WESLEY spent more than half of the year 1744 in London and its immediate neighbourhood. He made about half-a-dozen visits to Bristol; and three months were occupied in a tour to Cornwall, thence to Yorkshire and Newcastle, and thence to London.

Charles Wesley spent the year in London, Bristol, Cornwall, Staffordshire, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, at Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield, and other intervening places.

Whitefield commenced the year with rejoicing over the birth of his firstborn,—a boy expected to be a minister, and publicly baptized in the Tabernacle, where thousands, on the occasion, joined in singing a doggrel hymn, written by an aged and doting widow. On the 8th of February, this infant prodigy suddenly expired in the Bell Inn, Gloucester, where Whitefield himself was born; and, after being taken to the church in which Whitefield was baptized, first communicated, and first preached, was then buried, Whitefield returning to London deeply pondering the meaning of what he calls “this blessed riddle.” The next four months were chiefly spent in the metropolis; after which he and his wife repaired to Plymouth for the purpose of sailing to America. Here they were detained for several weeks, waiting for the convoy in whose company the voyage was to be attempted. During the interval, Whitefield preached in the town and neighbourhood with great success, and was nearly murdered by a villain, who beat him most unmercifully with his golden-headed cane. At length, he set sail in company with nearly one hundred and fifty ships; and, after not a few adventures, landed in New England, at the end of October, but was so extremely ill, that, for several weeks, he was almost incapable of preaching. In point of fact, Whitefield preached but very little, during the year 1744, except in London and in Plymouth, and in their respective vicinities.

One of the chief events of 1744 was the threat of a French invasion. On the 15th of February, the king sent a message to the houses of parliament, to the effect, that he had received undoubted intelligence, that the eldest son of the pretender to his crown was arrived in France, and that preparations were being made to invade England.

Parliament replied, that they looked upon such a design with the greatest indignation and abhorrence, and would use every effort to frustrate and defeat so desperate and insolent an attempt.

Great excitement followed. The coast was watched with the utmost care. A double guard was mounted at the Tower, and also at St. James’s. All military officers were ordered to their posts of duty. Workmen in the king’s yards were directed to wear arms and accoutrements, and to be exercised every morning; and instructions were given to the militia of the county of Kent, to assemble at the earliest notice.[524] The Habeas Corpus act was suspended, and a proclamation was issued for a general fast. All papists and reputed papists were forbidden to remain within ten miles of the cities of Westminster and London. The Earl of Barrymore was arrested and committed to the Tower, on the charge of enlisting men for the Pretender. Loyal addresses were presented to the king by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, by the merchants of London, by the convocation of the province of Canterbury, by the Quakers, by the Protestant Dissenters, and by many others. The city of Dublin offered a reward of £6000 for apprehending the Pretender, or his son, either alive or dead, should they attempt to land in Ireland; and sixty thousand fire arms and accoutrements were seized in suspected houses in the southern parts of that island. War was declared against France on the 29th of March, and the whole kingdom seemed to be inflamed with martial ardour.

How did this affect Wesley? Two days after the king informed parliament of the threatened invasion, Wesley and his London society held a day of solemn fasting and prayer. When the proclamation was published requiring all papists to leave London, though he had appointed to go out of town, he determined to stay, so as to cut off all occasion of reproach; but on the 2nd of March (the last day mentioned in the proclamation), while he was at a house in Spitalfields, a magistrate and the parish officers came in search of papists. Wesley was glad of the opportunity to explain the principles and the practices of the Methodists. The searchers were satisfied, and Wesley was allowed to depart in peace, a large mob merely gaping, staring, and hallooing as loud as they were able. Some of his friends pressed him to write an address to the king, on behalf of the Methodists. He did so, and described them as “a people scattered and peeled, and trodden underfoot; traduced as inclined to Popery, and consequently disaffected to his majesty.” They were, however, “a part of the Protestant Church established in these kingdoms; they detested the fundamental doctrines of the Church of Rome; and were steadily attached to his majesty’s royal person and illustrious house, and ready to obey him to the uttermost, in all things which they conceived to be agreeable to the written word of God.” “Silver and gold,” he adds, “most of us must own, we have none; but such as we have we humbly beg your majesty to accept, together with our hearts and prayers.” Charles Wesley objected to the sending of this address in the name of the Methodists, because it would constitute them a sect, or at least would seem to allow that they were a body distinct from the national Church. He wished his brother to guard against this, and then, in the name of the Lord, to address the king.[525] Upon further consideration the address was laid aside.

Wesley’s troubles were not ended. On the 20th of March, he received a summons from the Surrey magistrates, to appear at the court at St. Margaret’s Hill. He did so, and asked, “Has any one anything to lay to my charge?” None replied; but, at length, one of the magistrates said, “Sir, are you willing to take the oaths to his majesty, and to sign the declaration against Popery?” Wesley replied, “I am”; which he did accordingly, and was permitted to depart in peace.

