According to his custom, Wesley spent the first two months of 1775 in London, and in short preaching excursions to Northamptonshire and other places.

The nation, at this period, was in a state of the highest excitement. On February 9, the two houses of parliament presented an address to King George III., stating that the British colonists in America had risen in rebellion, and begging his majesty to “take the most effectual measures to enforce obedience to the laws and authority of the supreme legislature.” His majesty’s reply was affirmative; and parliament was requested to increase both the naval and military forces.

Wesley was not the man to be silent in great emergencies. He writes: “Sunday, January 29—Finding many were dejected by the threatening posture of public affairs, I strongly enforced our Lord’s words, ‘Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?’” Three weeks later, he preached at the Foundery, what the Westminster Journal described as, “an awful sermon, on the horrid effects of a civil war”; observing “that, of all scourges from God, war was the most to be deprecated, because it often swept away all traces of religion, and even of humanity.” The text was Daniel iv. 27: “Let my counsel be acceptable to thee, and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by shewing mercy to the poor; if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquillity.”

Both England and America were terribly excited; but space prevents our entering into details. Suffice it to say, that the alleged grievance of the American colonists was their being taxed, without their consent, by the English parliament. Dr. Johnson was known to be a great hater as well as a great genius. “Sir,” said he, concerning the miscellaneous and mongrel colonists across the Atlantic, “Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.” No wonder that the English government, already at their wits’ end, applied to Johnson to assist them with his powerful pen. He did so, by the publication, in 1775, of his famous pamphlet, entitled, “Taxation no Tyranny; an Answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American Congress.”⁠[221] No sooner was it issued, than, with or without leave, Wesley abridged it, and, without the least reference to its origin, published it as his own, in a quarto sheet of four pages, with the title, “A Calm Address to our American Colonies. By the Rev. Mr. John Wesley, M.A. Price one penny.”

This was an injudicious and unwarrantable act, except on the supposition that there was some secret understanding between him and Johnson; and even then the thing had too much the aspect of plagiarism to be wise. Johnson greatly reverenced Patty Hall, Wesley’s unfortunate sister, and always treated her as one of his confidential friends. For Wesley himself he also entertained great respect, and was only vexed that he was not able to secure more of his company. “John Wesley’s conversation,” said he, “is good, but he is never at leisure. He is always obliged to go at a certain hour. This is very disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and have out his talk, as I do.”⁠[222] There was unquestionably a friendship between the two; and it is possible that Wesley had Johnson’s consent to his publication of the abridgment of Johnson’s pamphlet. In a letter to Wesley, dated February 6, 1776, Johnson wrote: “I have thanks to return for the addition of your important suffrage to my argument on the American question. To have gained such a mind as yours may justly confirm me in my own opinion. What effect my paper has had upon the public I know not; but I have no reason to be discouraged. The lecturer was surely in the right who, though he saw his audience slinking away, refused to quit the chair while Plato stayed.”⁠[223] This certainly gives some countenance to the supposition we have ventured to suggest. Still, there can be no doubt that Wesley fairly exposed himself to acrimonious attack by publishing the brochure as his own.

Wesley was now one of the most conspicuous men in England; and, perhaps, no ecclesiastical personage of the realm swayed a wider influence over the masses, on questions involving religious interests. Hence, the publication of his “Calm Address” produced an unparalleled sensation; and this was the greater, because it was known that, up to this period, Wesley had sympathised with the colonists rather than otherwise. Indeed, he had declared five years before, in his “Free Thoughts on Public Affairs”: “I do not defend the measures which have been taken with regard to America; I doubt whether any man can defend them, either on the foot of law, equity, or prudence.” Of course, Wesley had a perfect right to change his opinions, which he says he did on reading Johnson’s “Taxation no Tyranny”; but when a public man like Wesley does that, he can hardly escape criticism of an unfriendly nature. The world dislikes changelings, and hesitates to trust them. Wesley, in the teeth of former sentiments, now made Johnson’s sentiments his own, contending not only that the English parliament had power to tax the American colonies, but also that it was a reasonable thing for the colonists to reimburse the mother country for some part of the large expense that had been incurred in defending the colonial rights, and that the whole of the present agitation was promoted by a few men in England, who were determined enemies to monarchy, and who wished to establish a republican form of government, which, of all others, was the most despotic. The result was, Wesley was at once pounced upon as a plagiarist and a renegade of the worst description. Countless pamphlets were published, only a few of which can be noticed here.

