WESLEY returned to Oxford shortly after the coronation of George II. In some respects this was an age of giants. Bolingbroke, though a rake and an infidel, was a man of exalted powers and of splendid eloquence. Walpole, more than any other man, was the means of keeping the British crown on the heads of the house of Hanover. The Earl of Granville, by his brilliant talents, raised himself to the highest offices of state; though, thinking ignorance the best security for obedience, he opposed the education of the poor, and disliked the propagation of Christ’s religion in the colonies. Chesterfield was a gambler and a roué, but, as Johnson said, “he was also a wit among lords, and a lord among wits.”

In the Church, Atterbury, though a Jacobite, passionate, ambitious, and double dealing, was also talented, learned, and eloquent. Whiston, though extremely heterodox, was a man of great ability. Gibson, Bishop of London, was one whose piety was equal to his erudition. Hoadly, Bishop of Winchester, has, not without reason, been pronounced “the greatest dissenter that ever wore a mitre.” Sherlock was famous for his pulpit power. The head of Waterland was “an immense library, where the treasures of learning were arranged in such exact order that whatever he or his friends wanted he could produce at once.” To these might be added Butler, Secker, Warburton, and others.

Among the Dissenters we find Edmund Calamy, Isaac Watts, Nathaniel Lardner, and Philip Doddridge.

Among men of science and of letters, Edmund Halley was exploring the starry heavens; and Sir Hans Sloane was revelling among the plants and flowers of earth. Nicholas Saunderson, blind from childhood, was lecturing upon optics; Roubiliac was making marble almost breathe, and Handel composing his immortal oratorios. Tindal was pouring out his streams of erudite infidelity. Daniel De Foe was still living. Bentley was at the zenith of his literary fame. Jonathan Swift was playing the part of a clever ecclesiastical buffoon. Edward Young was pondering poetry among the tombs of his own churchyard. Pope was employing his accomplished genius, surrounded by the beauties of his lovely retreat at Twickenham. Gay was composing comedies with more ability than ambition. Richardson, afterwards the novelist, was writing “indexes, prefaces, and honest dedications.” Savage was penning beautiful ideas amid tavern riots and cellar filth. Thomson, so lazy as to be a fit occupant for his own “Castle of Indolence,” was suffering his eye to roll in a fine frenzy among the beauties of the “Seasons;” and Samuel Johnson was preparing himself to be the Jupiter of letters, and to rule the literary world.

Greatness unfortunately does not always give birth to goodness. “Never,” says a modern writer,[68] “has century risen on Christian England so void of soul and faith as that which opened with Queen Anne, and which reached its misty noon beneath the second George—a dewless night succeeded by a sunless dawn. There was no freshness in the past, and no promise in the future. The Puritans were buried, and the Methodists were not born. The philosopher of the age was Bolingbroke, the moralist was Addison, the minstrel was Pope, and the preacher was Atterbury. The world had the idle, discontented look of the morning after some mad holiday, and, like rocket-sticks and the singed paper from last night’s squibs, the spent jokes of Charles and Rochester lay all about, and people yawned to look at them. The reign of buffoonery was past, but the reign of faith and earnestness had not commenced.”

Let it not be said that this is modern imagination. Bishops are, or ought to be, sober minded men, and to one of these we refer the reader for a testimony concerning the moral and religious state of England during the period of which we are now writing. The Bishop of Lichfield, in 1724, in a sermon before the Society for the Reformation of Manners, said:—

“The Lord’s day is now the devil’s market day. More lewdness, more drunkenness, more quarrels and murders, more sin is contrived and committed on this day than on all the other days of the week together. Strong liquors are become the epidemic distemper of this great city. More of the common people die of consumptions, fevers, dropsies, cholics, palsies, and apoplexies, contracted by the immoderate use of brandies and distilled waters, than of all other distempers besides, arising from other causes. Sin, in general, is grown so hardened and rampant, as that immoralities are defended, yea, justified on principle. Obscene, wanton, and profane books find so good a market as to encourage the trade of publishing them. Every kind of sin has found a writer to teach and vindicate it, and a bookseller and hawker to divulge and spread it.”

These were not rash and random statements. From the report of the society before which the bishop preached, it appears that in that very year, 1724, the society had prosecuted not fewer than 2723 persons for lewd, profane, drunken, and gambling practices; and that during the last thirty-three years the number of their prosecutions had been 89,393.

