in Europe;” Sir Richard Steele, Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope, John Gay, James Thomson, Matthew Prior, and William Congreve, may all be mentioned in a cluster; Edward Young, whose “Night Thoughts” have immortalised his memory; but who was a poet of high distinction long before they were thought about, having, in 1728, received from Wharton for his satire entitled “The Universal Passion,” the enormous sum of £3000; Samuel Johnson, who, at the time of Samuel Wesley’s death, was writing his first work for the press, “Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia;” Allan Ramsay, who was revolving in his mind the thoughts and charms of his “Gentle Shepherd;” Edward Cave, the son of a shoemaker, who was now meditating how to carry into effect his long cherished-scheme of the Gentleman’s Magazine; William Croft, who was revelling among his musical compositions; Handel, who, in his enormous white wig, was putting together his unrivalled oratorios; Sir Godfrey Kneller, who was painting heads to ready-made bodies with inconceivable rapidity; Dahl, Richardson, Jervas, and others, who were clothing their portraits with loose drapery, the costume of no age or nation whatever; Hogarth, who was rising to the zenith of his fame; and Roubiliac, whose chisel was giving to the marble a vitality which almost breathed.
These are a few of the distinguished men who flourished during the last twenty years of Samuel Wesley’s life; and among them he himself was not the least eminent. It was during this period that he prepared and wrote the greatest work that proceeded from his prolific pen, entitled “Dissertationes in Librum Jobi—Autore, Samuele Wesley, Rectore de Epworth in Dioecesi Lincolniensi.” The work is a large-sized folio of more than 600 pages, of good paper, and beautifully printed. It is written in Latin, intermixed with innumerable Hebrew and Greek quotations.
Mr Wesley was employed upon this remarkable work for more than five and twenty years. It was first begun previous to the burning of his parsonage, in 1709. He had carefully read the book of Job, first in the Hebrew text, and secondly in that of the Greek Septuagint. These he collated together, making, as he proceeded, the notes and observations that occurred to him. He then procured Walton’s great Polyglott Bible, containing the Sacred Text in the Hebrew and Greek languages; the Pentateuch in Samaritan; the Psalms and the New Testament in Syriac, Arabic, Chaldaic, and Ethiopic; the four Gospels in Persic; together with the Septuagint and Vulgate versions of both Testaments. Collating what he had already done with the versions of the book of Job in Walton’s Polyglott, he greatly increased his notes and observations. He had proceeded thus far, when the fire of 1709 broke out, and every leaf of his Polyglott and of his collections on Job were utterly destroyed.
He procured another Polyglott and recommenced his studies. The Hebrew text was read over again and again. The Alexandrian and Vatican editions of the Septuagint were diligently compared. All the variations in the Chaldee, Arabic, and Syriac versions, with the principal critics, as exhibited in Pool’s “Synopsis,” together with all the fragments of Origen’s “Hexapla,” were carefully collated. Tindal’s and the Bishop’s Bible were compared. All the commentators within his reach were consulted. Pliny, Salmasius, Mercator, Jerome, Eusebius, Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, Luitsius, Sanson, Purchas, Hakluyt, De la Valle, Pentinger,Pentinger, Bochart, Calmet, Pineda, Spanheim, Hyde, Bunting, Greaves, Sandys, Usher, Lloyd, Marshall, Reyland, and Maundrell, were all laid under contribution to his work. Accompanied by his son John, he visited, in 1733, the library of Lord Milton at Wentworth House, and acknowledges that without the kindness of his lordship, the work would have come into the world mutilated, or would have perished as an abortion. While at Wentworth House, their stay was prolonged over the Sabbath, and John Wesley occupied the pulpit of Wentworth Church to the no small gratification of the parishioners.[236]
Mr Wesley also received assistance from Maurice Johnson, Esq., who was a distinguished antiquarian, and the founder of the Gentleman’s Society at Spalding, of which many of the greatest men in the nation, including Sir Isaac Newton, Alexander Pope, Sir Hans Sloane, and Samuel Wesley, were members. Johnson was born at Spalding, was a student of the Inner Temple, London, married early a lineal descendant of Sir Thomas Gresham, had twenty-six children, and was the possessor of a fine collection of plants and medals. He was held in high esteem for the frankness and benevolence of his character, and was always ready to communicate the results of his literary researches to all who applied to him for information.[237] He contributed one of the maps to Mr Wesley’s “Book of Job;” and also one of the dissertations on “Job’s Jurisprudence.”[238]
Assistance was also received from Roger Gale, Esq.,[239] a gentleman who was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge; possessed a considerable estate at Scruton, Yorkshire, was Member of Parliament for Northallerton, the first Vice-President of the Society of Antiquaries, and was considered one of the most learned men of his age. He died at Scruton, in 1744, universally esteemed, and left all his MSS. and Roman coins to his alma mater, Cambridge University.[240]
Mr Wesley was further assisted by his three sons, Samuel, John, and Charles, who did everything in the work that dutiful sons should do for an aged parent.
