Chapter XII: Part 12

Only two days afterwards, he forged the name of Lord Chesterfield to a bond for £4200, on the security of which he obtained a considerable loan. Detection speedily ensued; and, before the month was ended, he was arrested, tried at the Old Bailey, and was convicted. The crime was forgery; the penalty was death. For four months, the unhappy culprit was kept in prison. His friends were indefatigable, in their endeavours, to obtain a commutation of his punishment. Even the city of London, in its corporate capacity, earnestly solicited that his sentence might not be carried into effect. Dr. Johnson, with his weighty pen, tried to arouse popular feeling in his favour, alleging that petitions for clemency had been signed by above thirty thousand people, and that justice might reasonably be satisfied with his imprisonment, infamy, exile, penury, and ruin. All was of no avail; and on June 26 the great preacher died a felon’s death by the hands of the common hangman.

In the days of his prosperity, Dodd had been in the ranks of Wesley’s enemies; and, more than once, had reviled him, his people, and his creed; and, yet, strange to tell, no sooner was he incarcerated for his crime, than he sent for Wesley to visit him. The latter writes: “1777, February 15--At the third message, I took up my cross, and went to see Dr. Dodd, in the Compter. I was greatly surprised. He seemed, though deeply affected, yet thoroughly resigned to the will of God. Mrs. Dodd, likewise, behaved with the utmost propriety. I doubt not, God will bring good out of this evil.” “February 18--I visited him again, and found him still in a desirable state of mind; calmly giving himself up to whatsoever God should determine concerning him.”

Both Wesley and his brother had always evinced an almost unequalled interest in the welfare of imprisoned convicts; but, remembering past treatment from this popular, but now incarcerated, preacher, and also remembering the terrible scandal which he had brought upon Christ’s religion, no wonder that Wesley felt it a _cross_ to visit him. Wesley, however, was not the man to shun a duty because it happened to be painful; and there can be no doubt that, if his itinerant engagements had not taken him away from London, the gloom of the convict’s cell would often have been relieved, during the next four months, by Wesley’s presence.

Wesley had never even seen Dr. Dodd, either in public or in private, until he saw him in Wood Street compter, a few days before his removal to Newgate to take his trial. “Sir,” said the prisoner, “I have long desired to see you; but I little thought, that our first interview would be in such a place as this.” “We conversed,” says Wesley, “about an hour; he spoke of nothing but his soul, and appeared to regard nothing in comparison of it.” At the second interview, Wesley spent half an hour with the poor wretched man. “Sir,” said he, “do not you find it difficult to preserve your recollection, amidst all these lawyers and witnesses?” Dodd answered: “It is difficult; but I have one sure hold: ‘Lord, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.’” The third visit was after his sentence had been passed. Wesley writes: “He conversed about an hour; but had not one word about any but spiritual things. I found his mind still quiet and composed; sorrowing, but not without hope.” Two days before the execution, Wesley went again. “Sir,” said he, “I think you do not ask enough, or expect enough, from God your Saviour. The _present_ blessing, you may expect from Him, is to be filled with all joy, as well as peace in believing.” “O sir,” replied the doctor, “it is not for such a sinner as I am to expect any joy in this world. The utmost I can desire is peace; and, through the mercy of God, that I have.” Wesley adds: “We then spent a little time in prayer, and I solemnly commended him to God. He was exactly in such a temper as I wished. He never, at any time, expressed the least murmuring or resentment at any one; but entirely and calmly gave himself up to the will of God. Such a prisoner I scarce ever saw before; much less, such a condemned malefactor.”

