Three years after this, the Isle of Man was a flourishing Methodist circuit, with 1051 members of society.

No sooner was the conference in London ended, than Wesley set out, on Sunday afternoon, August 11, for Cornwall. On his return, he spent, as usual, about a month at Bristol and in its vicinity. He began what, he says, he had long intended, visiting the Bristol society from house to house, setting apart at least two hours a day for that purpose. He preached in the church at Midsomer Norton, the rector making one of his congregation. Here an incident occurred which was characteristic of the man, and is worth relating. Wesley was entertained at the house of Mr. Bush, a local preacher, who kept a boarding school. While there, two of the boys quarrelled, and cuffed and kicked each other most vigorously. Mrs. Bush brought the pugilists to Wesley. He talked to them, and repeated the lines:

“You must be reconciled,” said he; “go and shake hands with each other.” They did so. “Now,” he continued, “put your arms round each other’s neck, and kiss each other.” This was also done. “Now,” said he, “come to me”; and, taking two pieces of bread and butter, he folded them together, and desired each to take a part. “Now,” he added, “you have broken bread together.” He then put his hands upon their heads, and blessed them. The two tigers were turned into loving lambs; they never forgot the old man’s blessing; and one of them became a magistrate in Berks, and related the occurrence with intense interest in after days.⁠[278]

Having returned to London, Wesley set out, on November 13, accompanied by his invalid friend, Fletcher, to Norwich. He says: “I took coach at twelve, slept till six, and then spent the time very agreeably in conversation, singing, and reading. I read Mr. Bolt’s account of the affairs in the East Indies. What a scene is here opened! What consummate villains, what devils incarnate, were the managers there! What utter strangers to justice, mercy, and truth; to every sentiment of humanity! I believe no heathen history contains a parallel. I remember none in all the annals of antiquity; not even the divine Cato, or the virtuous Brutus, plundered the provinces committed to their charge with such merciless cruelty as the English have plundered the desolated provinces of Hindostan.”

The two friends returned to London on November 21; and, a few days later, Wesley started on his accustomed visitation to Bedfordshire, etc.; and, on the way, read the poetical works of Gray, whom he pencils as “sharp, sensible, and ingenious; but proud, morose, envious, passionate, and resentful.”

After this, he made a tour through Kent; and then writes: “December 31—We concluded the year with solemn praise to God, for continuing His great work in our land. It has never been intermitted one year, or one month, since the year 1738; in which my brother and I began to preach that strange doctrine of salvation by faith.”

The Calvinistic controversy was now in its last agonies; but, on the part of the elect, was as acrimonious as ever. Some one published a twopenny pamphlet, entitled, “A necessary Alarm and most earnest Caveto against Tabernacle Principles and Tabernacle Connections; containing the substance of an extraordinary Harangue and Exhortation, delivered at Penzance, in August, 1774; on an extraordinary occasion. By J. W., Master of very extraordinary Arts.” In this infamous burlesque, Wesley is treated with as much ridicule as the anonymous author could command; and Toplady, in reviewing it, in his Gospel Magazine, of course commends it, as “a delicate satire on Wesley,” and hopes that “the cream of tartar, so ably administered by the anonymous physician, will prove a sweetener of the patient’s crudities, and conduce to carry off some portion of his self sufficiency.” Wesley, however, had been so “severely peppered and salted of late years,” that the considerate editor of the Gospel Magazine benevolently intimates that he shall, on that account, refrain from adding to the pepper and salt seasonings, which “must often have made Wesley smart and wince like an eel dispossessed of its skin.”⁠[279]

This was bad enough; but there were other things even worse. Wesley’s wife, (originally a not too respectable servant girl,) stole a number of Wesley’s letters, and interpolated words, and misinterpreted spiritual expressions, so as to make the letters bear a bad construction. She read them to an elect party of Calvinists, and agreed to send them to the Morning Post for publication. Two masked assassins, who assumed the not inappropriate names of Scorpion and Snapdragon, furiously assailed him, in the London newspaper, professing to ground their charges against him upon his own private papers, which the woman, who was legally his wife, had put into their hands. A more infamous episode does not occur in Wesley’s history. The charges were cruel insinuations, founded upon interpolated letters, stolen by a faithless woman, who, in order to defame a husband of whom she was utterly unworthy, not only committed theft but forgery, and then put herself into the hands of a set of holy Calvinists, who employed her perfidy and meanness in injuring the man whom, at the altar of the Most High God, she had sworn to love, honour, and obey. This is strong language; but the writer, knowing more than he chooses to make public, uses it with deliberate design. Charles Wesley, finding the use that was being made of his brother’s papers, was in the utmost consternation, and went off in haste, wishing him to postpone a journey, and to stay in town to defend himself against his enemies. Wesley was as calm as his loving and faithful brother was excited. “I shall never forget,” said Miss Wesley, “the manner in which my father accosted my mother on his return home. ‘My brother,’ said he, ‘is indeed an extraordinary man. I placed before him the importance of the character of a minister; and the evil consequences which might result from his indifference to it; and urged him, by every relative and public motive, to answer for himself, and stop the publication. His reply was, ‘Brother, when I devoted to God my ease, my time, my life, did I except my reputation? No, Tell Sally I will take her to Canterbury to-morrow.’”⁠[280]

On the Arminian side of the controversy, the chief, if not the only, publication issued in 1776, was Fletcher’s masterly “Answer to the Rev. Mr. Toplady’s ‘Vindication of the Decrees,’ etc.” 12mo, 128 pages. Never was a bravo shaved with so sharp a razor, and by so adept a hand.

Except “An Extract of the Life of Madame Guion,” 12mo, 230 pages, Wesley’s only publications, in 1776, were the two political tracts following. 1. “Some Observations on Liberty, occasioned by a late Tract”: 12mo, 36 pages. And, 2. “A Seasonable Address to the more Serious Part of the Inhabitants of Great Britain, respecting the Unhappy Contest between us and our American Brethren; with an occasional Word interspersed to those of a different complexion”: 12mo, 18 pages.

The former was an answer to Dr. Price, a Unitarian minister far more famed for politics than for preaching, who had recently published his “Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America.” This was considered the ablest work, in exposition of the injurious policy pursued by England toward America, that had yet been issued. Within less than two years, eight editions were printed; and, in testimony of their approbation of it, the common council of London presented to the author the freedom of the city in a golden box. Thus, in fighting with Dr. Price, Wesley was far from fighting with a shadow.

Both of Wesley’s tracts display, not only his wonted ability, but his profound loyalty to the government of King George, his benevolence of heart, and his intense interest in the fratricidal war which was then raging. A more loyal subject than Wesley, England never had; perhaps, indeed, his loving loyalty sometimes made him somewhat blind to the faultiness of ruling powers. No man was more obedient to law; and no man more cheerfully paid his taxes. The last mentioned might not amount to much; but they were never tendered with a niggard’s hand. Some imagined that he, the bishop of 40,000 Methodists, was sure to have an enormous income, and a silver chest well stocked with plate; and that, therefore, his assessments ought to be higher than they were. So, for instance, thought the commissioners of his majesty’s excise, in 1776. Hence the following circular:

Think of John Wesley, always on the wing, having a hoard of silver plate to adorn his sumptuous table when feasting his Epicurean coadjutors and his dinner loving friends. The idea was almost too silly to be ridiculous. Wesley seems to have thought it so; and his answer (with which we close the present year) was as follows.