Why was this? Besides the general calumny cast upon the Methodists, that they were papists, it was at this time currently reported, that Wesley had recently been seen with the Pretender in France. Might not this be the reason of the unnecessary and annoying summons to appear at St. Margaret’s Hill?

In the same month, a warrant was issued, by a magistrate of the west riding of Yorkshire, to compel the attendance of five witnesses to give evidence at Wakefield, that they had heard Charles Wesley speak “treasonable words, as praying for the banished, or for the Pretender.” At the time appointed, March 15, Charles himself appeared in the magisterial court, and engaged to prove, that all the Methodists, “to a man, were true members of the Church of England, and loyal subjects of his majesty, King George”; and then desired their worships to administer to him the oaths. All the summoned witnesses retracted their accusations; and yet the Methodist itinerant was insulted at the door of the magistrates’ room, for eight long hours, when Mr. justice Burton, with consummate coolness, told him he might go, for they had nought against him. “Sir,” said Charles, “that is not sufficient: I cannot depart till my character is cleared. It is no trifling matter. Even my life is concerned in the charge.” At length, their worships reluctantly acknowledged, in explicit terms, that his “loyalty was unquestionable”; and he took his leave for Birstal, where the Methodists of the neighbourhood met him on a hill, and joined him in singing “praises lustily, and with a good courage.” All this arose out of one of the witnesses having heard him praying, on the 12th of February, that “the Lord would call home His banished”; the words being used, of course, in a sense purely spiritual.

Other inconveniences and acts of violence arose out of the threatened invasion of the French. John Slocomb, a poor baker’s boy, who was now one of Wesley’s preachers in Cornwall, was arrested, under a press warrant, and taken by his own uncle to prison, where he was kept a week, and then brought before the commissioners, who, finding no cause to punish or detain him, were obliged, at last, notwithstanding all their threatenings, to let him go. In Nottingham, two other preachers, John Healey and Thomas Westall, were similarly arrested, the magistrates demanding their horses for the king’s service, and refusing to believe they had none till they sent and searched. The case of John Nelson is known to every one, and will ever stand as one of the most sublime and tragic chapters in Methodistic history. John Downes, another itinerant, while preaching at Epworth, was seized and pressed for the king’s service, and sent as a prisoner to Lincoln gaol. And then, to all these must be added the mournful case of Thomas Beard, a quiet and peaceable man, who was torn from his trade, and wife and children, in Yorkshire, and sent away as a soldier, for no other crime, either committed or pretended, than that of calling sinners to repentance; and who, while lodged in the hospital at Newcastle, died; and, as one of the first martyrs among the Methodists, escaped from his cruel enemies on earth, to the company of the beatified in heaven.

Thus did the hot-headed friends of King George II. do their utmost to make leal Methodists disloyal to the throne and house of Hanover; but the effort failed; for, from first to last, more faithful subjects than Wesley’s followers the throne of England has never had. “It is my religion,” wrote Wesley, more than thirty years after this, “which obliges me to put men in mind to be subject to principalities and powers. Loyalty is with me an essential branch of religion, and which I am sorry any Methodist should forget. There is the closest connection, therefore, between my religious and political conduct; the selfsame authority enjoining me to fear God, and to honour the king.”[526]

Two events occurred, in the year 1744, which deserve special mention: the first Methodist conference, and Wesley’s last university sermon.

The conference began on Monday, June 25, and continued the five following days. It was held at the Foundery, London; and consisted of the two Wesleys, and four other clergymen, namely, John Hodges, Henry Piers, Samuel Taylor, and John Meriton; also of four lay preachers—Thomas Richards, Thomas Maxfield, John Bennet, and John Downes.[527]

Mr. Hodges was the rector of Wenvo, in Wales, a good man, who, from the first, was friendly to the Methodists, and who showed his love for Wesley, in 1758, by writing him a reproof for the tartness of some of his controversial writings, and which Wesley had the honest manliness to publish in his Arminian Magazine.