During the last few years of his life, Mr Wesley suffered most painfully from the gout and palsy, and hence found it necessary to employ an amanuensis. Two gentlemen who were employed in this capacity, in writing the “Dissertations on the Book of Job,” were John Romley and John Whitelamb.
We have no information of Romley’s origin, except that he studied divinity under Samuel Wesley; graduated at Lincoln College, Oxford; and was for a time Mr Wesley’s curate. He was a member of the Gentleman’s Society at Spalding; and, in 1730, presented to that society an “Account of the Manors, Villages, Seats, and Church of Althorp, in Lincolnshire.”[241] It is also stated, in Nicholl’s “Literary Anecdotes,” that he was schoolmaster at Wroote. Seven years after Mr Wesley’s death, he was curate of Epworth, and refused to allow John Wesley either to read the prayers or to preach in Epworth church, and, in Wesley’s presence, delivered a florid and oratorical sermon on enthusiasts, which led Wesley to preach the same evening on his father’s tombstone to such a congregation as Epworth had never seen.[242] Seven months afterwards, John Wesley preached again on the same sacred spot, and, on asking Romley’s permission to receive the sacrament, received as an answer, “Tell Mr Wesley I shall not give him the sacrament, for he is not fit.”[243] In August 1744, he was again at Epworth, and heard Romley preach two sermons so “exquisitely bitter and totally false” as he had never heard before. In May 1745, when he was again present, Romley’s “sermon, from beginning to end, was another railing accusation.”[244] Three years after this, Romley had lost his “soft, smooth, tunefultuneful voice, without hope of recovery, and spoke in a manner so shocking to hear that it was impossible for him to make himself heard by one quarter of his congregation.”[245] He also became a tippler, and was sometimes “so drunk that he could scarce stand or speak.”[246] In 1751, he became mad, and had to be confined. During the first week of his confinement, he was for constraining every one that came near him to kneel down and pray; and frequently cried out, “You will be lost, you will be damned, unless you know your sins are pardoned.” Two or three weeks afterwards he died.[247] Such was one of the men who helped Samuel Wesley in the preparation of his great work, “Dissertationes in Librum Jobi.”
The other amanuensis was John Whitelamb, who was born in the neighbourhood of Wroote, and received the rudiments of his education at an endowed school, established there in 1706, in accordance with the will of Mr Travers, who bequeathed three hundred and seventy-nine acres of land for the support of schools at Wroote, Hatfield, and Thorne. The school was placed under the care of Romley, who recommended Whitelamb to the notice of Mr Wesley as a lad of promising abilities. Mr Wesley took Whitelamb to his house at Epworth, where he became his amanuensis in place of Romley, and, for four years, was employed in transcribing his “Dissertations on the Book of Job;” and in designing the illustrations for it, several of which were engraved with his own hand.
Under the care of the Rector of Epworth, young Whitelamb obtained a sufficient knowledge of Latin and Greek to enter the university; and at the expense, chiefly, of Mr Wesley’s family, he was maintained at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he obtained his education gratis under Mr John Wesley, then a fellow of that seat of learning. In a letter to his father, dated “June 11, 1731,” John Wesley says: “John Whitelamb reads one English, one Latin, and one Greek book alternately; and never meddles with a new one in any of the languages till he has ended the old one. If he goes on as he has begun, I dare take upon me to say, that, by the time he has been here four or five years, there will not be such a one of his standing in Lincoln College, perhaps not in the University of Oxford.”[248]
Mrs Wesley used to call Whitelamb “poor starveling Johnny,” and no wonder; for John Wesley writing to his brother, Samuel, a few months after the date just given, says; “John Whitelamb wants a gown much, and I am not rich enough to buy him one at present,”[249] and he then states his purpose to use his influence among his friends to beg the money requisite to make the purchase.