One of his principal antagonists was the Rev. Caleb Evans, then a baptist minister at Broadmead, Bristol, and in the thirty-seventh year of his age,—a man of good sense, a diligent student, a faithful pastor, and extensively useful; but a rampant advocate of what was called liberty, and, therefore, a well wisher to the republican rebellion across the Atlantic.

Evans’s first publication was “A Letter to the Rev. Mr. John Wesley, occasioned by his ‘Calm Address’”: 12mo, 24 pages. He taunts Wesley with having so suddenly changed his opinions; with having, at the late election, advised the Bristol Methodists to vote for the “American candidate”; and with having, at no remote period, recommended a book entitled, “An Argument in Defence of the exclusive right claimed by the Colonies to tax themselves.”

Wesley’s reply to this was the republication of his “Calm Address,” with a preface prefixed, in which he acknowledges that the “Address” was an extract “of the chief arguments from ‘Taxation no Tyranny,’” with “an application” of his own “to those whom it most concerned.” In a page and a half he answers Evans’s objections, and says that all “the arguments in his tract may be contained in a nutshell.”

Another attack on Wesley, which, before the year was out, reached a second edition, was “A Cool Reply to a Calm Address, lately published by Mr. John Wesley. By T. S.” 12mo, 33 pages. What this production lacked in argument it made up in scurrilous innuendo. Wesley is told that his “religious principles are a species of popery,” and that he is in quest of “a mitre”; though he “ought to sit in sackcloth and pour dust upon his head.”

Evans also, before the expiration of 1775, issued a new edition of his letter, 12mo, 32 pages, in the preface to which he waxes angry, in exposing what he calls “the shameful versatility and disingenuity of this artful man;” and does his utmost to fasten upon Wesley a deliberate falsehood, because Wesley had denied that he had ever seen the book which Evans had accused him of recommending, though both William Pine, his own printer, and the Rev. James Roquet, his friend, were both prepared to attest on oath that he had recommended the book to them.

Here then was a direct personal issue between them. Thomas Olivers, in his “Full Defence of the Rev. John Wesley,” 12mo, 24 pages, published in 1776, gives the explanation. Wesley’s denial was not owing to untruthfulness, but forgetfulness. “Mr. Wesley,” says Olivers, “is now an old man, and yet has such a variety and multiplicity of business as few men could manage, even in the prime of life. There are few weeks in which he does not travel two or three hundred miles; preach and exhort in public between twenty and thirty times, and often more; answer thirty or forty letters; speak with as many persons in private, concerning things of deep importance; and prepare, either in whole or in part, something for the press. Add to all this, that often, in that short space of time, a variety of tracts on different subjects pass through his hands, particularly as he travels, and that if any tract does not immediately relate to his office as a divine, though he may give it a cursory reading, yet he does not think it necessary to charge his memory with its contents: I say, when all these things are considered, no one will think it strange that his memory should often fail.”

This was a reasonable explanation of an awkward discrepancy; but Wesley, who was incapable of falsehood, hardly needed the defence of his ingenious friend Olivers. He had already written the following to Mr. Roquet himself.

Besides the pamphlets already mentioned, there were published, in 1775: “A Second Answer to Mr. John Wesley. By W. D.” 12mo, 22 pages. Also, “A Wolf in Sheep’s Cloathing; or an Old Jesuit Unmasked. Containing an account of the wonderful apparition of Father Petre’s Ghost, in the form of the Rev. John Wesley. By Patrick Bull, Esq.” 12mo, 24 pages: a vile production in which Wesley is branded as “a chaplain in ordinary to the Furies, or minister extraordinary to Bellona, goddess of war;” and is said to have “solicited to be made bishop of Quebec;” but who, for “the jacobitical doctrines contained in his ‘Calm Address,’ deserves to be presented, not with lawn sleeves, but with a hempen neckcloth; and, instead of a mitre, ought to have his head adorned with a white nightcap drawn over his eyes.”

Toplady was not likely to allow such an opportunity to pass without embracing it to vent his venom. Hence the publication of his 12mo tract of 24 pages, entitled, “An Old Fox Tarr’d and Feather’d”; with a fox’s head, in canonicals, for a frontispiece. The opening sentence is characteristic of the whole effusion. “Whereunto shall I liken Mr. John Wesley? and with what shall I compare him? I will liken him unto a low and puny tadpole in divinity, which proudly seeks to disembowel a high and mighty whale in politics.” He then proceeds to say, that, “both as to matter and expression Wesley’s ‘Calm Address’ is a bundle of Lilliputian shafts, picked and stolen out of Dr. Johnson’s pincushion. If Mr. Wesley had the least spark of shame remaining, the simple detection of such enormous literary theft would be more terrible to his feelings than an English pumping or an American tarring and feathering.”