Mr. Piers has been already noticed. Samuel Taylor was the great great grandson of the celebrated Dr. Rowland Taylor, of Hadleigh, in Suffolk, who was forcibly ejected from his church; whom Gardiner, from the woolsack, addressed as “a knave, a traitor, and a villain”; whom Bonner was about to strike with his crosier, and was only hindered by Taylor telling him he would strike again; and who, amid the tears and prayers of his afflicted flock, was put into a pitch barrel, by the bloodthirsty papists, on the 9th of February, 1555, and was set on fire, one zealous vagabond flinging a fagot at his head, and another impatient ruffian cleaving his skull with a halbert, while he was singing in the flames, “In God have I put my trust, I will not fear what man can do unto me.” The descendant of this brave-hearted martyr partook of his ancestor’s zealous and heroic spirit. He was vicar of Quinton in Gloucestershire; but his heart was larger than his parish. Like Wesley, he went out into the highways and hedges, and was a sharer in the brutal persecutions of Wednesbury, Darlaston, and other places. Richard Whatcoat, one of the first Methodist bishops in America, when a child, sat under his ministry, and received impressions which he never lost.[528] As a preacher, Mr. Taylor was zealous, pathetic, and powerful. He died about the year 1750.[529]

Mr. Meriton had been educated in one of the universities, and was now a clergyman from the Isle of Man.[530] The last years of his life seem to have been chiefly spent in accompanying the two Wesleys in their preaching excursions, and in assisting them in the chapels they had built. He died in 1753.

Of the four lay members of the first Methodist conference, three afterwards left Wesley, and became ministers of other churches. John Downes was the only one who lived and died a Methodist.

The day before the conference commenced was one to be remembered. Besides the ordinary preaching services, a lovefeast was held, at which six ordained ministers were present; and, during the day, the sacrament was administered to the whole of the London society, now numbering between two and three thousand members. At this grand sacramental service five clergymen assisted.

On the day following, the conference was opened, with solemn prayer, a sermon by Charles Wesley, and the baptism of an adult, who there and then found peace with God.[531] The three points debated were:—1. What to teach. 2. How to teach. 3. How to regulate doctrine, discipline, and practice.

In reference to the first point, it was settled that, to be justified is to be pardoned, and received into God’s favour; that faith, preceded by repentance, is the condition of justification; that repentance is a conviction of sin; that faith, in general, is a Divine, supernatural elenchos of things not seen; and that justifying faith is a conviction, by the Holy Ghost, that Christ loved me, and gave Himself for me; that no man can be justified and not know it; that the immediate fruits of justifying faith are peace, joy, love, power over all outward sin, and power to keep down inward sin; that wilful sin is inconsistent with justifying faith; that no believer need ever again come into condemnation; that works are necessary for the continuance of faith, which cannot be lost but for want of them; and that St. Paul and St. James do not contradict each other, when one says Abraham was not justified by works, and the other that he was, because they do not speak of the same justification, and because they do not speak of the same works,—St. Paul speaking of works that precede faith, and St. James of works that spring from it.

The Conference further agreed, that Adam’s sin is imputed to all mankind in the sense, that in consequence of such sin—(1) our bodies are mortal; (2) our souls disunited from God, and of a sinful, devilish nature; and (3) we are liable to death eternal. It was further agreed, that the Bible never expressly affirms, that God imputes the righteousness of Christ to any, but rather, that faith is imputed to us for righteousness. At the same time, the Conference conceived that, by the merits of Christ, all men are cleared from the guilt of Adam’s actual sin; that their bodies will become immortal after the resurrection; that their souls receive a capacity of spiritual life, and an actual spark or seed thereof; and that all believers are reconciled to God and made partakers of the Divine nature.

Sanctification was defined, a renewal in the image of God, in righteousness and true holiness; to be a perfect Christian is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, implying the destruction of all inward sin; and faith is the condition and instrument by which such a state of grace is obtained.

Proceeding to other matters, the Conference resolved to defend the doctrine of the Church of England both by their preaching and living; to obey the bishops in all things indifferent, and to observe the canons as far as they could with a safe conscience; and, finally, to exert themselves to the utmost not to entail a schism in the Church, by their hearers forming themselves into a distinct sect; though they agreed that they must not neglect the present opportunity of saving souls, for fear of consequences which might possibly or probably happen, after they were dead.

The belief was expressed, that the design of God in raising up the preachers, called Methodists, was to reform the nation, more particularly the Church; and to spread scriptural holiness through the land. It was decided that, wherever they preached, they ought to endeavour to form societies, because where societies were not formed, the preacher would not be able to give proper instructions to them that were convinced of sin; nor the people to watch over one another in love, bear one another’s burdens, and build up each other in faith and holiness. It was stated, that the Methodists were divided into four sections; namely, the united societies, the bands, the select societies, and the penitents. The united societies, who were the most numerous, consisted of awakened persons. The bands were selected from these, and consisted of those who were supposed to have remission of sins. The select societies were taken from the bands, and were composed of those who seemed to walk in the light of God’s countenance. The penitents were those who, for the present, were fallen from grace. After this, the rules of the united societies, and of the bands, were read. The rules of the select societies were the same as those of the bands, with three additions:—1. That nothing spoken in their meetings be spoken again. 2. That every member submit to his minister in all indifferent things. 3. That, till they could have all things common, every member should bring, once a week, all he could spare toward a common stock. The penitents were left without rules.