In 1733, Whitelamb became Samuel Wesley’s curate, and was married to his daughter, Mary. In one short year he became a widower, and was so overwhelmed with grief that he wished to get away from the scene of his sorrows, and to embark in the contemplated mission to Georgia.
On the 6th of June 1742, John Wesley, being refused the use of the Epworth church, preached standing upon his father’s tombstone. Whitelamb, who was then the rector at Wroote, was one of his congregation, and, five days after, wrote him a most touching letter. He says: “I saw you at Epworth. Fain would I have spoken to you, but that I am quite at a loss how to address you. Your way of thinking is so extraordinary that your presence creates awe, as if you were an inhabitant of another world. I retain the highest veneration and affection for you. The sight of you moves me strangely. My heart overflows with gratitude. I feel, in a high degree, all that tenderness and yearning of bowels with which I am affected towards every branch of Mr Wesley’s family. I cannot refrain from tears, when I reflect this is the man who at Oxford was more than a father to me.
“I am quite forgot. None of the family ever honours me with a line! Have I been ungrateful? I appeal to sister Patty; I appeal to Mr Ellison whether I have or no. I have been passionate, fickle, a fool; but I hope I shall never be ungrateful.
“Dear sir, is it in my power to serve or to oblige you in any way? Glad I should be that you should make use of me. God open all our eyes and lead us into truth, whatever it be.
John Wesley did make use of him, for, two days after, he preached twice in Whitelamb’s church[251]; a circumstance which gave great offence to the High Church party, and was likely to involve Whitelamb in considerable trouble at the approaching triennial visitation.[252]
John Wesley says that at this time, and for some years after, Whitelamb did not believe the Christian revelation.[253] I can hardly understand this, unless it arose out of Whitelamb stating to Charles Wesley that he looked upon the doctrines preached by himself and his brother “as of ill consequence,” and that he had great reason to think that, what he calls “the seal and testimony of the Spirit was, in the generality of their followers, merely the effect of a heated fancy.”[254] In the same letter, however, he speaks of John Wesley in the kindest terms, and says—“He behaved to me truly like himself. I found in him what I have always experienced heretofore, the gentleman, the friend, the brother, the Christian.”
Whitelamb died in July 1769,[255] and was succeeded by a member of the Whitelamb family, who was remarkable for his various learning, and especially for his skill in mathematics.[256]
In 1844, there was an aged female at Wroote, who remembered John Whitelamb, and had been a scholar in his school. She described him as a person of retiring habits, and fond of solitude. She was present when he was suddenly seized, on his way to perform divine service at the church, with the illness which shortly terminated in his death; and stated that his funeral was attended by a considerable number of clergymen, who thus paid their last tribute of respect to a departed friend.[257] On a small stone in the churchyard, about two feet long and one foot broad, is the following inscription:—“In“In memory of John Whitelamb, Rector of this Parish thirty-five years. Buried 29th July 1769, aged 62 years. Worthy of imitation. This at the cost of Francis Wood, Esq., 1772.”[258]
Dr Adam Clarke says Whitelamb was a Deist; and John Wesley says that for years he did not believe the Christian revelation. As to Dr Clarke’s assertion, I demur to it in toto; and, as to Mr Wesley’s I agree with Southey in regarding it as a hasty and loose expression, only applicable to the peculiar—the great and glorious doctrines—which Wesley and his band of helpers were the means of rescuing from oblivion, and of propagating throughout the land. Still Wesley always regarded him as a backslider, and, after his death, exclaimed—“Oh, why did not he die forty years ago, while he knew in whom he had believed!”[259]
As an apology for these lengthened remarks respecting John Whitelamb, the reader is reminded that this able man married one of Mr Wesley’s daughters, and, for four years, acted as his amanuensis in transcribing his “Dissertations on the Book of Job.”