From the literature of the period, we learn that gin-drinking in the great towns of England had become a mania; the sellers of this pernicious spirit announcing on their signboards that they would make a man drunk for a penny, and find him straw on which to lie till he recovered the use of his lost faculties. In 1736 every sixth house in London was a licensed grogshop, and parliament, to check the evil, enacted that all intoxicating spirits should pay a duty of £1 per gallon, and every victualler £50 per annum for his licence.

In the higher classes of society, the taint left by Charles II and his licentious court still festered. Among the lower classes, laziness and dishonesty were next to universal. Superstition flourished almost as vigorously as it had done in the middle ages, and nearly every old mansion in England was haunted by a ghost, and almost every parish tormented by a witch. In the metropolis, Ranelagh and Vauxhall were the resorts of thousands, of the upper strata of society; and puppetshows, hops, balls, prize-fights, merry meetings, cockfights, and badger-baitings furnished entertainment for the masses. In the rural districts, rustic squires found their greatest enjoyment in hunting foxes, and in gorging venison, and guzzling sack; while the peasantry relieved the monotony of their daily toils at wakes and fairs, and in wrestling, cudgel playing, and foot racing.

Extravagance was the order of the day. Scarcely one family in ten kept within its income. The grand controversy then, as now, was, who should out-dress, out-drink, or out-eat his neighbour. Citizens and young tradesmen, whose ancestors would have fainted at the sight of drawing-rooms, were the chief visitors at plays and masquerades; and even shopkeepers were seen wearing long wigs and swords, velvet breeches and hunting caps. Families, who were oftentimes resolved into committees on ways and means to pay a butcher’s bill, paraded themselves in attire the most pompous, and adorned with the richest brocades and jewels. London swarmed with ruined rakes and broken traders, who contrived to live in the best society by reciting scraps of poetry, singing licentious songs, and retailing drunken puns and quibbles. In fact, all ranks and classes seemed to be corrupted to the core. “A sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil doers; children that are corrupters; the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint; from the sole of the foot even unto the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds, bruises, and putrifying sores.”

What was done to improve this state of things? From a report of the charity schools, we learn that, in 1715, there were, throughout the kingdom, 1193 schools for the education of the children of the poor, containing 26,920 scholars. In other words, and to say nothing of other churches, there are at present in the Wesleyan-Methodist day-schools of England four times more scholars than there were in all the schools for primary education throughout the kingdom in 1715.

Turning from schools to churches, there is no amelioration of the dark picture. The Church, which ought to have reformed the nation, needed to be reformed itself. The Dissenters complained of their ministers conforming to the Establishment, but comforted themselves with thinking that the apostates were mainly young fops and dandies. The three Dissenting denominations, Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, considered themselves the great barriers to the doctrine of passive obedience to the crown, and of submission to the priestly encroachments of the Church. They maintained that they had greatly contributed to the interests of the Protestant succession, and had promoted a better observance of the sabbath, and the more frequent preaching of the high church clergy; but still they lamented that numbers of their ministers were immoral, negligent, and insufficient; that they devoted too much time to the fashionable study of the classics, and read their sermons instead of preaching them. They also complained of their children being sent to high church schools, and of the artful caballing of their congregations in appointing ministers to vacant pastorates. (See “Observations upon the Present State of the Dissenting Interest.” London: 1731.)

The clergy of the Established Church! What of them? Bishop Burnet, in 1713, wrote: “Our ember weeks are the burden and grief of my life. The much greater part of those who come to be ordained are ignorant to a degree not to be apprehended by those who are not obliged to know it. The easiest part of knowledge is that to which they are the greatest strangers; I mean the plainest parts of the Scriptures. They can give no account, or at least a very imperfect one, of the contents even of the gospels, or of the catechism itself.”

