In his journey southwards, Wesley visited, for the second time, his friend Fletcher, at Madeley,—a man, in many respects, the opposite of Mr. Adam of Wintringham, and especially in his feelings towards the Methodists. So far from shunning them, or being ashamed of them, he, as far as possible, identified himself with them; and, at the very last conference before he died, entreated Wesley to make Madeley a circuit town, and to put John Fletcher down as a supernumerary preacher there. He made his kitchen a Methodist chapel, in which Wesley’s itinerants and his own curate regularly preached; while his study was the place in which were penned the ablest defences of Wesley’s doctrines that were ever committed to the public press.

From Madeley, Wesley went to Shrewsbury, where, as early as 1744, there was a poor woman, who had been converted in London under the preaching of the Methodists, and who now obtained a living, by mending her neighbours’ stockings. While thus employed, at their respective houses, she would relate to them her religious experience, read to them a sermon, and then engage in prayer. By this means, she had already formed a society of sixteen or eighteen persons; and the Rev. Job Orton, the well known author, a native of Shrewsbury, and at this time its presbyterian minister, declared that this poor stocking-mending Methodist was not only of “an excellent and serious spirit,” but had had more success in converting sinners than he had had by all his preaching.⁠[29]

Leaving Shrewsbury, Wesley rode right through Wales to Pembroke, where he “read prayers, preached, and administered the sacrament to a serious congregation at St. Daniels;” and so tried to remove some misunderstandings among the Methodists, that he “left the people full of good desires, and in tolerable good humour with each other.” Here Methodism had been begun seven years before, when Thomas Taylor traversed mountains, forded rivers, and plunged through bogs, with an empty purse and an empty stomach, seeking to save sinners with a zeal and a spirit of self denial worthy of the noblest missionary that ever lived.⁠[30]

At Neath, where the minister of the parish was just dead, the churchwardens announced, that Wesley would preach in the parish church. He did so, but says: “I was greatly disgusted at the manner of singing. 1. Twelve or fourteen persons kept it to themselves, and quite shut out the congregation. 2. These repeated the same words, contrary to all sense and reason, six, or eight, or ten times over. 3. According to the shocking custom of modern music, different persons sung different words at one and the same moment; an intolerable insult on common sense, and utterly incompatible with any devotion.”

After more than five months of laborious travelling, Wesley came to Bristol on Saturday the 13th of August, between eleven and twelve o’clock at night. His conference had to open two days afterwards; but the first news he heard was, that his wife was dangerously ill in London. He had about forty-eight hours before he must meet his preachers, twenty-four of which were sabbatical. The distance to London and back again was two hundred and twenty-eight miles; the roads not the best; and the mode of travelling a perfect contrast to what exists at present. Wesley was an aged man, of more than sixty-five; for nearly six months he had been travelling and preaching incessantly, and might now fairly wish for a few hours’ rest. But no sooner did he hear of his wife’s affliction, than, notwithstanding her unloving heart and life, he started off to London, which, by travelling most of the sabbath day, he reached at one o’clock on Monday morning; when, finding that the fever was abated and the danger gone, he set out again within an hour, and, by hard driving, arrived in Bristol on Monday afternoon. Next morning he opened his annual conference, and closed it the following Friday, exclaiming, “Oh! what can we do for more labourers? We can only cry to the Lord of the harvest.”

One of the chief points discussed at the present conference was, whether the itinerant preachers should be allowed to engage in trade. This was a question at once delicate and difficult. In the first place, many of them had wives and children, the provision for whose maintenance was of the most slender kind. Secondly, the men were not ordained, and had no clerical status whatever. So far there seemed to be no difficulty. But, in the third place, though not ordained, the preachers were regarded by Wesley as occupying, to all practical intents and purposes, the same position as the regular ministers of the Church of England; and, hence, he considered it as unseemly and as improper for his itinerants to be engaged in trade as it would be for the clergy of the Established Church. “God,” says he, “has called us to supply their lack of service to the sheep that are without shepherds, and to spend and be spent therein. Every travelling preacher solemnly professes to have nothing else to do; and receives his little allowance for this very end, that he may not need to do anything else,—that he may not be entangled in the things of this life, but may give himself wholly to these things.”

The result was, the few preachers who had resorted to some kind of trade, for the purpose of eking out the insufficient maintenance for their families were advised to give up their business as soon as possible, and especially hawking drops (which their wives might sell at home), for it had “a bad appearance, and did not suit the dignity of their calling.”