This was Wesley’s last interview. Two days later, the once famous Dr. Dodd was hanged, Wesley expressing the firm belief, that angels took him from the gallows to the paradise of God.[281]

Perhaps more space has been devoted to Dr. Dodd than some may think fitting; but, remembering the positions occupied respectively by Dodd and Wesley,--the one the most popular and fashionable preacher that London had, and the other an outcast clergyman, who, for eight-and-thirty years, had been reviled in every form that malice and ingenuity could devise,--it was no slight fact, that, as soon as Dodd was face to face with death, the man he sent for was, not one of his old associates, lay or clerical, but the man who had been, and still was, the butt of national persecution, and whom he himself in the days of his prosperity had treated disrespectfully. Dr. Dodd, when he most needed them, had more faith in Wesley’s counsels and Wesley’s prayers than he had in the counsels and prayers of those whom he had been accustomed to call his friends. His confidence was not misplaced. Wesley did his best; Wesley’s brother poured forth the feelings of his heart in “A Prayer for Dr. Dodd under Condemnation”; and Miss Bosanquet wrote to the poor prisoner not a few of her Christian letters. The result was, Dodd, on the very day of Wesley’s final visit, thus addressed his lady correspondent: “My dear Friend,--On Friday morning I am to be made immortal! I die with a heart truly contrite, and broken under a sense of its great and manifold offences, but comforted and sustained by a firm faith in the pardoning love of Jesus Christ.”[282]

On the 10th of March, Wesley left London on a seventeen days’ preaching tour to Bristol and back again. This was the year for his pastoral visitation in the north; but, he writes, “I cannot be long absent” from London, “while the new chapel is building.” In fact, Wesley became so interested in his great building scheme, that he was tempted to turn architect himself. “It seems,” says he in a letter to Miss Ball, of Wycombe, dated March 13, 1777, “it seems, the time is come, that you are to have a more commodious preaching house at High Wycombe. I will give you a plan of the building myself; and employ whom you please to build.”[283] After all, the Methodists at Wycombe might have had a worse architect than Wesley.

Ten days were spent in London, and, it being Easter time, Wesley writes: “During the octave, I administered the Lord’s supper every morning, after the example of the primitive church.” On Sunday, April 6, he set out on his northern journey, making collections, as he went, for his London chapel. When he had got only as far as Lancashire, he was obliged to return to London to lay the foundation stone on April 21. A week later, he took coach for Newcastle upon Tyne. Here he spent four days, and then again turned his face southward; and, preaching all the way, reached the metropolis on the 17th of May.

Having met the building committee, which was his chief business in London, and having, with his brother, visited Dr. Dodd, he, a third time, started north on Sunday, May 25. He now hurried on to Whitehaven, and paid his first visit to the Isle of Man, where he spent the first three days in the month of June, and says: “A more loving, simple hearted people than this I never saw; and no wonder; for they have but six papists, and no Dissenters, in the island.”

Here he met with the Rev. E. and Mrs. Smyth, the former a clergyman from Ireland, and the latter a young wife of twenty-two. Mr. Smyth had been ejected from his curacy for preaching the doctrines of the Methodists, and especially for daring to reprove “the great man of the parish” for living the life of an adulterer. Expelled from the Established Church, he began to preach wherever he had a chance, and became more extensively useful than ever. Though the nephew of an archbishop, his home was a thatched cabin, and his trials not a few. Hearing that Wesley was about to visit the Isle of Man, Mr. Smyth and his wife came to meet him. Wesley received them with his customary kindness, and, during their stay, met with a misadventure, which is worth relating. He writes: “I set out for Douglas in the one-horse chaise, Mrs. Smyth riding with me. In about an hour, in spite of all I could do, the headstrong horse ran the wheel against a large stone: the chaise overset in a moment; but we fell so gently on the smooth grass, that neither of us was hurt at all.”