This is a doleful picture, but there was more than this. The dissensions in the Church of England then were quite as violent as dissensions now. The high church clergy were moral, and many of them talented and learned, but they were as intolerant as intolerance could make them. Of course, they held that none were ministers of Christ except those who had been episcopally ordained; and hence they held that all sacraments administered by Dissenters were invalid, and all Dissenting churches in a state of sin and damnation. They boldly preached the doctrine of a proper sacrifice being made in the Christian eucharist, and most furiously contended for the Divine right of kings, and the kindred dogma of passive obedience. Many of them, in heart at least, were Jacobites, and, while promising allegiance, regarded King George as a usurper, and branded those of their brethren who differed from them with opprobrium. Endless were the pamphlets published, and fierce were the feuds of those who ought to have dwelt together in unity. The foulest sins were made sinless by intemperate zeal for the Pretender, and the fairest virtues were besmeared in those who showed a friendly feeling for Dissenters. A man might be drunken and quarrelsome all the week, but if on Sunday he bowed to the altar and cursed King William he was esteemed a saint. He might cheat everybody, and pay nobody, but if he drank health to the royal orphan, hated King George, and abhorred the Whigs, his want of probity was a peccadillo scarce worth noticing. On the other hand, a man might be learned, diligent, devout, and useful, but if he opposed the Pretender and Popery, or if he thought the Dissenters should not be damned, he was at once set down as heterodox, and, according to his importance, became a target for the poisoned shafts of high church malice.

Such, in brief, was the state of things when God raised up the Methodists. The court of England was corrupt to its very core, and the people were too faithful imitators of a bad example. Popery was intriguing, Dissenters were declining, and the Church was full of fiery and drunken feuds. Reformers, like the Methodists, were needed. Without them, or others of a kindred spirit, the nation must have sunk into an inconceivable depth of depravity, and social and political degradation. In estimating the benefits which have accrued from the great Methodist movement, the reader must think not only of the good effected but of the ill averted.

Methodism arose in Oxford, and not before it was needed, even there. When Wesley returned to the university in 1729, the vice-chancellor, the heads of houses and proctors, issued an edict, which was posted in most of the college halls, to the effect that certain members of the university had of late been in danger of being corrupted by the wicked and blasphemous notions of the advocates of pretended human reason against Divine revelation; and that therefore it was a matter of the utmost consequence that the college tutors should use double diligence in explaining to their respective pupils the articles of religion and their Christian duty, and in recommending to them the frequent and careful reading of the Scriptures, and such other books as might serve more effectually the orthodox faith and sound principles.

The Dean of Christ Church, however, where Charles Wesley was a tutor, was so much a friend to infidelity, that he forbade the posting of this edict in his college hall, forgetting that there was One higher than himself, who, in that very college, had already begun to raise one of the strongest barriers against the spread of this pernicious evil.

A few months afterwards, on the 4th of July, 1730, it was announced in Fogg’s Weekly Journal, that one of the principal colleges in Oxford had of late been infested with Deists, and that three Deistical students had been expelled, and a fourth had had his degree deferred two years, during which he was to be closely confined in college, and, among other things, was to translate Leslie’s “Short and Easy Method with the Deists.”

Wesley was now a tutor in Lincoln College, and presided in the hall as Moderator in the disputations, six of which were held weekly; and, by this, he acquired the remarkable expertness in arguing, and in discerning and pointing out well concealed and plausible fallacies, which distinguished him to the end of life. He writes: “In November, 1729, the then Rector of Lincoln College, Dr. Morley, sent for me to Oxford, to take pupils, eleven of whom he put under my care immediately. In this employ I continued[69] till 1735, when I went as a missioner to Georgia.” Several of Wesley’s pupils were among the first Oxford Methodists.

The Methodist movement, however, was begun not by Wesley, but by his brother Charles. When the latter was elected to Christ Church, in 1726, he was a sprightly, rollicking young fellow, with more genius than grace; John spoke to him about religion, but Charles answered, “What, would you have me to be a saint all at once!” This was an unfavourable beginning; but, while John was serving as his father’s curate at Epworth and at Wroote, Charles began to attend the weekly sacrament, and induced two or three other students to attend with him. On John’s return from Lincolnshire, he heartily united with his brother and his friends. The regularity of their behaviour led a young collegian to call them Methodists; and “as the name,” says Wesley, “was new and quaint, it clave to them immediately, and, from that time, all that had any connection with them were thus distinguished.”[70]

The name was not new. Wesley says “it was given in allusion to an ancient sect of physicians, of the time of the Emperor Nero, who taught that almost all diseases might be cured by a specific method of diet and exercise.”[71] This might be so, and yet it is a curious fact that the name was in use in England long before it was applied to Wesley and his friends. In 1693 a pamphlet was published with the title, “A War among the Angels of the Churches: wherein is shewed the Principles of the New Methodists in the great point of Justification. By a Country Professor of Jesus Christ.” And even as early as 1639, in a sermon preached at Lambeth the following perfumed eloquence occurs:—“Where are now our Anabaptists, and plain pack-staff Methodists, who esteem all flowers of rhetoric in sermons no better than stinking weeds, and all elegance of speech no better than profane spells?”

