those who neither considered the relation in which he stood to him, nor did justice to his principles and feelings.

Some remarkable circumstances attended Wesley's preaching in these parts. Some of his opponents, in the excess of their zeal against enthusiasm, took up a whole waggon load of Methodists, and carried them before a Justice. When they were asked what these persons had done, there was an awkward silence; at last one of the accusers said, "Why, they pretended to be better than other people; and, besides, they prayed from morning till night." The magistrate asked if they had done nothing else." Yes, Sir," said an old man, "an't please your worship, they have converted my wife. Till she went among them, she had such a tongue! and now she is as quiet as a lamb !" " "Carry them back, carry them back," said the magistrate, "and let them convert all the scolds in the town." Among the hearers in the church-yard, was a gentleman remarkable for professing that he was of no religion: for more than thirty years he had not attended at public worship of any kind; and, perhaps, if Wesley had preached from the pulpit instead of the tomb-stone, he might not have been induced to gratify his curiosity by bearing him. But when the sermon was ended, Wesley perceived that it had reached him, and that he stood like a statue; so he asked him abruptly, Sir, are you a sinner ?"-" Sinner enough," was the reply, which he uttered in a deep and broken voice; and he continued staring upwards, till his wife and servants, who were all in tears, put him into his chaise and took him home. Ten years afterwards, Wesley says in his journal, "I called on the gentleman who told me he wassinner enough,' when I preached first at Epworth on my father's tomb, and was agreeably surprised to find him strong in faith, though exceeding weak in body. For some years, he told me, he had been rejoicing in God without either doubt or fear, and was now waiting for the welcome hour when he should depart and be with Christ."

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There were indeed few places where his preaching was attended with greater or more permanent effect than at Epworth, upon this first visit. "Oh!" he exclaims, "let none think his labour of love is lost, because the fruit does not immediately appear! Near forty years did my father labour here, but he saw little fruit of all his labour. I took some pains among this people too; and my strength also seemed spent in vain. But now the fruit appeared. There were scarce any in the town on whom either my father or I had taken any pains formerly, but the seed so long sown had now sprung up bringing forth repentance and remission of sins." The intemperate and indecent conduct of the curate must undoubtedly have provoked a feeling in favour of Wesley; for this person, who was under the greatest obligations to the Wesley family, behaved toward him with the most offensive brutality. In a state of beastly intoxication himself, he set upon him with abuse and violence in the presence of a thousand people; and when some persons who had come from the neighbouring towns to attend upon the new preacher, by his direction, waited upon Mr. Romley to inform him that they meant to communicate on the following Sunday, he said to them in reply, "Tell Mr. Wesley I shall not give him the sacrament, for he is not

fit." This insult called forth from Wesley a strong expression of feeling in his journal: "How wise a God," says he, "is our God! There could not have been so fit a place under Heaven where This should befal me: first, as my father's house, the place of my nativity, and the very place where, according to the strictest sect of our religion, I had so long lived a Pharisee. It was also fit, in the highest degree, that he who repelled me from that very table, where I had myself so often distributed the bread of life, should be one who owed his all in this world to the tender love which my father had shown to his, as well as personally to himself."

CHAPTER XIV.

OUTCRY AGAINST METHODISM.-VIOLENCE OF MOBS AND

MISCONDUCT OF MAGISTRATES.

METHODISM had now assumed some form and confidence. Meeting houses had been built, societies formed and disciplined, funds raised, rules enacted, lay preachers admitted, and a regular system of itinerancy begun. Its furious symptoms had subsided, the affection had reached a calmer stage of its course, and there were no longer any of those outrageous exhibitions which excited scandal and compassion, as well as astonishment. But Wesley continued, with his constitutional fervour, to preach the doctrines of instantaneous regeneration assurance, and sinless perfection. These doctrines gave just offence, and became still more offensive when they were promulgated by unlettered men, with all the vehemence and selfsufficiency of fancied inspiration. Wesley himself added to the of fence by the loftiness of his pretensions In the preface to bis third journal, he says, "It is not the work of man which hath lately appeared; all who calmly observe it must say,