Mr Wesley’s Dissertations are fifty-three in number, (Dr Adam Clarke, in mistake, says thirty-five,) and many of them, besides being immensely learned, are in a high degree interesting and curious. The following is a list of them:—
Unhappily the whole of these Dissertations are written in Latin, and, therefore, are never likely to be read except by the lettered few. Who will undertake to furnish a correct translation of some of them for a periodical like the Methodist Magazine?
After the Dissertations, there are nearly two hundred pages occupied with the Hebrew text of the Book of Job, collated with the Chaldee Paraphrase, and with the Septuagint in its best editions; and also with the Syriac and Arabic versions; likewise with the Latin versions of Castellio, Montanus, St. Ambrose, Junius Tremellius, Piscator, and of the Zurich divines, together with the English version of Tindal, and the present authorised version. Every verse of the whole book of Job was collated in all the versions above-mentioned, and all the variations set down. This must have been an immense labour. Dr Adam Clarke says—“It is one of the most complete things of the kind I have ever met with, and must be invaluable to any man who may wish to read the book of Job critically.”
The frontispiece of Mr Wesley’s large folio is a portrait of himself in the character of Job. He is represented as without beard, and without whiskers; as wearing a small cap; as clothed in a long, loose-flowing robe; and as sitting in an antique chair with a sceptre in his hand, two pyramids being placed behind him, and above him the arch and portcullis of an ancient gate.
The book is also illustrated with a most hideous picture of the five cities of the plain, probably designed and executed by the untutored hand of John Whitelamb; two maps of the region of the Red Sea; another plate, pretending to represent the tombs of Rachel, Dionysius, the Maccabees, Semiramis, and Herod the Great; two maps of Arabia; a map of Maundell’s Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem; an illustration of the Borealis; together with large-sized engravings of the hippopotamus, the crocodile, and the horse.
In reference to the horse, the following anecdote is worth preserving. It appears that Lord Oxford had in his possession, what was supposed to be, the finest Arab horse in existence. His Lordship had already shown great kindness to Mr Wesley’s son Samuel at Westminster, and, thus encouraged, the rector wrote, saying he was wishful to illustrate his Dissertations by an engraving of the Arab horse, and that he had been told that his lordship’s “Bloody Arab” was the finest animal of that breed that existed. He adds:—“I have an ambition to get him drawn by the best artist we can find, and place him as the greatest ornament of my work. If your lordship has a picture of him I would beg that my engraver may take a draft from it, or, if not, that my son may have the liberty to get one drawn from life.”[260]
Samuel Wesley, jun., shared the intimate friendship of this distinguished statesman, and was a frequent guest at his lordship’s house; and there can be little doubt that, through him, the father’s request was granted, especially remembering that Lord Oxford was not only a great encourager of literature, but the greatest collector, in his time, of curious books and manuscripts, and that he it was who formed the nucleus of the celebrated Harleian library, now one of the richest treasures of the British Museum.
Prefixed to Mr Wesley’s Dissertations is a list of subscribers’ names, numbering more than three hundred, and including thirty-one nobles, fifteen bishops, and twenty-two deans and other dignitaries of the Church. The following are some of the distinguished names in this illustrious list, given alphabetically:—Earl of Ashburnham, Bishop Atterbury, Lord Bathurst, Lord Bolingbroke, Duke of Buckinghamshire, Earl of Burlington, Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop of London, Earl of Malton, Earl of Orrery, Earl of Oxford, Alexander Pope, Earl of Portmore, Sir Hans Sloane, Dean Swift, Lord Tyrconnel, Dr Waterland, Samuel, John, Charles, and Matthew Wesley, and William Whiston. Such names are a strong intimation of Mr Wesley’s high repute as a literary man.