The two young gentlemen who, with Wesley and his brother Charles, were first called Methodists, were Robert Kirkham, already mentioned on a previous page, and William Morgan.[72] To these were subsequently added, George Whitefield, John Clayton, J. Broughton, Benjamin Ingham, James Hervey, John Whitelamb, Westley Hall, John Gambold, Charles Kinchin, William Smith, and Messrs. Salmon, Wogan, Boyce, Atkinson, and others.[73]

What shall we say of these Oxford Methodists?

William Morgan’s career was brief and painful; he was the first Methodist who passed the pearly gates of the celestial city. Charles Kinchin, a lovely character, soon followed him. Charles Wesley, in his incomparable hymns, left behind him one of the noblest legacies that an uninspired man ever bequeathed to the Christian church. George Whitefield was the prince of preachers—a glorious emblem of the apocalyptic angel flying through the midst of heaven with the good tidings of great joy unto all people. And James Hervey will be loved and honoured as long as there are men to appreciate the highest order of Christian piety and the most mellifluent compositions in the English language.

The history of the Oxford Methodists is not, however, an unspotted one. Clayton’s high churchism was not an excellency to be admired. Broughton’s usefulness was crippled and cut short by his imperfect, stunted, stereotyped views of Christian truth. Westley Hall, though we hope he died a penitent, was, throughout the greatest part of his vicious life, an unmitigated scamp. John Whitelamb sunk down into an ecclesiastical village drone. Gambold, though good, was visionary, and throughout life was injured by his Moravian maggots. And Ingham, for many years one of the most successful of evangelists, through the ill judged connections that he formed, died beneath a cloud. But, with all these drawbacks, the reader is challenged to produce a band of godly friends, whose lives and labours have, upon the whole, issued in such an amount of blessing to mankind as that which has resulted from the lives and labours of the students who, in 1735, were known as “Oxford Methodists.” They were widely scattered; their views were different; they were often brought into painful collision with each other; but, with the one or two exceptions mentioned, they were all sincere, earnest, laborious, successful ministers of Christ; and five or six of them must for ever occupy a high position in the history of the Christian church. Clayton shunned the Wesleys; Broughton opposed them; Ingham left them; Hervey, though with Christian courtesy, wrote against them; Gambold, at one period, hesitated not to say that he was ashamed of them; and even Whitefield, for a little while, was alienated from them; but we earnestly hope and have little doubt that they have all long been re-united in that blessed world where friends are free from misconceptions, and where the din of controversial strife does not exist—a world where all churches are merged into one grand Church, the members of which make one vast, happy, and harmonious family, and sing in the same ceaseless tune the same great song for ever—the song of Moses and of the Lamb.

Of the Methodists, three were tutors in colleges; and the rest were bachelors of arts, or undergraduates. All were of one judgment and of one heart; and all tenacious of order to the last degree, and observant, for conscience sake, of every rule of the Church, and every statute both of the university and of their respective colleges. They all thought themselves orthodox in every point, firmly believing, not only the three creeds, but whatsoever they judged to be the doctrine of the Church of England, as contained in her articles and homilies. Practically, they had all things common; and no one was allowed to want what another had the ability to spare.[74] Wesley was nicknamed “the Curator of the Holy Club,” and not a few branded him a “crack-brained enthusiast”; and yet others acknowledged that though his views and doctrines were peculiar his piety was unimpeachable; and Mr. Gerard, the bishop’s chaplain, dared to express an opinion to George Lascelles, one of his revilers, that he “would one day be a standard-bearer of the Cross, either in his own country or beyond the seas.”[75] Charles Wesley paid the utmost deference to his brother, and all the Methodists acknowledged his fitness to be their chief director. This was not surprising, for, confessedly, he had more learning and experience than the others; and was blessed with such activity and steadiness that he was always gaining ground, and losing none. Every affair was well considered before he propounded it, and all his decisions were made in the fear of God, without passion, or self-confidence. His countenance also wore an air of authority; and yet there was no assumption of super-eminence; but all were allowed to speak their minds with the utmost freedom, and no one was a more respectful listener than himself. Hence it was, that, whatever proposals he submitted, they were readily adopted, and the brotherhood was as perfect as unity of sentiment and feeling could make it.