This is the Lord's

doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes.' The manner wherein God hath wrought is as strange as the work itself. These extraordinary circumstances seem to have been designed by God for the further manifestation of his work, to cause his power to be known, and to awaken the attention of a drowsy world." He related cures wrought by his faith and his prayers, which he considered and represented as positively miraculous. By thinking strongly on a text of Scripture which promised that these signs should follow those that believe, and by calling on Christ to increase his faith and confirm the word of his grace, he shook off instantaneously, he says, a fever which had hung upon him for some days, and was in a moment freed from all pain, and restored to his former strength. He visited a believer at night who was not expected to live till the morning the man was speechless and senseless, and his pulse gone. "A few of us," says Wesley, "immediately joined in prayers. I relate the naked fact. Before we had done, his senses and his speech returned. Now, he that will account for this by natural causes has my free leave. But I choose to say, this is the power of God." So, too, when his own teeth ached, he prayed, and the pain left him. And this faith was

:

was so exceedingly lame, We could not discern what it

so strong, that it sufficed sometimes to cure not only himself but his horse also. "My horse," he says, that I was afraid I must have lain by. was that was amiss, and yet he would scarce set his foot to the ground. By riding thus seven miles I was thoroughly tired, and my head ached more than it had done for some months. What I here aver is the naked fact: let every man account for it as he sees good. I then thought Cannot God heal either man or beast, by any means, or without any? Immediately my weariness and headach ceased, and my horse's lameness in the same instant. Nor did he halt any more either that day or the next. A very odd accident this also." Even those persons who might have judged favourably of Wesley's intentions, could not but consider representations like these as discreditable to his judgment. But those who were less charitable impeached his veracity, and loudly accused him of hypocrisy and imposture. The strangest suspicions and calumnies were circulated; and men will believe any calumnies, however preposterously absurd, against those of whom they are disposed to think ill. He had hanged himself, and been cut down just in time ;-he had been fined for selling gin ;--he was not the real John Wesley, for every body knew that Mr. Wesley was dead. Some said he was a Quaker, others an Anabaptist: a more sapient censor pronounced him a Presbyterian Papist. It was commonly reported that he was a Papist, if not a Jesuit; that he kept Popish priests in his house ;-nay, it was beyond dispute that he received large remittances from Spain, in order to make a party among the poor, and when the Spaniards landed, he was to join them with 20,000 men. Sometimes it was reported that he was in prison upon a charge of high treason; and there were people who confidently_affirmed that they had seen him with the Pretender in France. Reports to this effect were so prevalent, that when, in the beginning of the year 1744 a proclamation was issued requiring all Papists to leave London, he thought it prudent to remain a week there, that he might cut off all occasion of reproach; and this did not prevent the Surry magistrates from summoning him, and making him take the oath of allegiance, and sign the declaration against Popery. Wesley was indifferent to all other accusations, but the charge of disaffection, in such times, might have drawn on serious inconveniences; and he drew up a loyal address to the King, in the name of "The Societies in derision called Methodists." They thought it incumbent upon them to offer this address, the paper said, if they must stand as a distinct body from their brethren; but they protested that they were a part, however mean, of the Protestant Church established in these kingdoms; and that it was their principle to revere the higher powers as of God, and to be subject for conscience sake. The address, however, was not presented, probably because of an objection which Charles started, of its seeming to allow that they were a body distinct from the National Church, whereas they were only a sound part of that Church. Charles himself was more seriously incommoded by the imputation of disloyalty than his brother. When he was itinerating in Yorkshire, an accusation was laid against him of having spoken treasonable words, and witmesses were summoned before the magistrates at Wakefield to depose

against him. Fortunately for him, he learnt this in time to present himself, and confront the witnesses. He had prayed that the Lord would call home his banished ones; and this the accusers construed, in good faith, to mean the Pretender. The words would have had that meaning from the mouth of a Jacobite. But Charles Wesley, with perfect sincerity, disclaimed any such intention. "I had no thoughts," he said, " of praying for the Pretender, but for those who confess themselves strangers and pilgrims upon earth,-who seek a country, knowing this is not their home. You, sir," he added, addressing himself to a clergyman upon the bench," you, sir, know that the Scriptures speak of us as captive exiles, who are absent from the Lord while present in the body. We are not at home till we are in Heaven." The magistrates were men of sense: they perceived that he explained himself clearly-that his declarations were frank and unequivocal, and they declared themselves perfectly satisfied.