It was agreed, that lay assistants were allowable only in cases of necessity. They were to expound every morning and evening; to meet the united societies, the bands, the select societies, and the penitents, once a week; to visit the classes once a quarter; to hear and decide all differences; to put the disorderly back on trial, and to receive on trial for the bands or society; to see that the stewards, the leaders, schoolmasters, and housekeepers faithfully discharged their several offices; and to meet the leaders and the stewards weekly, and to examine their accounts. They were to be serious; to converse sparingly and cautiously with women; to take no step towards marriage without first acquainting Wesley or his brother clergymen; and to do nothing as a gentleman, for they had no more to do with this character than with that of a dancing master. They were to be ashamed of nothing but sin; not of fetching wood, or drawing water; not of cleaning their own shoes, or their neighbour’s. They were to take no money of any one, and were to contract no debts without Wesley’s knowledge; they were not to mend the rules, but keep them; to employ their time as Wesley directed, and to keep journals, as well for Wesley’s satisfaction as for profit to themselves.[532]

It was decided, that they should preach most, where those of them who were clergymen could preach in a church; where they could get the greatest number of quiet and willing hearers; and where they had most success. It was agreed, that field preaching had been used too sparingly; that every alternate meeting of the society, in every place, should be strictly private; and that at the other meeting strangers might be admitted with caution, but not the same person above twice or thrice. To improve the usefulness of classleaders, it was resolved that each leader should be diligently examined, concerning his method of meeting a class; that all of them should converse with the preachers, as frequently and as freely as possible; that they should attend the leaders’ meeting every week, bringing notes of all sick persons in their classes; and that none should speak in the leaders’ meeting but the preacher or the steward, unless in answer to a question. The members were to be more closely examined, at the general visitation of the classes; the married men and married women, and the single men and single women were to be met apart once a quarter; and all the members were to be visited at their own houses, at times fixed for such a purpose. Tickets were to be given to none, till they were recommended by a leader with whom they had met three months on trial; and new members were to be admitted into the society only on the Sunday following the quarterly visitation, their names being read on the Sunday night previous. It was agreed, also that it was lawful for Methodists to bear arms; and that they might use the law as defendants, and perhaps in some cases as plaintiffs.[533]

Other regulations were adopted, either at this or ensuing conferences, as follows: preachers were to meet the children in every place, and give them suitable exhortations; they were to preach expressly and strongly against sabbath breaking, dram drinking, evil speaking, unprofitable conversation, lightness, gaiety, or expensiveness of apparel, and contracting debts without sufficient care to discharge them; they were to recommend to every society, frequently and earnestly, the books that Wesley published, as preferable to any other; they were to use their best endeavours to extirpate smuggling, and also bribery at elections; they were to speak to any that desired it, every day after the morning and evening preaching. As often as possible, they were to rise at four o’clock; to spend two or three minutes every hour in earnest prayer; to observe strictly the morning and evening hour of retirement; to rarely employ above an hour at a time in conversation; to use all the means of grace; to keep watchnights once a month; to take a regular catalogue of the societies once a year; to speak freely to each other, and never to part without prayer. They were never to preach more than twice a day, unless on Sundays or extraordinary occasions; to begin and end the service precisely at the time appointed; to always suit their subject to their congregations; to choose the plainest texts possible, and to beware of allegorizing and rambling from their texts. They were to avoid everything awkward or affected, either in phrase, gesture, or pronunciation; to sing no hymns of their own composing; to choose hymns proper for the congregation; not to sing more than five or six verses at a time, and to suit the tune to the nature of the hymns. After preaching, they were recommended to take lemonade, candied orange peel, or a little soft, warm ale; and to avoid late suppers, and egg and wine, as downright poison.[534]

Here we find six clergymen and four lay preachers, not elaborating an ecclesiastical structure, but carefully considering the greatest truths of the Christian religion, and investigating the duties of its preachers. Six days were spent in this important work. They desired nothing, said Wesley, but to save their own souls and those that heard them. Their doctrines, so simple and encouraging, were not the popular theology of the age; but they were in the Scriptures, and what every sinner needed. They little thought, that they were constructing a platform which would survive their times, and originating a long series of annual conferences which would become one of the most important institutions in the world; a central power, conveying religious benefits to every quarter of the globe, and serving as a model for framing other similar institutions both at home and abroad. The doctrines agreed upon are still the staple doctrines of the Methodist communities, and the elements of Methodist discipline may be found in the minutes of this the first Methodist conference.

Leaving Wesley’s first conference, we pass to his last sermon before the university of Oxford.