Another pamphlet, issued in the same year, was “A Constitutional Answer to the Rev. Mr. John Wesley’s ‘Calm Address to the American Colonies’”: 12mo, 23 pages. The last sentence is as follows: “As I have formerly seen you, with pleasure, in the character of a Christian minister, doing some good in the moral world; so it is with regret I now see you in the character of a court sycophant, doing much more mischief in the political world; injuring, perhaps irreparably injuring, your country.”

“Americus,” also, in the Gentleman’s Magazine,⁠[225] had his fling against the poor Methodist. One sentence from his polished quiver must suffice, as a specimen of others: “And now, Mr. Wesley, I take my leave of you. You have forgot the precept of your Master, that God and mammon cannot be served together. You have one eye upon a pension, and the other upon heaven,—one hand stretched out to the king, and the other raised up to God. I pray that the first may reward you, and the last forgive you!”

These extracts might be multiplied almost ad infinitum. We only add, that Fletcher, as well as Olivers, came to the defence of Wesley. The former published his “Vindication of the Rev. Mr. Wesley’s ‘Calm Address’: in some Letters to Mr. Caleb Evans.” 12mo, 70 pages. This evoked from Evans an unworthy acrimonious “Reply,” 12mo, 103 pages, in which the angry baptist not only rakes up the whole story respecting Wesley, Roquet, and Pine, but finishes by telling the loving and accomplished Fletcher, that he is “the most verbose, and most unmeaning and unfair disputant, that ever took up the polemical gauntlet.”

Hampson and Whitehead censure Wesley for turning a politician. This is a point upon which opinions will differ. Certain it is, however, that the political part which Wesley took made him as many enemies as his caveat against Calvinism had done. Within three weeks, forty thousand copies of his “Calm Address” were printed and put into circulation; and excited so much anger among the English friends of the revolted colonists, that they would willingly have burnt both him and his Address together. To accuse him of mercenary motives was an unfounded, base, malignant fabrication. It is true, that the government were so pleased with his little tract that copies were ordered to be distributed at the doors of all the metropolitan churches; and it is said that one of the highest officers of state waited upon him, asking whether government could in any way be of service to either himself or his people. Wesley replied that he “looked for no favours, and only desired the continuance of civil and religious privileges.” The nobleman pressed the question, but again received the same answer. In retiring, he observed: “In all probability, sir, you have some charities which are dear to you; by accepting £50 from the privy purse, to appropriate as you may deem proper, you will give great pleasure to those for whom I act.” This was accepted; but “Mr. Wesley,” says Dr. Clarke, who related the story, “expressed himself to me as sorry that he had not requested to be made a royal missionary, and to have the privilege of preaching in every church.⁠[226]”

This might be true; but, in conclusion, we must add to it Wesley’s own account, as published at the time, in Lloyd’s Evening Post.

Thus things proceeded. England was flooded with political pamphlets; the houses of parliament echoed with the sonorous periods of senatorial oratory; and the hill sides and river banks of America rang with sharp and dissonant peals of musketry. Blood had been shed at Lexington; and, at the bungling battle at Bunker Hill, the English had lost 1050 men, in killed and wounded. In the month of November, Wesley says: “I was desired to preach, in Bethnal Green church, a charity sermon for the widows and orphans of the soldiers that were killed in America. Knowing how many would seek occasion of offence, I wrote down my sermon.” The discourse was immediately published, with the title, “A Sermon preached at St. Matthew’s, Bethnal Green, on Sunday, November 12, 1775. By John Wesley, M.A. For the benefit of the widows and orphans of the soldiers who lately fell near Boston, in New England.” 8vo, 33 pages. Wesley speaks of the terrible distress from which the nation was suffering. Thousands were totally unemployed. He had seen not a few of them “standing in the streets, with pale looks, hollow eyes, and meagre limbs.” He says, he had “known families, who, a few years ago, lived in an easy, genteel manner,” driven to the necessity of repairing to the fields “to pick up the turnips which the cattle had left: and which they boiled, if they could get a few sticks for that purpose, or otherwise ate them raw.” Thousands had “screamed for liberty till they were utterly distracted, and their intellects quite confounded.” “In every town, men, who were once of a calm, mild, friendly temper, were now mad with party zeal, foaming with rage against their quiet neighbours, ready to tear out one another’s throats, and to plunge their swords into each other’s bowels.” He then proceeds to descant, in withering terms, on the sins of the nation,—money getting, lying, gluttony, idleness, and profanity. The sermon altogether, considering the time and circumstances of its delivery, was one of the boldest he ever preached; and, of course, added to the rage that his “Calm Address” had kindled. The Gospel Magazine, in reviewing it, remarks: “So many barrels of tar have of late been lavished on Mr. Wesley, and so many bags of feathers have been shaken over him, on account of his new political apostasy, that it might seem unmerciful in us, should we add to the anointings and to the powderings, which he has already so plentifully, though not undeservedly, received. We shall therefore, from a principle of compassion, touch his sermon with the tenderer hand, and let the sermoniser himself very lightly off, the enormity of his demerits considered.” And then the tender reviewer, in his unmerited compassion, proceeds to describe “the sermon as being as dry as an old piece of leather that has been tanned five thousand times over”; and the preacher as “a tip-top perfectionist in the art of lying.” All this revives a recollection of “The Old Fox tarred and feathered,”—and of its polite author, the Rev. Augustus Toplady, who had just now become the courteous editor of the misnamed Gospel Magazine.