The increase of members during the year was 430. Wesley was not satisfied with this. Hence the question:

Wesley’s means, then, to promote a revival of the work of God, were a diffusion of Methodist literature, field and morning preaching, the enforcement of Methodist discipline, good singing, quarterly fasts, the preaching of the doctrine of Christian perfection, house to house visitation, attention to the young, continued union with the Established Church, and, above all and more than all, more inward and outward religion among the preachers.

Before leaving the conference of 1768, we insert a letter, which, so far as we are aware, has not before been published, except in the “Methodist Pocket Book” for 1799. It was addressed to James Morgan, one of Wesley’s itinerant preachers, well read, and popular, but who had sunk into a state of nervousness, and had settled down in the city of Dublin.

A letter has been already inserted in which Wesley congratulates his brother on the reports he had received respecting the success of his ministry in London. This was somewhat premature, for, in reality, instead of there being an increase in the London circuit, there was a decrease of seventy members; and there was a serious intention to abandon the chapel in Spitalfields. Hence the following letter “to the stewards of the Foundery.”

Poor Spitalfields! Noble Wesley! Let the fashionable Methodists of the present generation ponder such sentiments as these, and hesitate before they abandon their old chapels, because surrounded by none but the abject and the poor, and because keeping them open involves expense and trouble.

It is a remarkable fact, that almost in the very year in which Methodism was founded in America, it was instituted in Newfoundland. For nine years, Laurence Coughlan was one of Wesley’s itinerants. In 1764, he was ordained by Erasmus, the Greek bishop, and was put away from the Methodist connexion. In 1766,⁠[32] he was reordained by the Bishop of London, and was sent to Newfoundland by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. It is true, he went as a clergyman of the Church of England, but he took his Methodism with him, and established classes, in which the present Methodism of Newfoundland had its origin. In a letter to Wesley, he writes:

It would be a pleasant task to trace the steps of Mr. Coughlan in Newfoundland; but suffice it to remark that he returned to England, and shortly after, while conversing with Wesley in his study, was seized with paralysis, and suddenly removed to his rest in heaven.⁠[33]

Coughlan was one of those in London, who professed to receive the blessing of Christian perfection; but, like many others, imbibed fantastic notions respecting it. Soon after the conference of 1768, Wesley wrote to him as follows.

Wesley had been incessantly travelling for nearly the last six months; but no sooner were the sessions of the Bristol conference ended, than he started off to Cornwall, where he spent the interval between August 26 and September 18. On his way, he preached to a serious congregation at Taunton, and asks, “Shall we have fruit here also?” Wesley might well ask this. For many a long year, he had been accustomed to preach at Taunton, and had been received either with stupid indifference or active contempt. As early as 1744, he attempted to preach in the yard of the Three Cups inn; but had no sooner named his text, than the mayor came, in all his full blown dignity, and ordered the proclamation to be read, and silenced the preacher.⁠[35] Almost a quarter of a century had elapsed since then; and now there was a small society, of which one of the members was Thomas Dingle, who for sixty-three years was a chief supporter of the Taunton society, and one of its brightest ornaments.

Wesley’s labours in Cornwall were Herculean. Though now in the sixty-sixth year of his age, for eight days together he preached, “mostly in the open air, three or four times a day,” and says, “I hardly felt any weariness, first or last.” He was also not without adventures. At Polperro, his bedroom was filled with pilchards and conger eels, which made him glad to accept the offer of another. At Plymouth, on his return, a “silly man talked without ceasing” during the sermon, till Wesley desired the people “to open to the right and left, and let him look his garrulous disturber fairly in the face,” upon which the noisy prater “pulled off his hat, and quietly went away.” Between Charlton and Lympsham, the rivers were so swollen, that Wesley’s horse had to swim, and Wesley himself had to be taken to his lodgings on an “honest man’s shoulders.”

Reaching Bristol on September 24, Wesley spent the next few days in visiting the neighbouring towns and villages. At Frome, he found the liveliest society that there was in the Wiltshire circuit: a fact which greatly surprised him, because the town was made up of a strange medley “of men of all opinions,—anabaptists, quakers, presbyterians, Arians, antinomians, Moravians, and what not.” He adds: “if any hold to the truth, in the midst of all these, surely the power must be of God.”