The day appointed for the sermon was Friday, August 24, the anniversary of St. Bartholomew, and occurred in Oxford race week. The duty came to Wesley by rotation; and had he declined it, he must have paid three guineas for a substitute. We have three accounts of this celebrated sermon. From Charles Wesley we learn, that he and Mr. Piers and Mr. Meriton were present at its delivery; that the audience was a large one, and much increased by the racers; that the congregation gave the utmost attention; that some of the heads of colleges stood during the whole service, and fixed their eyes upon the preacher; and that, after the sermon, the little band of four Methodist clergymen walked away in form, none daring to join them.[535]

Wesley’s own account is as follows:—

The third account is by the celebrated Dr. Kennicott, who was, at this period, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, and an undergraduate of Wadham College. He had no sympathy with the Methodists, and yet he appears to have been deeply impressed with Wesley’s sermon. He writes:—

This obnoxious sermon was published a few weeks after it was preached, and was advertised in the October magazines, price sixpence.[539] Another edition was issued in the same year, at Newcastle on Tyne, 12mo, eighteen pages.

In a preface to the reader, Wesley says, that he never intended to print the latter part of the sermon; but “the false and scurrilous accounts of it which had been published, almost in every corner of the nation, now constrained him to publish the whole, just as it was preached, that men of reason might judge for themselves.”

The sermon has three divisions, and considers Christianity under three distinct aspects—(1) As beginning to exist in individuals. (2) As spreading from one to another. (3) As covering the earth. Of these nothing need be said. That which gave offence was the “plain, practical application,” which is quite one third of the entire discourse. The following extracts will show what it was that gave the offence which Oxford authorities never pardoned; and also the fidelity and Christian courage of the preacher in uttering such sentiments before such a congregation.

This is not only the substance, but nearly the whole of the “plain, practical application,” that created so much offence. Who can find fault with it? Rather, who will not commend the bold preacher, who, in such yearning accents, gave utterance to truths of the highest consequence, but which perhaps no one but himself, in such a congregation, durst have uttered? Would to God that pulpits had more of this courageous, pitying fidelity, at the present day! Is it not a fact, that preaching now-a-days consists so much of polite and pious platitudes, that, so far from saving souls, it is almost powerless? The age is too refined to tolerate preachers of the stamp of Luther, Knox, and Wesley. The words of the prophets are, in this pretentiously polite period of the church’s history, well worth pondering: “They have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.” “This is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the Lord; which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things; speak unto us smooth things; prophesy deceits.”

It was Wesley’s fidelity, far more than the novelty of his doctrines and proceedings, that brought upon him the persecutions he encountered. Of these, he and the Methodists had already had their share; but the vials of the people’s wrath were far from being emptied. The outrages in Staffordshire and other places have been already mentioned. “In Cornwall,” says Wesley, “the war against the Methodists was carried on with far more vigour than that against the Spaniards.” “At St. Ives,” writes Henry Millard, “the word of God runs and is glorified; but the devil rages horribly.” At Camborne, Thomas Westall was pulled down while preaching in Mr. Harris’s house; was carried to Penzance, where Dr. Borlase wrote a “mittimus” committing him to the house of correction at Bodmin as a vagrant; and here he was kept till the next quarter sessions, when the justices, then assembled, knowing a little more of the laws of God and man than Dr. Borlase and his Penzance confrères, declared his commitment to be illegal, and set him at liberty. “For what pay,” asks Wesley, justly proud of his preachers, “could we procure men to do this service,—to be always ready to go to prison or to death?” Dr. Borlase was a man of unquestioned sense and learning; but he was a bigot of the purest water. On his asking Jonathan Reeves to point him out a man who had been the better for hearing the Methodists, Jonathan pointed to John Daniel, then before him. “Get along,” cried the doctor. “Get along; you are a parcel of mad, crazy headed fellows;” and taking them by the shoulders, he thrust them to the doors. After this, we find him issuing warrants for the apprehension of Methodists; sending Thomas Maxfield to be a soldier; and signing a warrant for the arrest of Wesley himself; yet all this was not sufficient to prevent Wesley rendering to the Cornish bigot his due share of literary praise. “I looked over,” writes Wesley, in 1757, “Dr. Borlase’s Antiquities of Cornwall. He is a fine writer, and quite master of his subject. He has distinguished, with amazing accuracy, the ancient Saxon monuments from the more ancient Roman, and from those of the Druids, the most ancient of all.”[540] The doctor died in 1772.