Such is Wesley’s account; Mrs. Smyth’s reflects on Wesley’s charioteering capabilities. “He told me,” she writes, “when we got into the carriage, that he could drive a chaise forty years ago; but, poor dear man! his hand seemed out of practice, as I thought we should be overturned several times. At last, one of the wheels being mounted on one side of a ditch, we were both pitched out on a green plain, as the Lord in mercy ordered it; for had we been overset in some parts of the road, it is more than probable we should have been killed on the spot. I found no bad effects from the fall at the time; but the next morning I was scarce able to stir, and felt so sore and bruised that I thought it likely I should lay my bones in the churchyard at Douglas.”[284]

We shall meet with Mr. and Mrs. Smyth again; suffice it to add, that, immediately after preaching at Douglas, Wesley set sail for England; and, a few days after, his newly acquired friends went back to Ireland, while he himself went on his way to London. In his progress, he, for the first time, preached at Settle, where Methodism had recently been introduced by John Read, a poor clogger, and where one of the first members was Edward Slater, who became Wesley’s coachman.[285]

Wesley proceeded to Otley, where Miss Ritchie, apparently, was dying; to Bradford, where William Brammah, one of Wesley’s weakest preachers, had been amazingly useful; to Birstal and Huddersfield, where thousands upon thousands assembled to hear him; and to Colne, where, as soon as he entered the pulpit, the left hand gallery of the chapel fell, with nearly two hundred persons in it.

William Sagar, a young man not then in business for himself, had been the principal promoter of this erection, and had made himself responsible for the payment of the cost. When the walls were half way up, the workmen became clamorous for their wages; and Mr. Sagar unfortunately was without funds; but, two or three days afterwards, a gentleman, unsolicited, offered to lend him the money needed. One trouble was got over, but another was yet to come. When the ill fated chapel was ready for the roof, a gale of wind blew down the western gable, and shook the entire edifice to its foundations. And now, to crown the whole, through the malevolence of a carpenter who had purposely cut the timbers too short, down fell the left hand gallery; and, though no lives were lost, yet not a few of the people had their limbs broken, and were otherwise severely injured.[286]

It was at this period that Colne was made the head of what Thomas Taylor called “a snug circuit”; though the circuit embraced the entire region constituting the Todmorden, Bacup, Haslingden, Blackburn, Burnley, Preston, Garstang, Lancaster, Clitheroe, and Padiham circuits of the present day. Taylor was the assistant of the circuit before it was made so _snug_, and was Wesley’s companion at the time of the Colne catastrophe. In his voluminous unpublished diary, he tells us, that at Otley, Wesley not only preached, but made a collection for his London chapel; at Bingley, he preached in the parish church; at Keighley, after preaching, Wesley stood on one side of the path and Taylor on the other, and, with their hats in their hands, collected upwards of £7 for the new chapel in City Road; at Colne, Taylor was with Wesley in the pulpit when the gallery fell. He writes: “Oh, what a scene ensued. The dismal shrieks of those whose limbs were broken, or who were otherwise injured, and the cries of the women for their children, were terrible. Happily no lives were lost, and much less damage done than might have been expected. As soon as the confusion was abated, Mr. Wesley preached out of doors; but the catastrophe prevented many from hearing.”[287]

Wesley proceeded to Derby, where, strangely enough, another accident occurred, which might have been as serious as that at Colne. An hour before the congregation assembled in the chapel, part of the roof fell in; the people, however, rushed to hear, despite the doubtful state of the flimsy edifice; and, among others permanently benefited by Wesley’s ministry, was Catherine Spencer, who, for sixty-four years, adorned her religious profession by “a meek and quiet spirit,” and who died at the age of eighty-six, in 1843.[288]

Wesley got back to London on June 21, and, a week later, wrote: “June 28--I have now completed my seventy-fourth year, and, by the peculiar favour of God, I find my health and strength, and all my faculties of body and mind, just the same as they were at four-and-twenty.”

A man, on his birthday, frequently reviews the past, sifts the present, and reflects upon the future. At this period Wesley wrote as follows to his legal friend, Walter Churchey, of Brecon, the birthplace of Thomas Coke.