The Frome Methodists, however, were not untrained recruits, but veteran soldiers, who had stood the brunt of many a furious and fiery fight. Twenty-two years before this, Methodism had been started in their town, by a poor Bristol pedlar, who dealt in rags and small ware, singing to the people Wesley’s hymns. Since then, a vagabond barber——​a tool in the hands of the parish priest——​had dragged two Methodist women to prison. Mrs. Seagram had been fined £20 for permitting her house to be used as a preaching place; and, not being able to pay the fine, had had all her stock in trade and her household goods sold by public auction, while she and her two fatherless children were turned penniless out of doors. In one instance, the mob rushed into the preaching room, seized the benches, and made a bonfire of them. Methodism in Frome had outlived all this; and, despite the sectarianism of the town, it was destined still to live and prosper.

On October 24, Wesley set out for London, and employed the first week in November in a preaching tour through the three counties of Hertford, Bedford, and Northampton. At Hertford, a chapel had been built by Mr. Andrews, who afterwards, in 1777, gave to Wesley’s new chapel in City Road the pulpit which has been used in Methodism’s cathedral from that time to this.⁠[36]

The second week in November was spent in a similar visitation of the societies in Oxfordshire. He writes: “I was desired to preach at Oxford. The room was throughly filled, and not with curious, but deeply serious hearers. Many of these desired, that our travelling preachers would take them in their turn; with which I willingly complied.” Oxford had been Methodism’s cradle, but the infant had long been absent. Henceforth, Methodism was one of Oxford’s institutions; though, for long, long years, it was a thing of feebleness and of small dimensions. The “Oxfordshire” circuit extended over the greater part of Berkshire, Wiltshire, and Buckinghamshire; and, even as late as 1787, there were throughout the circuit only four Methodist chapels, namely, at Oxford, Wycombe, Wallingford, and Witney. At Aylesbury, the Methodists preached in the baptists’ chapel; at Newbury, in an ironfounder’s shop; and at all the other places, in private houses. The small chapel in Oxford was in New-Inn-Hall Lane;⁠[37] and the Oxford home of the two unmarried preachers, Joseph Entwisle and Richard Reece, was a garret in the house of a journeyman shoemaker, for which the society paid sixpence a week as rent; and which had to serve them as dining room, sitting room, bedroom, and study,⁠[38] all in one.

The third week in November was occupied in meeting the London classes; and the fourth in a tour in Kent. The rest of the year was chiefly spent in town.

Wesley was fervent, but not fanatical; he loved earnestness in religious worship, but not disorder. Hence the following letter to Mr. Merryweather, of Yarm.

We have already seen that, by an enormous effort, in the month of August, Wesley hurried from Bristol to London to visit his afflicted wife. On his return he wrote her as follows.

No sooner was Wesley’s wife convalescent, than, instead of waiting to welcome him to his home in London, she, in one of her insane piques, took her departure to Newcastle. The following letter to his brother refers to this, and also to his preparing an edition of Young’s “Night Thoughts,” and to other matters.

Wesley was still troubled on account of the chapel debts. Nearly £6000 had been contributed; but there was still a debt of £7728 upon the chapels in the United Kingdom undefrayed.⁠[41] This gave rise to the following letter.

Wesley was a great reader, as well as a great writer; and, during the year 1768, his journal is enriched with an unusual number of his critical remarks. A few may be given as specimens of others.

The last extract refers to a matter too nearly allied to Methodism to be passed without further notice.

The expelled students were Benjamin Kay, Thomas Jones, Thomas Grove, Erasmus Middleton, Joseph Shipman, and James Mathews. The junta of expellers were Drs. Durell, Randolph, Fothergill, Nowell, and Atterbury.⁠[44] The charges brought against the young culprits were: 1. That they had held or frequented illicit conventicles, where some of them, though not in orders, had preached and prayed extempore, particularly in the house of a staymaker, a woman who herself officiated and taught. 2. That some of them had been bred up to the lowest trades and occupations, for one had been a weaver and kept a taphouse, a second had been a barber, a third a draper; and further all were wholly illiterate, and incapable of performing the statutable exercises of the university; and were maintained at the charge of persons suspected of enthusiasm. 3. That they were attached to the sect called Methodists, and held their doctrines, namely, “that faith without works is sufficient for salvation; that there is no necessity for good works; that the immediate impulse of the Spirit is to be waited for; that once a child of God always a child of God; and the like.” 4. That one of them, before his entrance into the university, had preached, and, in defiance of his father’s authority, had connected himself with the Methodists. 5. That some of them had behaved very irreverently and disrespectfully to their tutor, and had industriously sought to cavil with and to vex him.⁠[45]