Dr. Borlase was not alone; for his brother clergymen raged against the Methodists without measure, and, in their sermons, retailed the grossest lies concerning them. A poor woman complained to the mayor of St. Ives of some one throwing a huge stone into her house, which fell on a pillow within a few inches of her suckling child. His worship damned her, and said she might go about her business. One of the clergy told Jonathan Reeves, he wished the Bible were in Latin only, so that none of the common people could read it.[541] The mob at St. Ives saluted Wesley with stones and dirt; and pulled down the meeting-house, “for joy that Admiral Matthews had beat the Spaniards.” It was a gratifying fact, however, that, notwithstanding the fierceness of the Cornish persecution, not more than three or four of the Methodists turned cowardly deserters, while the rest, instead of being shaken, were confirmed in their principles by the violence of their enemies.

The press was still vigorously employed. An anonymous pamphlet, entitled “Observations upon the Conduct and Behaviour of a certain Sect usually designated by the name of Methodists,” 4to, pages 24, was written by Dr. Gibson, and obtained considerable approval from his brother bishops.[542] In this prelatical publication, the Methodists are charged with setting government at defiance, by appointing public places of religious worship, and by preaching in the open air, without taking the prescribed oaths, and subscribing the declaration against Popery. They broke the rules of the church of which they professed themselves members, by going to other than their own parish churches to receive the sacrament. Their doctrines and practices were a dis-service to religion—1. Because they set the standard of religion so high, that some were led to disregard religion altogether. 2. Because they carried the doctrine of justification by faith alone to such a height, as not to allow that the observance of moral duties is a condition of being justified. 3. Because a due attendance on the public offices of religion answered the purposes of devotion better than the “sudden agonies, roarings, screamings, tremblings, ravings, and madness of the Methodists.” 4. Because their exalted strains of religion led to spiritual pride, and to contempt of their superiors. In short, the irregular practices of the Methodists were of the like nature as those which had so great a share in bringing in the religious confusions of the last century.

Whitefield replied to this pamphlet in two small quarto tracts, of fourteen and twenty-four pages respectively. This evoked “A Serious and Expostulatory Letter,” by the Rev. Thomas Church, M.A., vicar of Battersea, and prebendary of St. Paul’s;[543] and also another letter, of fifty pages, “by a Gentleman of Pembroke College, Oxford.” In the latter production, the Methodists are censured for “suffering their heated imaginations to mount to such an exalted pitch, that it hurries them out of their senses, evaporates the religious spirit, and leaves nothing but sensuality in the heated machine.” Whitefield’s answer to “Observations on the Conduct and Behaviour of the Methodists” is politely said to be “stuffed with the coaxing and wheedling of the woman, the daring of the rebel, the pertness of the coxcomb, the evasions of the jesuit, and the bitterness of the bigot.” It is unblushingly affirmed, that the Methodists “can curse, rail, and berogue their antagonists, though in Scripture language, so as hardly to be exceeded by any pope, or spiritual bully, that ever yet appeared in Christendom.” They are a “rag-tag mob,” using “lascivious and blasphemously languishing expressions when they talk of the Redeemer’s love.” “They cant and blaspheme the Holy Spirit, and appeal to starts and sallies of flesh and blood for the inspiration of the Holy One.” They are “a set of creatures of the lowest rank, most of them illiterate, and of desperate fortunes; cursing, reviling, and showing their teeth at every one that does not approve of their frenzy and extravagance.” Whitefield was “crafty and malicious enough to be suspected of any wicked enterprise,—a person of wicked principles, travelling over all counties, to establish newfangled societies”; and he and his friends were “heads and spiritual directors of hot-brained cobblers, all big with venom against the clergy of the Established Church.” The author “trembles and shudders,” lest the Methodists should be “betrayed, by their feelings and stretchings, into a bed of eternal fire and brimstone, appointed for the reception of the lewd, the concupiscent, and the blasphemous.”

These are fair specimens of the foul foamings of this valiant defender of Church and state.

Another pamphlet, published in 1744, was “A Charge against Enthusiasm,” delivered, in several parts of his diocese, by the Bishop of Lichfield; and the object of which was to prove that “the indwelling and inward witnessing of the Spirit in believers’ hearts, as also praying and preaching by the Spirit, are all the extraordinary gifts and operations of the Holy Ghost, belonging only to the apostolical and primitive times, and that, consequently, all pretensions to such favours in these last days are vain and enthusiastical.”

Another, published at a shilling, was “Remarks on Mr. J. Wesley’s last Journal, by Thomas Church, A.M.,”[544] the prebendary of St. Paul’s already mentioned. Mr. Church sums up his charges against Wesley thus: “It is impossible for you to put an entire stop to the enormities of the Moravians, while you still (1) too much commend these men; (2) hold principles in common with them, from which these enormities naturally follow; and, (3) maintain other errors more than theirs, and are guilty of enthusiasm to the highest degree.” Mr. Church’s “Remarks,” however, will have to be noticed in the next chapter.