The proposals for publishing the Dissertations were circulated in 1729, but the book was not ready for the market until about the year 1736, that being the date of a copy now before us. The work was dedicated by permission to Queen Caroline, to whom it was presented by John Wesley, two days before he set sail for Georgia. He says, her Majesty received it with “many good words and smiles.”[261] Dr Clarke relates that, when Wesley was introduced into the royal presence, the Queen was romping with her maids of honour; but she suspended her play, took the book from his hand, and said, “It is very prettily bound,” and then laid it down without opening it. He rose up, bowed, walked backward, and withdrew. The Queen bowed and smiled, and immediately resumed her sport.[262]
Samuel Badcock, whose friendship for the Wesley family was dubious, says, Mr Wesley’s Dissertations were “never held in any estimation by the learned.” John Wesley replied, “I doubt that. The book certainly contains immense learning, but of a kind which I do not admire.”[263]
Bishop Warburton, of whom Dr Johnson says, “his knowledge was too multifarious to be always exact,” writing to Bishop Hurd, remarks: “Poor Job! It was his eternal fate to be persecuted by his friends. His three comforters passed sentence of condemnation upon him, and he has been executing in effigie ever since. He was first bound to the stake by a long Catena of Greek fathers; then tortured by Pineda; then strangled by Caryll; and afterwards cut up by Wesley, and anatomised by Garnet. He was ordained, I think, by a fate like that of Prometheus, to lie still upon his dunghill, and have his brains sucked out by owls.”[264]
As a set-off to Warburton’s slap-dash wit, we give a letter which Alexander Pope addressed to Dean Swift in the year 1730:—“This is a letter extraordinary, to do and say nothing but recommend to you a pious and good work, and for a good and honest man; moreover, he is about seventy, and poor, which you might think included in the word ‘honest.’ I shall think it a kindness done to myself, if you can propagate Mr Wesley’s subscription for his Commentary on Job among your divines, (bishops excepted, of whom there is no hope,) and among such as are believers, or readers of Scripture. Even the curious may find something to please them, if they scorn to be edified. It has been the labour of eight years[265]of this learned man’s life. I call him what he is—a learned man; and I engage you will approve his prose more than you formerly could his poetry. Lord Bolingbroke is a favourer of it, and allows you to do your best to serve an old Tory and a sufferer for the Church of England, though you are a Whig, as I am.”[266]
Lord Oxford wrote to Swift in the same year, requesting the same favour, and says: “The person concerned is a worthy, honest man; and by this work of his he is in hopes to get free of a load of debt which has hung upon him for some years. This debt of his is not owing to any folly or extravagance, but to the calamity of his house having been twice burned, which he was obliged to rebuild; and having but small preferment in the Church, and a large family of children, he has not been able to extricate himself out of the difficulties these accidents have brought upon him. Three sons he has bred up well at Westminster, and they are excellent scholars. The eldest has been one of the ushers in Westminster School since the year 1714. He is a man in years, yet hearty and able to study many hours in a day. This, in short, is the ease of an honest, poor, worthy clergyman; and I hope you will take him under your protection. I cannot pretend that my recommendation should have any weight with you, but as it is joined to and under the wing of Mr Pope.”
We have now passed in review the whole of Mr Wesley’s literary productions, excepting one. This was “A Letter to a Curate,” originally written for the use of the brother of the Rev. Mr Hoole of Haxey, who was about to be ordained, and to become Samuel Wesley’s curate at Epworth. A year or two after, the manuscript was sent to John Wesley, who published it shortly after his father’s death, and says, in his preface, that the reader will “find strong sense and deep experience, in plain, clear, and unaffected words, and a strain of piety running through the whole, worthy a soldier of Jesus Christ.” This considerably-sized pamphlet is now extremely scarce, but the reader may find a reprint of it in an Appendix to Jackson’s “Life of Charles Wesley,” vol. ii. p. 500. As the pamphlet throws great light upon Mr Wesley’s character, displays his immense reading, mentions the leading men of his times with whom he was personally acquainted, and makes several statements respecting his own proceedings as a parish priest, we take the liberty of giving a lengthened outline of its valuable contents.[267]
The points uponupon which Mr Wesley gives advice to his young curate are—1. His general aims and intentions; 2. His converse and demeanour among the parishioners; 3. His reading the liturgy; 4. His studies; 5. His preaching and catechising. 6. His administering the sacraments. 7. The administration of discipline.