Every night they met together,[76] to review what each had done during the day, and to consult what should be done the day following; their meetings always commencing with prayer, and ending with a frugal supper. Their plans of action were various. Some conversed with young students, and endeavoured to rescue them from evil company, and to encourage them in a sober and studious life. Others undertook the instruction and relief of impoverished families; others the charge of some particular school, and others of the parish workhouse. Some or other of them went daily to the Castle, and to the city prison, reading in the chapel, to as many of the prisoners as would attend, books like the “Christian Monitor” and the “Country Parson’s Advice to his Parishioners,” and then summing up the reading in a few sentences easy to be remembered. On the introduction of a new prisoner, they would subject him to the most searching examination as to whether he bore malice towards his prosecutors or others, and whether he repented of his sins, and used private prayer, and received the sacrament. Out of their own scanty means, and by quarterly contributions from others, they raised a fund to purchase books, medicines, and other necessaries for the prisoners, and to release those who were confined for debts of small amount. They read prayers at the Castle on most Wednesdays and Fridays, preached a sermon to the prisoners every Sunday, and administered the sacrament once a month. One of the schools which they visited was a school which Wesley himself had founded, the mistress of which he paid, and some, if not all, of the children of which he clothed.

In all this the world saw nought but oddity and folly, and called these hardworking and godly students “Bible bigots,” and “Bible moths;” but, in the midst of all, Wesley calmly pursued the path which he had marked out for himself and his friends. Gambold, in a letter written whilst Wesley was in Georgia, tells us that Wesley at Oxford was always cheerful but never arrogant. By strict watchfulness, he beat down the impetuosity of his nature into a childlike simplicity. His piety was nourished by continual communion with God, for he thought prayer to be his greatest duty; and often did Gambold see him come out of his closet of devotion with a serenity of countenance that was next to shining. The secret consolations of God seldom left him, and never but in a posture of strong and longsuffering faith. In him there were no idle cravings, no chagrin or sickliness of spirit. Slanders never ruffled him, and his chief fear was lest he should grow proud of this conformity to his great Master. Coming home from long journeys, where he had been in different companies, he would calmly resume his usual employments, as if he had never left them. Himself setting an example, he urged upon his associates method, diligence, and early rising. His hours for private devotion were from five to six o’clock every morning and every night. Every day he noted in a diary what had been his chief employments; and one day every week he set apart for writing letters to his friends.[77]

His charity to the poor was limited only by the means at his command. One cold winter’s day, he tells us, a young girl, whom the Methodists kept at school, called upon him in a state nearly frozen, to whom he said, “You seem half-starved; have you nothing to wear but that linen gown?” The poor girl said, “Sir, this is all I have.” Wesley put his hand in his pocket, but found it nearly empty. The walls of his chamber however were hung with pictures, and these now became his accusers. “It struck me,” says he, “will thy Master say, ‘Well done, good and faithful steward’? thou hast adorned thy walls with the money which might have screened this poor creature from the cold! O Justice! O Mercy! Are not these pictures the blood of this poor maid?”[78] To say the least, this story shows the intense conscientiousness of the man, and his dread of spending anything upon himself which might have been spent more properly upon the poor. He says it was the practice of all the Oxford Methodists to give away each year all they had after providing for their own necessities; and then, as an illustration, he adds, in reference to himself, “One of them had thirty pounds a year. He lived on twenty-eight, and gave away forty shillings. The next year receiving sixty pounds, he still lived on twenty-eight, and gave away thirty-two. The third year he received ninety pounds, and gave away sixty-two. The fourth year he received a hundred and twenty pounds; still he lived as before on twenty-eight, and gave to the poor all the rest.”[79]