It is right to add, that none of these young men had been connected with Wesley. Mr. Jones, the barber, had, for some time resided, with the Rev. John Newton, and, under his instruction, had made considerable progress in the Greek and Hebrew languages. Mr. Kay was of a respectable family, and an excellent scholar, and had an exhibition paid by the Ironmongers’ Company. Mr. Mathews had been instructed by Fletcher of Madeley. Mr. Middleton had been under the tutelage of the Rev. Thomas Haweis. Of Mr. Grove and Mr. Shipman we know nothing, except that the latter, after his expulsion, was admitted to the college of the Countess of Huntingdon, at Trevecca.

This act of Oxford tyranny, as might be expected, created great commotion; and numbers of tracts and pamphlets, pro and con, were published. Among others, Whitefield rushed into the battle, in a “Letter to the Rev. Dr. Durell,” 8vo, 50 pages, and defended the expelled with great vigour and effect; as also did Dr. Horne, afterwards bishop of Norwich. Macgowan published his “Shaver,” in which he shaved the collegiate rulers with no gentle hand, and, in the process, must have made them smart. Sir Richard Hill, a young man of thirty-six, who for some time past had been using his utmost endeavours to improve Oxford morality, issued his “Pietas Oxoniensis,” 8vo, 85 pages, in which he belaboured the junta with unsparing severity. Several replies were written in justification of the Oxford bull; and, after an immense expenditure of time, and not a little display of angry temper, this execrable act of the Oxford authorities was allowed to repose in silence. It is a fact, however, far too serious to be forgotten, that while Oxford university, in past days, has tolerated in its students the most notorious wickedness, and while, at the present day, it tolerates German scepticism and Romish heresy, it once, in one of its paroxysms of pious zeal, ignominiously expelled six young men, whose only crimes were, that some of them had been ignobly bred, and all had sung, and prayed, and read the Scriptures in private houses.

The Countess of Huntingdon was accused of maintaining some or all of these young students at the Oxford university; and perhaps there was a modicum of truth in this. Be that as it may, she soon made her young preachers independent of Oxford help. Trevecca House, in the parish of Talgarth, in Wales, was an ancient structure, supposed to have been erected about the year 1176. This building the countess opened as a college, five months after the expulsions just mentioned,—on the 24th of August, 1768, the anniversary of her ladyship’s birthday. Whitefield preached at the opening; Fletcher was made the president; and, for a few months, Mr. Easterbrook the head master; when Joseph Benson was appointed his successor. Of course, Fletcher was not expected to relinquish his charge at Madeley; but he was to attend the college at Trevecca as often as he conveniently could; to give advice, with regard to the appointment of masters, and the admission or exclusion of students; to oversee their studies and conduct; to assist their piety; and to judge of their qualifications for the ministry.⁠[46] As is well known, both Fletcher and Benson soon retired, because of the doctrinal differences that sprang up; but Trevecca was still used as a seminary for the training of Calvinistic ministers, till 1792, when the institution was removed to Cheshunt, in Hertfordshire. Wesley from the beginning was in doubt of it, though, perhaps, without reason. In a letter to his brother, dated “May 19, 1768,” he writes: “I am glad Mr. Fletcher has been with you. But if the tutor fails, what will become of our college at Trevecca? Did you ever see anything more queer than their plan of institution? Pray who penned it, man or woman? I am afraid the visitor too will fail.”⁠[47] Was there a tinge of jealousy in this? We know not. Troubles, it is true, soon sprung up; but the countess made Trevecca her principal place of residence; and within its walls were trained a noble band of earnest, laborious, and useful ministers. The old building is now the residence of a Celtic farmer.⁠[48] O tempora! O mores!

Excepting the hubbub arising out of the Oxford expulsions, there was not much, in 1768, that was antagonistic to the Methodist movement. A small, paltry pamphlet was published, with the title, “Enthusiasm Reprehended. Three Letters to Mr. John Wesley. With Strictures on his Character, the Reception he met with at Perth, and his Conduct on that occasion.” A 12mo volume, of 212 pages, was also issued, entitled “Sermons to Asses”; and was dedicated to Whitefield, Wesley, Romaine, and Madan. Besides these, an eighteenpenny poem was published, entitled “The Hypocrite: a comedy;” in which the writer tries to turn Cibber’s satire on disloyalty into a castigation of enthusiasm.