In reference to the first, he avers that the end to be aimed at by every Christian minister is “the glory of God, the edifying of His Church, and the salvation of immortal souls.” The man who makes the attainment of worldly dignity any part of his design, falls not far short of the iniquity of Simon Magus, nor can he expect a much better end. Without the aim being right, a clergyman’s life would be one of the most tasteless and wearisome things in the world. “For my own part,” he says, “I had rather be a porter, or even a pettifogger.” To keep the heart right in this matter, he recommends his curate to read, once a quarter, the form of ordination; just as Methodist preachers, some years ago, were enjoined to read the “Liverpool Minutes.”
As it regards “converse and demeanour,” he strongly advises that, when parish business calls the minister to a public-house, as it sometimes may, his stay in such a place should be as brief as possible; and that when visiting, especially the rich, he should guard himself against the bottle and against bribes. He recommends him to “visit his whole parish from house to house, and that even the men and maid-servants; for a good shepherd knows his sheep by name.” He advises him to take down the name and age of every person, and to ascertain who can read; who can say their prayers and catechisms; who have been confirmed; who have received the communion; who are of age to do it; and who have prayers in their families. He had attempted this twice or thrice himself during the first twelve years of his ministry at Epworth; but during the last twelve, since his house was burned, he had been so much diverted, that, though he had begun such a systematised visiting, he had not been able to quite finish it. He recommends the curate to visit the sick, even though not requested; and to endeavour to suppress the new custom of burying by candlelight.
With regard to “reading prayers,”[268] he expresses a confident hope that his curate will do as he has done, viz., read the prayers on every holiday, Wednesday, and Friday; and, he says, he should be pleased if this was done also on the eves of holidays. He remarks that there are but very few who read the Liturgy as it should be read; and that he has heard a hundred good preachers to one good reader. He says—“I am of opinion that the prayers, and even the lessons, might be pricked, as are the psalms and anthems, so as to be read properly and musically.” He urges his friend to avoid “unequal cadences,” and “incondite whinings; laying weight where there ought to be none, or omitting it where it is requisite, like the music of a Quakers’ meeting.” “He must,” he adds, “avoid a running over the prayers, as if we were in haste to be at the end of them; and, on the other side, a drawling, canting manner, either of which will be apt to render the reader, if not the prayers themselves, contemptible.”
Respecting psalmody, he says that, as they cannot, at Epworth, “reach anthems and cathedral music, they must be content with their present parochial way of singing.” Indeed, he inclines to think they must also be content with their “grandsire Sternhold,” for Bishop Beveridge had declared that the common people could understand the Psalms of Sternhold better than those of Tate and Brady. Wesley says there may be truth in this, for the common people “have a strange genius at understanding nonsense.” He adds that the people at Epworth “did once sing well, and it cost a pretty deal to teach them.” The singing, however, was now not so good as formerly, and he hopes his curate will tune them up again by meeting them at church in the long winter evenings, and by getting the scholars to sing as they used to do when he first came thither.
Concerning his “studies,” Mr Wesley advises his curate to add to his knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages a knowledge of the Hebrew, for that is necessary in order to be a complete divine. He contends that, while logic, history, law, pharmacy, philosophy, chronology, geography, mathematics, poetry, music, and other parts of learning, are to be read and studied, they must all be used as auxiliaries to divinity. The Bible, however, must be the main subject of a clergyman’s studies, and this ought always to be read with devotion. The Apocryphal Books ought not to be neglected, being of great and venerable antiquity, and some of them referred to by St Paul, and perhaps also by our Saviour. Mr Wesley then proceeds to enumerate a host of writers whose works are worthy of being read or otherwise. Tertullian had fire enough, and Justin and Clemens Alexandrinus sense and learning; but Origen is worth them and all others put together. Irenæus is learned, acute, orthodox, zealous, and devout; and St Cyprian is safer than his master Tertullian; but Lactantius, notwithstanding the purity of his language and the beauty of his periods, is so novel a Christian, or so rank an heretic, that he scarce had patience to read him. Socrates and Plato are almost transcripts of Pythagoras. Tully is worth all the Romans. Seneca is well worth reading. And thus Samuel Wesley runs through all the principal writers, Christian and heathen, from the birth of Christ to the time of the Reformation. He had not read much of Luther; Melancthon was ingenious and polite; Calvin worthy of being read with caution. Bucer was pious, learned, and moderate; Bellarmine had all the strength of the Romanists; Fisher was a great man; Gardiner was far from being contemptible; Erasmus useful and pleasant; Jewel neat and strong; Cranmer pious and erudite; but Ridley, among all the Reformers, for clearness, closeness, strength, and learning, stands pre-eminent. Chillingworth was one of the best disputants in the world; Grotius was the prince of commentators, and worth all the rest, though he seems not always consistent with himself; Hammond was learned, judicious, and orthodox, if you throw aside his Jerusalem, and Gnostics, and Simon Magus; Sanderson was a master casuist; Mede has many bright and happy thoughts; the critics were worth a king’s ransom, and most of them might be found in Pool’s Synopsis.