Wesley at Oxford was as conscientious in the use of time as he was in the use of money. Finding that he awoke every night about twelve or one o’clock, he concluded that this arose from his lying longer in bed than nature needed; and, to satisfy himself, he procured an alarum which aroused him next morning at seven, an hour earlier than he rose the day previous; but still he lay awake again at night. The second morning his alarum roused him up at six; and the third at five; but notwithstanding this he still lay awake when he ought to have been fast asleep. The fourth morning, by means of his alarum, he got up at four, and now wakefulness was unknown to him. Sixty years after adopting this expedient to ascertain how much sleep his nature needed, he wrote, “By the grace of God, I have risen at four o’clock ever since; and, taking the year round, I don’t lie awake a quarter of an hour together in a month.”[80]

The Bible now, as ever afterwards, was Wesley’s book of books. He writes: “In 1729, I began not only to read, but to study, the Bible, as the one, the only standard of truth, and the only model of pure religion. Hence, I saw, in a clearer and clearer light, the indispensable necessity of having ‘the mind which was in Christ,’ and of ‘walking as Christ also walked.’ I considered religion as an entire inward and outward conformity to our Master. Nor was I afraid of anything more than of bending this rule to the experience of myself, or of other men; or of allowing myself in any the least disconformity to our grand Exemplar.”[81]

Such was Wesley in 1729. What about his friends? To some extent, their principles and practice may be learnt from the scheme of self-examination they adopted. They tried to act upon the principle of doing nothing without a previous perception that it was the will of God. Every morning and every evening they spent an hour in private prayer. They always prayed in going in and out of church. Three days every week, though separate from each other, they, at the same hour, prayed in concert. In secret devotion they frequently stopped short to observe if they were using proper fervour, and, before concluding in the name of Christ, they adverted to the Saviour now interceding on their behalf at the right hand of God, and offering up their prayers. They habituated themselves to the use of ejaculations for humility, faith, hope, and love; used a collect every day at nine, twelve, and three o’clock; and each one said aloud, in his own room, a grace before and after eating. They embraced every possible opportunity of doing good, and of preventing, removing, or lessening evil. They tried to spend an hour every day in speaking to men directly on religious things, never relinquishing the objects of their attention till they were positively repelled, and always, before addressing them, trying to learn, as far as possible, their tempers, way of life, and peculiar hindrances. In order to converse usefully, they planned every conversation before they went into company; and considered what subject would be most useful, and how to prosecute it.[82] They persuaded all they could to attend public prayers, sermons, and sacraments; and, in general, to obey the laws of the church catholic, the Church of England, the state, the university, and their respective colleges. They refrained from thinking or speaking unkindly of any one; and used intercession for their friends on Sundays, for their pupils on Mondays, for those who particularly desired it on Wednesdays and Fridays, and for the family with whom they lodged every day.[83] They also communicated at Christ Church once a week.[84]

They had one, and only one, rule of judgment, with regard to all their tempers, words, and actions—namely, the oracles of God, and were one and all determined to be Bible Christians. The book which, next to the holy Scripture, was of the greatest use to them, in settling their judgment as to the grand point of justification by faith, was the Book of Homilies.[85]

They were tenacious, not only of all the doctrines of the Church of England, but of all her discipline, to the minutest points, and were scrupulously strict in observing the rubrics and canons. In short, “they were,” says Wesley, “in the strongest sense, high churchmen.”[86]

Many of their proceedings were ecclesiastically irregular, though religiously right; and Wesley, fearful of doing evil even while doing good, wrote to his brother Samuel and to his father for advice. Samuel replied that, though there might be some things concerning which he was dubious, yet he would choose to follow his two brothers to the grave rather than they should abandon their course of piety, and especially that relating to the prisoners in the Castle.[87] The venerable rector, in his reply, said, “As to your designs and employments, what can I say less than Valde probo; and that I have the highest reason to bless God that He has given me two sons together at Oxford, to whom He has granted grace and courage to turn the war against the world and the devil?” At the same time, however, he advised them to obtain consent to visit the prisoners from the chaplain, who had charge of them, and likewise to seek the approbation of their bishop. This advice was adopted; the chaplain commended their design; and the bishop expressed himself as highly pleased with their undertaking.[88]