At the conference of 1774, Wesley had 2204 members of society in America, and seven itinerant preachers, Messrs. Rankin, Asbury, Shadford, Williams, King, Dempster, and Rodda; and to direct these, in the midst of a great rebellion, required more than ordinary wisdom. A few extracts from his letters to Thomas Rankin will not be without interest.

Under the same date, Charles Wesley wrote to Rankin as follows.

The war was not the only thing that gave Wesley trouble. Thomas Rankin and Francis Asbury were not able to agree; and Miss Gilbert had actually written to Asbury, stating that Mr. Gilbert was about to leave Antigua; and wishing him to come, and to take charge of the three hundred Methodists in that island. Asbury was inclined to accept of this invitation; but was deterred by his want of ordination, and therefore, as he thought, want of authority to administer the sacraments of the Christian church. Wesley wished him to return to England. What a disaster, if he had!⁠[227] These facts will cast light on the following letters.

The “great man” referred to was probably Lord North, the prime minister of the English cabinet, to whom, and to the Earl of Dartmouth, Wesley had, four months before, addressed most important letters, in which he strongly endeavoured to convince the government of the exceedingly critical condition of public matters. No man in the kingdom had suffered more from the violation of English law than Wesley had; and yet now, in England’s extremity, no man evinced a more loyal spirit than was evinced by him. Indeed, his loyalty became, in the eyes of his enemies, a crime, and brought him, not reward, but ruffianly reproach. An extract from the letters to the two ministers of state may fitly, for the present, close these American reminiscences.

Whatever may be thought of the principle advocated in Wesley’s “Calm Address to the American Colonies,” namely, that taxation without representation is no tyranny, there can be no doubt that his letters to the premier and to the colonial secretary are full of warnings and foresight which were terribly fulfilled; and, for fidelity, fulness, terseness, in short, for multum in parvo, were perhaps without a parallel in the correspondence of these ministers of state.

Much space has been occupied with these American affairs. If an apology were needed, the reader might be courteously reminded (1) that John Wesley’s “Calm Address” threw, not Methodism only, but the nation, into a fever of excitement, and, directly and indirectly, gave birth to scores of pamphlets on the same subject; (2) that the American rebellion is one of the greatest events in English history; and (3) that, in consequence of the great majority of the clergy of the English Church fleeing from the colonies, when the colonies most needed them, Methodism, under the sagacious management of the apostolic Asbury, took the place which had hitherto been occupied by Anglican episcopacy; and, henceforth, literally became the predominant religion of what is likely to be the greatest and most prosperous country in the world.

We must now return to Wesley in a more private capacity.

The reader has long lost sight of Peter Bohler. In 1739, after the conversion of the two Wesleys, Bohler went to Georgia, and his life, since then, had been spent in unwearied Christian work, partly in America and partly in Europe. His labours now were nearly ended; and, on April 27, 1775, he peacefully expired, in London, at the age of sixty-three. For years past, correspondence seems to have ceased between Wesley and his early Moravian friend. Within three months of Bohler’s death, it was renewed. Wesley wrote to him on the 5th of February, and Bohler, in a beautifully Christian letter, responded. A few days later, Wesley wrote again, as follows.

Thus ended Wesley’s intercourse with Bohler, till it was renewed in heaven.

Eleven days after the above was written, Wesley left London for Ireland, proceeding, as usual, by way of Bristol and the midland counties. Nothing remarkable occurred in his journey to Liverpool. Of course, he was preaching continually, and, winter though it was, sometimes out of doors. While doing so, at Newcastle under Lyne, “a buffoon,” he says, “laboured to interrupt him; but, as he was bawling, with his mouth wide open, some arch boys gave him such a mouthful of dirt as quite satisfied him.”