Speaking of his own contemporaries, Wesley proceeds to say:—Tillotson brought the art of preaching near perfection, but Stillingfleet was a more universal scholar; and yet Archbishop Sharpe was a more popular pulpit orator than either. Bishop Pearson was a man of almost inimitable sense, piety, and learning, and his work on the creed ought to be in every clergyman’s study, though unable to purchase anything else than the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. Bishop Bull was a strong and nervous writer; and the sermons of Bishop Beveridge were in themselves a library. Bishop Spratt was one of the first masters of the English language. Bishop Burnet, notwithstanding his Scotticisms, had a prodigious genius, and a body that would bear almost anything, for he himself had told Wesley that, at one period of his life, his circumstances were such that, to retrieve them, he lived upon three-halfpence a day. Bishop Ken made almost all who heard him preach begin to weep; Bishop Hopkins was judicious and useful; Isaac Barrow strong, masculine, and noble; Dodwell had piety and learning, but was overfond of nostrums; Ray, Derham, and Boyle were as useful as entertaining; Calamy’s, Smalridge’s, and Atterbury’s sermons were standards; Whitby was learned and laborious, though he had brought his squirt to quench hell-fire, and to diminish the honour of his Lord and Master; and Le Clerc had more wit than learning, and less faith than either. Judge Hale was strong, pious, and nervous; Nelson genteel, zealous, and instructive; Leslie, against the Jews and Deists, was demonstrative; Kettlewell, wonderfully pious and devout; and Hickes’s Letters against the Papists unanswerable. Among his old friends, the Dissenters, Mr Wesley mentions Richard Baxter, whom he had heard preach, and whose practical writings, as well as sermons, had a strange fire and pathos; Dr Annesley, a man of great piety and of very good learning; Charnock, diffuse and lax, but very good; Howe, close, strong, and metaphysical; Alsop, merry and witty; Bates, polite and polished; Williams, orthodox and possessed of good sense, especially that of getting money; Calamy, whose style is not amiss; Bradbury, who is fire and feather; Burgess, who had more sense than he made use of; Shower, polite; Cruse, unhappy; Owen, a gentleman and a scholar; Matthew Henry, commended for his laborious work on the Old Testament; and Clarkson, Tillotson’s tutor, who knew more about the Fathers than all the Dissenters put together.
After going through this long list of authors, with whose writings he was himself more or less acquainted, Mr Wesley takes up the fifth section of his pamphlet—viz., Preaching; and says here “he ought to blush for pretending to give rules for that wherein he was never master, but it is far easier to direct than it is to practise.” First, he advises his curate to prepare a course of sermons on all the principles of religion, so as to comprise, as near as may be, the whole body of divinity. He then proceeds to say—“I sincerely hate what some call a fine sermon, with just nothing in it. I cannot for my life help thinking that it is very like our fashionable poetry—a mere polite nothing.” He recommends that the divisions of a sermon be not too long, or too many; that its illustrations be proper and lively, its proofs close and pointed, its motives strong and cogent, and its inferences and application natural, and yet laboured with all the force of sacred eloquence. He also recommends a prudent, occasional mixture of controversial sermons against papists, sectaries, and heretics; and that the curate, instead of reading his sermons, should repeat them from memory. He advises him to preach suitable sermons in every year, on November 5th, January 30th, May 29th, and August 1st.