At the commencement of the year 1730, Wesley had the offer of a curacy, eight miles from Oxford, for three or for six months, at the rate of £30 a year; and this he readily accepted, not only because it opened to him a field of usefulness, but also because it enabled him to retain his horse, when he began to feel that he must sell it; for if he had not a horse of his own he must hire one to ride to his cure on Sundays, and the hire would be quite as expensive as the keep.[89]

It was in the same year that he begun his remarkable correspondence with Mary Granville, afterwards the celebrated wife and widow of the Very Rev. Dr. Delany, Dean of Down, in Ireland. Mary Granville, while living in Gloucestershire, became acquainted with Sarah, daughter of the Rev. Lionel Kirkham, of Staunton; and, ever after, the two ladies were the most devoted friends.[90] We have already seen that Wesley was a visitor of the Kirkhams; and that, in 1726, a warm-hearted intimacy existed between him and one of the young ladies of that family, whose pet name, among her friends, was “Varanese.” It is almost certain that it was here Wesley was first introduced to the remarkable woman above-mentioned. Their correspondence with each other was conducted in feigned names, Wesley calling himself “Cyrus,” and Mary Granville calling herself “Aspasia,” that being the name by which she was often designated by her most intimate acquaintance.[91] The first letter from “Aspasia” is dated “August 28th, 1730.” She writes:—

The companion referred to was probably Mary Granville’s mother (with whom also Wesley corresponded),[93] or her beloved friend, Sarah Kirkham. Araspes was most likely a feigned name for Wesley’s brother Charles. On the fly-leaf of the letter there is a postscript, in the handwriting of Mary Granville’s sister, whose pet name was Selina, telling Wesley that Aspasia was about to visit Bath, and that, if he designed to wait upon her, he had best write to her to ascertain her movements. He is further told that “Varanese” (see Robert Kirkham’s letter, p. 50) had sent him a letter by the carrier about a fortnight ago, and wished to know whether it had come safe to hand.

Mary Granville, at this period, was the widow of Alexander Pendarves, Esq., and was three years older than Wesley. As a member of the Lansdowne family, she had moved in the most fashionable circles of London society, and was now a frequent attendant at ridottos, masquerades, operas, and other amusements: but, in the midst of all, she maintained an unblemished character; evinced talents and virtues of an exceedingly high order; was received at court during each successive reign; and, to the day of her death, was honoured with the notice and confidence of George III. and his Queen Charlotte. Are we justified in inferring, from the language employed in the postscript of the above letter, that Wesley was thinking of making Mary Granville (or rather Mrs. Pendarves) his wife? Or that there was some intrigue among his friends, to bring about an interview at Bath, and to initiate a correspondence which might ripen into something more than an ordinary intimacy between friends? A correspondence was now begun which lasted for four years, from August 1730 to July 1734. Mrs. Pendarves, however, remained in widowhood until 1743, when she married Dr. Delany. A few extracts, from some of Wesley’s letters to this distinguished lady, may cast some light upon the questions we have ventured to suggest, and will also help to illustrate his character at this important period of his history.

Aspasia made an inquiry of Wesley, couched in the following terms:—

Wesley replied:—

Mary Granville spent the summer of 1731 principally in London, and, to a great extent, in the family of Richard Colley, Esq., who, three years before, had succeeded to the estates of his cousin Garrett Wesley, Esq., of the county of Meath, and had assumed the name and arms of Wesley, and who, in 1746, was created Baron of Mornington. One day would be spent in boating upon the Thames, the Duchess of Ancaster affording them high amusement by singing, or rather catterwauling, a piece out of the “Beggars’ Opera”; the next day in witnessing the working of her friend Wesley’s orrery, and in representing Lady Shelburn at the baptism of a baby; another day in a jaunt to Greenwich. Then we find her attending court; and then sitting by the side of Hogarth, while painting a picture of the Wesley family, and obtaining a promise that he would give her instructions in drawing. In the midst of all this fashionable, fluttering kind of life, John Wesley, at Oxford, was writing her frequent letters.

Under the date of June 19, he says:—

A month later, he writes:—

By return of post, on July 21, Aspasia answers:—

Three days later, on July 24, Wesley writes:—

Aspasia, in other words Mrs. Delany, spent the winter of 1731 in Ireland. On the 11th of March, 1732, writing to her sister from Dublin, she says:—