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Yet these aspersions tended to aggravate the increasing obloquy under which the Wesleys and their followers were now labouring. "Every Sunday," says Charles, " damnation is denounced against all who hear us, for we are Papists, Jesuits, seducers, and bringers-in of the Pretender. The clergy murmur aloud at the number of communicants, and threaten to repel them." He was himself repelled at Bristol, with circumstances of indecent violence. "Wives and children," he says, are beaten and turned out of doors, and the . persecutors are the complainers: it is always the lamb that troubles the water!" A maid-servant was turned away by her master, "because," he said, "he would have none in his house who had received the Holy Ghost !"-She had been thrown into the convulsions of Methodism, and continued in them fourteen hours. This happened at Bath, where, as Charles expresses himself, "Satan took it ill to be attacked in his head-quarters." John had a curious interview there with Beau Nash, for it was in his reign. While he was preaching, this remarkable personage entered the room, came close to the preacher, and demanded of him by what authority he was acting. Wesley made answer, By that of Jesus Christ, conveyed to me by the present Archbishop of Canterbury, when he laid his hands upon me and said, Take thou authority to preach the Gospel."Nash then affirmed that he was acting contrary to the laws: "Besides," said he, "your preaching frightens people out of their wits." "Sir," replied Wesley, "did you ever hear me preach ?”—“No,” said the Master of the Ceremonies. "How then can you judge of what you never heard ?” Nash made answer, " By common report." "Sir," said Wesley, "is not your name Nash ? I dare not judge of you by common report: I think it not enough to judge by." However accurate common report might have been, and however rightly Nash might have judged of the extravagance of Methodism, he was delivering opinions in the wrong place; and when he desired to know what the people came there for, one of the congregation cried out, "Let an old woman answer him :-you, Mr. Nash, take care of your body, we take care of our souls, and for the food of our souls we come here." He found himself a very different person in the meeting-house from what he was in the pump-room or the assembly, and thought it best to withdraw.

But Wesley had soon to encounter more dangerous opposition. Bristol was the first place where he received any serious disturbance from the rabble. After several nights of prelusive uproar, the mob assembled in great strength. "Not only the courts and the alleys," he says, "but all the street upwards and downwards, was filled with people, shouting, cursing, and swearing, and ready to swallow the ground with fierceness and rage. They set the orders of the magistrates at nought, and grossly abused the chief constable, till a party of peace officers arrived and took the ringleaders into custody. When they were brought up before the mayor, Mr. Combe, they began to excuse themselves, by reviling Wesley; but the mayor properly cut them short by saying, "What Mr. Wesley is, is nothing to you. I will keep the peace. I will have no rioting in this city.

And such was the effect of this timely and determined interposition of the civil power, that the Methodists were never again disturbed by the rabble at Bristol. In London also the same ready protection was afforded. The chairman of the Middlesex justices, hearing of the disposition which the mob had shown, called upon Mr. Wesley, and telling him that such things were not to be suffered, added, "Sir, I and the other Middlesex magistrates have orders from above to do you justice whenever you apply to us." This assistance he applied for when the mob stoned him and his followers in the streets, and attempted to unroof the Foundry. At Chelsea they threw wildfire and crackers into the room where he was preaching. At Long Lane they broke in the roof with large stones, so that the people within were in danger of their lives. Wesley addressed the rabble without effect; he then sent out three or four steady and resolute men to seize one of the ringleaders they brought him into the house, cursing and blaspheming, despatched him under a good escort to the nearest justice, and bound him over to the next sessions at Guildford. A remarkable circumstance occurred during this scene. One of the stoutest champions of the rioters was struck with sudden contrition, and came into the room with a woman who had been as ferocious as himself— both to fall upon their kneee, and acknowledge the mercy of God.

These disturbances were soon suppressed in the metropolis and its vicinity, where the magistrates knew their duty, and were ready to perform it; but in some parts of the country, the very persons whose office it was to preserve the peace, instigated their neighbours and dependents to break it. Wesley had preached at Wednesbury, in Staffordshire, both in the town-hall, and in the open air, without molestation. The colliers in the neighbourhood had listened to him peaceably; and between three and four hundred persons formed themselves into a society as Methodists. Mr. Egginton, the minister of that town, was at first pleased with this; but offence was given him hy some great indiscretion, and from that time he began to oppose the Methodists by the most outrageous means. Some of the neighbouring magistrates were ignorant enough of their duty, both as magistrates and as men, to assist him in stirring up the rabble, and to refuse to act in behalf of the Methodists, when their persons and property were attacked. Mobs were collected by the sound of horn, windows were demolished, houses broken open, goods destroyed or stolen, men, women, and children beaten, pelted, and dragged in the