In reference to “Catechising,” he says, the curate will have assistance from the pious and careful schoolmaster, in whose house he will live. He thinks that catechising had much to do with the speedy and wide propagation of the Reformed religion, and has little hope that the Church of England will maintain its position if this be neglected. He expresses the opinion that catechising should not be confined to the season of Lent only, but should be practised at evening service on all Sundays and holidays; and that when the children have been made perfect in the ordinary church catechism, they should be taught some larger one. He himself had adopted this plan, using, as his second catechism, that published by Bishop Beveridge.
As to the administration of the Sacraments, he hopes that the curate will succeed in doing what he had never been able to do himself—viz., getting the godfathers and godmothers at baptisms to repeat the responses. The greatest struggle of his ministerial life at Epworth, had been to prevail with the people to bring their children to church for public baptism, and their wives to be churched. In many instances, parents deferred the baptism of their children so long that they brought such monsters of men-children to the font as were almost enough to break his arms while holding them, and whose manful voices were enough to disturb and alarm the whole congregation. This was an evil which ought to be set right. The Lord’s Supper was administered in Epworth Church once a month, and a collection made, at which Mr Wesley, for the sake of example, always gave something himself. This sacrament money, when entered in the church book, was kept in the box appointed for it, with three canonical locks and keys, one of the keys being held by the rector; three-fourths of the money were paid for the children at the charity school, and the remainder put into the bank for such poor sick people as had no constant relief from the parish, and who came to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.
The enforcement of Discipline was not the least difficult task. He requests that the curate will direct the churchwardens to enforce the ninetieth canon, and diligently see that all the parishioners resort to church, and not stay idling in the churchyard or porch; and that he keep the churchwardens themselves from the alehouse during divine service. He states that he had always brought to public penance anti-nuptial and no-nuptial fornicators. He advises that there be no disputations with Dissenters, for when he first came to Epworth he had practised this, but his opponents always outfaced and outlunged him, and, at the end, they were just where they were at the beginning.
Mr Wesley then concludes by saying, that he had spent some weeks in writing “this tedious and most unfashionable letter;” and adds, “Go on in the way of duty. I hope there will be no dispute between us, but who shall run fastest and fairest; and if I am distanced, I will limp after you as fast as I can with such a weight.”
Such are the salient points and facts in Mr Wesley’s letter to a young clergyman. John Wesley acted upon some of its advices in Georgia with respect to visiting and catechising, and strongly urged the same upon his first itinerants; and George Whitefield acknowledged, in 1737, that the letter had been of service to himself.[269]
Thus did Mr Wesley labour to benefit the church and to bless mankind. Meanwhile, as usual, he was struggling with embarrassments, and with no ordinary trials. Mrs Wesley, in 1721, states that she was rarely in health, and Mr Wesley began to suffer from the infirmities of age. Emily had been compelled to become a teacher in a boarding-school; Sukey had been married to a man little better than a fiend; other children were at home, wanting neither industry nor capacity for business; but the parents could do nothing for them. The eldest daughter was absent, the second ruined, and all the rest in great distress. The parsonage was not half furnished, nor the family half clothed, but amid all, the venerable man was patient, and his wife loving. “Did I not know,” she writes, “that Almighty wisdom hath views and ends in fixing the bounds of our habitation, which are out of our ken, I should think it a thousand pities that a man of his brightness, and rare endowments of learning and useful knowledge, in relation to the Church of God, should be confined to an obscure corner of the country, where his talents are buried, and he determined to a way of life for which he is not so well qualified as I could wish.”
In the midst of all this, he obtained, in 1726, the small rectory of Wroot, about five miles from Epworth, and here he sometimes resided, but this added but little to his domestic comforts, as the profits barely covered the expenses of serving it.[270] Even as late as 1821, the number of houses in the parish were not more than fifty-four, and contained a population of only two hundred and eighty-five.[271] The church, in the days of Wesley, was a small brick building, having, however, some ancient sepulchral monuments.[272] The parsonage-house was covered with a roof of thatch, the country round about was little better than a swamp, and the inhabitants are thus described by the gifted pen of Mehetabel Wesley in lines addressed to her sister Emilia:—