At Dublin, at the request of “the good old dean,” he assisted in administering the Lord’s supper in St. Patrick’s. At Maryborough, he complied with the wish of the clergyman, and preached in the parish church. The Methodist chapel at Waterford he describes as “a foul, horrid, miserable hole.” For the first time, he preached at Clones, using, as his church, an old Danish fort. Here Methodism had been introduced about the year 1768. The papists were furious, and magistrates refused to interfere; but, just when the place was about to be given up, a military pensioner, an old presbyterian, took his stand in the centre of the market, and, shouldering his musket, declared that he would shoot the first man that attempted to disturb the preacher. The rioters were frightened; and the rough old soldier mounted guard every sabbath afternoon, until opposition ceased.⁠[237]

At Londonderry, Wesley accepted the bishop’s invitation to dinner; the prelate remarking, “I know you do not love our hours, and will therefore order dinner to be on the table between two and three o’clock.” “We had,” says Wesley, “a piece of boiled beef, and an English pudding. This is true good breeding.”

At Castle Caulfield, writes Wesley, with the utmost sang froid, “the rain came plentifully, through the thatch, into my lodging room; but I found no present inconvenience, and was not careful for the morrow.”

Six days afterwards, Wesley was seized with illness, which nearly proved fatal; but for three days more, though in a burning fever, he continued travelling and preaching almost as usual. He had now reached the town of Lurgan, where, four years previously, a society had been formed, one of the first members being Isaac Bullock, an old soldier, who had been at the capture of several islands in the West Indies, and was one of sixty, called “the forlorn hope,” who, in 1762, first entered the breach at the storming of Havannah, only six of the sixty escaping with their lives. The house of this sturdy veteran was the preaching place of the Lurgan Methodists.⁠[238] Here Wesley was obliged to succumb to fever. He sent for a physician, who told him he must rest. Wesley replied, he could not, as he “had appointed to preach at several places, and must preach as long as he could speak.” The doctor gave him medicine, and off he went to Tanderagee, and then to a gentleman’s seat, three miles beyond Lisburn, where nature sank, and the conquered evangelist was compelled to take his bed. Strength, memory, and mind entirely failed. For three days, he lay more dead than alive. His tongue was black and swollen. He was violently convulsed. For some time his pulse was not discernible. Hope was almost gone; when Joseph Bradford, his travelling companion, came with a cup, and said, “Sir, you must take this.” Wesley writes: “I thought, ‘I will, if I can swallow, to please him; for it will do me neither harm nor good.’ Immediately it set me a vomiting; my heart began to beat, and my pulse to play again; and, from that hour, the extremity of the symptoms abated.” Six days afterwards, to the astonishment of his friends, and, as he says, “trusting in God,” he set out for Dublin, where, within a week, he was preaching as usual.

This was a memorable epoch, even in Wesley’s eventful life. The house in which he lay so dangerously ill was the hospitable dwelling of Mr. Gayer, of Derryaghey,⁠[239] a devoted Methodist of great respectability, who had built a chapel in the village, and, for the accommodation of the preachers, a room, which went by the name of “the prophet’s chamber.” His daughter, afterwards Mrs. Wolfenden, was now a converted girl, sixteen years of age, and, with her mother, was Wesley’s nurse. Great anxiety was felt for Wesley’s life, and, while a few select friends were praying that, as in the case of Hezekiah, God would add to his days fifteen years, Mrs. Gayer suddenly rose from her knees, and cried, “The prayer is granted!” Marvellously enough, Wesley’s recovery immediately commenced, and he survived, from June 1775 to March 1791, a period of just fifteen years, and a few months over.

But even this was not all the wonder. Alexander Mather, at the time, was at Sheerness, in Kent, where he read, in the newspapers, that Wesley was actually dead. Mather says, he was not able to give credence to this; and, before he went to preach, he opened his Bible on the words, “Behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years” (Isa. xxxviii. 5); and away he went to the chapel, and began to pray that the promise, made to Hezekiah, might be fulfilled in the case of Wesley.⁠[240] These are striking facts. We give them as we find them. The sceptic will sneer; but the Christian will exercise an unfaltering faith in the glorious text, which, in the history of the church, has been confirmed in instances without number: “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”

The news of Wesley’s dangerous illness created the utmost consternation among his friends. The following is a letter, hitherto unpublished, addressed by Charles Wesley to Joseph Bradford, Wesley’s faithful companion.