Wesley’s publications also were fewer than usual, and hardly any of them original. The following belong to this period.

1. “A Letter to the Rev. Dr. Rutherforth.” This has been already noticed in a previous chapter.

2. “A Caution to False Prophets: a Sermon on Matthew vii. 15–20. Particularly recommended to the people called Methodists.” 12mo, 12 pages. In this sermon, Wesley discusses a point which he confesses had puzzled him for many years, namely, whether it is right to hear a minister who is either immoral, or who preaches false doctrine. He still hesitates to pronounce an opinion, and recommends those who were in doubt to “wait upon God in prayer, and then act according to the best light they had.”

3. “Instructions for Members of Religious Societies. Translated from the French.” Under the date of February 26, 1768, Wesley writes: “I translated from the French one of the most useful tracts I ever saw, for those who desire to be ‘fervent in spirit.’ How little does God regard men’s opinions! What a multitude of wrong opinions are embraced by all the members of the Church of Rome! Yet how highly favoured have many of them been!”

4. “An Extract from the Rev. Mr. Law’s Later Works.” Two vols., 12mo, 251 and 204 pages. About a quarter of a century before this, Wesley had published an extract from Law’s “Christian Perfection”; an extract from his “Serious Call”; and an extract from his “Serious Answer to Dr. Trapp.” He now published similar extracts from Law’s answer to “Christianity as old as Creation,” his “Spirit of Prayer,” his “Spirit of Love,” his “Letters,” and his “Address to the Clergy.”

5. “An Extract of the Life of the late Rev. David Brainerd.” 12mo, 274 pages. Just at the time when Methodism was extending its mission to America and Newfoundland, Wesley issued his life of one of the most devoted missionaries that ever lived: a young man who died before he arrived at the age of thirty; but whose piety, for depth and fervour, has seldom been excelled; and whose four years’ mission among the Delaware and other Indians, from 1743 to 1747, would warm the heart and improve the character of all candidates for missionary work.

Besides the above, another publication belongs to the year 1768,—“Free Thoughts on the Present State of Public Affairs,” 12mo, 47 pages. This, strictly speaking, was Wesley’s first political pamphlet. At the general election of 1768, John Wilkes, at the time an outlaw, was returned to parliament by the county of Middlesex; and, shortly after, was arrested and committed to the King’s Bench prison. For nearly a fortnight, crowds collected outside the prison walls, and soldiers were sent to protect the place. A riot followed; the soldiers fired; six of the rioters were killed, and fourteen badly wounded; and the exploit got the name of the “Massacre of St. George’s Fields.” For months, Wilkes’s business occupied the attention of court and cabinet; when the wretched demagogue was sentenced to pay a fine of £1000, to be imprisoned for two-and-twenty months, and afterwards to find security for good behaviour for seven years. While in prison, he was at the zenith of his fame; subscriptions were opened for the payment of his debts; and his likenesses were so multiplied, that portraits of him squinted from the signboards of half the public houses in the kingdom.

It was in the midst of such a state of things, that Wesley wrote the pamphlet already mentioned. He admits that, though “cobblers, tinkers, porters, and hackney coachmen” think themselves wise enough “to instruct both the king and his council,” he himself is “not so deeply learned. Politics were beyond his province; but he would use the privilege of an Englishman to speak his naked thoughts.” “I have,” he writes, “no bias, one way or the other. I have no interest depending. I want no man’s favour, having no hopes, no fears, from any man.” He then proceeds to defend the character of the king; and maintains that, as an outlaw, Wilkes was incapacitated to take a seat in the House of Commons. “Encumbered with no religion, and disappointed in his application for place and power, Wilkes had set up for patriot, vehemently inveighed against evil counsellors and grievances, and was paid in French louis d’or for his agitative services.” Wesley then expresses the opinion that, “supposing things to take their natural course, they must go from bad to worse; the land will become a field of blood; and many thousands of poor Englishmen will sheathe their swords in each other’s bowels, for the diversion of their good neighbours. Then, either a commonwealth will ensue, or else a second Cromwell. One must be; but it cannot be determined which,—King Wilkes, or King Mob.”