In addition to all this foam and fury against the Methodists, must be mentioned an equally vile attack of another kind. At the Brecon assizes, held in the month of August, the grand jury deemed it their duty to make a presentment to the presiding judge to the following effect: “that the Methodists held illegal meetings,” and that their “preachers pretended to expound the Scriptures by virtue of inspiration”; that, by this means, “they collected together great numbers of disorderly persons, very much endangering the peace of our sovereign lord the king; and that, unless their proceedings were timely suppressed, they might endanger the peace of the kingdom in general.” At all events, “the pretended preachers, or teachers, at their irregular meetings, by their enthusiastic doctrines, very much confounded and disordered the minds of his majesty’s good subjects”; and this, “in time, might lead to the overthrowing of our good government, both in Church and state.” Finally, the judge is requested, if the authority of the present court was not sufficient for the purpose, to apply to some superior authority, in order to put an end to the “villainous scheme” of “such dangerous assemblies.”[545]

Thus had Methodism to make its way through the opposition of vulgar mobs, fiery priests, lampooning pamphleteers, unjust magistrates, and grand juries. Gamaliel’s advice was set aside: “Refrain from these men, and let them alone; for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God.”

Wesley’s longest journey, in 1744, was from London to Cornwall, thence to Newcastle, and thence to London. Nearly three months were spent upon this evangelistic tour: many hundreds of miles were traversed, not by rail, or even in stage coaches, but on horseback, over the most miserable roads, the rider sometimes battered with rain and hail for hours together, and at others plunging through drifts of snow enough to engulf both man and beast. About a hundred sermons were preached: some, at Gwennap and at St. Stithian, to thousands upon thousands of attentive hearers; some in public houses; some on village greens; and a few in parish churches.

One of the churches Wesley was permitted to occupy was at Laneast, in Cornwall, of which Mr. Bennett was the aged clergyman. Another was at Landau, in Wales. “Such a church,” says Wesley, “I never saw before. There was not a glass window belonging to it; but only boards, with holes bored here and there, through which a dim light glimmered. Yet even here the light of God’s countenance has shone on many hearts.” In the former of these churches a strange scene was witnessed in the month of August. Charles Wesley was preaching “against harmless diversions,” having three clergymen, Messrs. Meriton, Thompson, and Bennett, among his auditors. “By harmless diversions,” exclaimed the preacher, “I was kept asleep in the devils arms, secure in a state of damnation, for eighteen years.” No sooner were the words uttered than Meriton added aloud, “And I for twenty-five!” “And I,” cried Thompson, “for thirty-five!” “And I,” said Bennett, the venerable minister of the church, “and I for above seventy.”

Strange and stirring incidents came across Wesley’s path. In his father’s church, at Epworth, he heard Mr. Romley preach two of the bitterest and falsest sermons he ever listened to. On proceeding to Syke House, some of his friends met him and said a drunken mob was awaiting his arrival, who would press all the men in the congregation for soldiers. Others declared, the mob was just about to fire the meeting-house, or pull it to the ground. Wesley calmly answered, “Our only way is to make the best use of it while standing;” and, accordingly, he entered it at once, and expounded the tenth chapter of Matthew. At Durham, he met John Nelson and Thomas Beard, at that time with their regiment, and took them to his inn, and said, “Brother Nelson, lose no time; speak and spare not, for God has work for you to do in every place where your lot is cast; and when you have fulfilled His good pleasure, He will burst your bonds asunder, and we shall rejoice together.”[546] At Chinley, in Derbyshire, lived a poor widow, of the name of Godhard, with a family of four small children. At her request, Wesley made Chinley a resting place, and preached. Finding the widow’s house too small, he stood upon a chair near to a miller’s dam. The miller, enraged at Wesley and his congregation daring to worship in such proximity to his premises, let off the water for the purpose of drowning Wesley’s voice. The effort was a failure; truth triumphed; Chinley became a Methodist preaching place; and, in order to provide the preachers when they called with a cup of tea, the poor widow and her children set apart the whole of every Friday night for winding bobbins, depositing the earnings, as a sacred treasure, in an old pint mug, and never touching them except to meet the necessities of Wesley’s itinerants when paying their gospel visits.[547]

Already Wesley’s lay preachers had become a considerable host. In different parts of the kingdom there were, at least, forty of these devoted evangelists.[548] Some of them, as John Brown, of Newcastle, David Taylor, John Downes, John Nelson, William Shepherd, John Slocomb, Thomas Westall, Thomas Beard, John Haime, Thomas Richards, John Bennet, and Thomas Maxfield, have been already mentioned. Besides these, there were—John Haughton, originally a weaver, who, whilst the mob, in the city of Cork, were burning Wesley in effigy, threw up the window and began to preach to the people in the street; and who, afterwards, obtained episcopal ordination and settled in the sister country;—Jonathan Reeves, who was with Wesley when he laid the first stone of the Orphan House at Newcastle, and who, after passing through a great amount of persecution, became an ordained minister of the Church of England, preached in London, and died in 1778, testifying that all his hope was in Christ Jesus;—Enoch Williams, pious, deeply devoted to his work, faithful and successful, and brought to an untimely grave in 1744;—Thomas Williams, extremely popular as a preacher; but haughty, revengeful, headstrong, and unmanageable; a great favourite among the London young ladies; but a maligner of the two Wesleys; expelled in 1744, but taken back on declaring, before many witnesses, that the slanders he had propagated against Wesley and his brother were grossly false; the man who introduced Methodism into Ireland in 1747, but who was again expelled from the Methodist society in 1755; and then, through the Countess of Huntingdon, obtained episcopal ordination, and for several years acted as a clergyman in the neighbourhood of High Wycombe;—Thomas Meyrick, a native of Cornwall, educated for the law, a poet, but expelled from the Methodist connexion in 1750, after which he became a clergyman of the Established Church, and died, we fear, a drunkard, at Halifax, in 1770;—John Trembath, one of Wesley’s most courageous preachers, though somewhat vain and stubborn; then a farmer and a fibber; and, for a long series of years, an impoverished vagabond, who died about 1794;—Alexander Coates, a poor Scotch “laddie,” fond of books, who could speak in Gaelic, read with fluency in Dutch and Danish, and had some acquaintance with Hebrew, Greek, and Latin; the honoured instrument in the conversion of Mr. Crosse, the well known Bradford vicar; one of the best of men, and a most useful preacher, who died, at Newcastle, in 1765, in perfect peace;—William Darney, another Scotchman, honest, bold, impetuous, a rhymer, and painfully eccentric, but who was used by Providence in converting Grimshaw, and who prided himself upon never “dabbing people with untempered mortar”;—Nicholas Gilbert, a man of deep piety, and of great simplicity, possessed of considerable talents, and pronounced by Wesley “an excellent preacher”;—Samuel Larwood, who in 1754 became a Dissenting minister in the borough of Southwark;—James Jones, one of the first fruits of Wesley’s ministry in Staffordshire, as bold as a lion, and who built, at his own expense, the first Methodist chapel at Tipton Green;—Joseph Jones, who left the itinerancy in 1760, became a farmer in the county of Somerset, and acted as a local preacher to the end of life;—Herbert Jenkins, who afterwards became one of Whitefield’s preachers, and laboured in the Tabernacle connexion;—John Maddern, a man of genuine piety, and a lively, zealous preacher;—Henry Millard, who, after narrowly escaping a violent death at the hands of a Cornish mob, fell a victim to an attack of small pox, in 1746;—William Prior, of whom Charles Wesley, in a manuscript letter now before us, dated 1755, writes: “William Prior is ordained, without learning, interest, or aught but Providence to recommend him”;—Robert Swindells, a man of great benevolence, who was never heard to speak an unkind word of any one, had no enemy, and died full of days, riches, and honour in 1783;—James Wheatley, of Norwich notoriety, where he was often dragged by the hair of his head through the streets of the city, built a large chapel, and became immensely popular, but who ultimately died, beneath a cloud, in Bristol;—Francis Walker, a native of Tewkesbury, pious, honest, and upright, his talents small, but his preaching lively, zealous, and useful, an instrument of great good to souls wherever he went, and who settled in the city of Gloucester, where he died in peace. And to all these must be added William Biggs, Thomas Crouch, John Hall, Thomas Hardwick, Francis Scott, David Tratham, Thomas Willes, and William Holmes.

Little more remains to be related concerning the year 1744. The Newcastle society was increasingly earnest, there hardly being a trifler left. The society at Bristol was not so perfect as it should have been, many of the members crying out, “Faith, faith! Believe, believe!” but making little account of the fruits of faith, either of holiness or good works. The London society was poor, but generous. At a single collection, in the month of February, they contributed nearly fifty pounds to relieve the destitute around them, and which Wesley at once laid out in buying clothes for those whom he knew to be diligent and yet in want. A month later, they made a second collection of about thirty pounds. A month later still, a third collection of about six-and-twenty pounds; and to these three collections were added ninety pounds more in the shape of private subscriptions; making altogether £196 raised by the poor London Methodists, and employed in providing clothing for three hundred and sixty persons.

Already some of Wesley’s people began to profess Christian perfection; but he was extremely cautious in receiving their testimony. At the end of the year, he writes:—