“MY DEAR BROTHER,--At present, I am very safe; for I am a good
many pounds, if not scores of pounds, worse than nothing. In my
will, I bequeath no money but what may happen to be in my
pocket when I die.

“Dr. Coke promises fair, and gives us reason to hope, that he
will, bring forth, not only blossoms, but fruit. He has
hitherto behaved exceeding well, and seems to be aware of his
grand enemy--applause. He will likewise be in danger from
offence. If you are acquainted with him, a friendly letter
might be of use, and would be taken kindly. He now stands on
slippery ground, and is in need of every help.

“I am your affectionate brother,

“JOHN WESLEY.”[289]

Having spent nine days in London, Wesley set out, on June 30, on a preaching tour which occupied the whole of the ensuing month. Proceeding by way of Buckingham, he visited Oxford, Witney, Stroud, Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Worcester, Malvern; and then passed through Wales to Bristol, which he reached on July 28.

Here, on August 5, he opened his annual conference, and writes:

“As the report had been spread far and wide, I now particularly
inquired of every assistant, ‘Have you reason to believe, from
your own observation, that the Methodists are a fallen people?
Is there a decay or an increase in the work of God where you
have been? Are the societies in general more dead, or more
alive to God, than they were some years ago?’ The almost
universal answer was: ‘If we must know them by their fruits,
there is no decay in the work of God among the people in
general. The societies are not dead to God: they are as much
alive as they have been for many years. And we look on this
report as a mere device of Satan, to make our hands hang down.’

“‘But how can this question be decided?’ You can judge no
further than you see. You cannot judge of one part by another;
and none but myself has an opportunity of seeing the Methodists
throughout the three kingdoms.

“But to come to a short issue. In most places, the Methodists
are still a poor, despised people, labouring under reproach,
and many inconveniences; therefore, wherever the power of God
is not, they decrease. By this then, you may form a sure
judgment. Do the Methodists in general decrease in number? Then
they decrease in grace; they are a fallen, or, at least, a
falling people. But they do not decrease in number; they
continually increase; therefore, they are not a fallen people.”

These are weighty words. They show Wesley’s deep anxiety to maintain the genuine character of the work in which he was engaged; and the test which he instituted was, unquestionably, under existing circumstances, logical and conclusive.

The principal propagator of the report, that the Methodists were a fallen people, was John Hilton, who, for thirteen years, had been an itinerant preacher. Dr. Stevens calls him “an honest but weak headed man.” This is scarcely correct. Leaving his honesty an open question, John Hilton, judged by his publications, was far from being “weak headed.” Wesley says: “He told us he must withdraw from our connexion. Some would have reasoned with him, but it was lost labour; so we let him go in peace.” Hilton was no sooner gone, than he turned author, and, in 1778, besides an octavo pamphlet of 32 pages, entitled, “The Deplorable State of Man,” he issued “Reasons for Quitting the Methodist Society; being a Defence of Barclay’s Apology;” 8vo, 66 pages. Dated, “Melksham, 3rd month, 28th day, 1778.” He tells his readers, that, “a year ago, Barclay’s Apology converted him to the principles of the quakers;” and a broadbrimmed quaker John Hilton henceforwards was. Both his pamphlets are written in a plain, good, nervous style, and show, that, in point of education and mental power, he was much superior to the mass of Wesley’s itinerants.[290] Hilton was not without talent; but like most who think themselves more religious than their neighbours, he was sour and censorious. “What I have lamented in him, for some years,” wrote Wesley, in a letter, dated October 22, 1777, “is an aptness to condemn and despise his brethren. There is no failing more infectious than this; and it is much if you did not catch a little of it from him; otherwise you would hardly say, ‘the body of Methodists are degenerated.’ You cannot possibly judge whether they are or not. Perhaps you converse with one or two hundred of them. Now allowing two thirds of these to be degenerated, can you infer the same concerning thirty or forty thousand? Yet this I will allow, two thirds of those who are grown rich are greatly degenerated. They do not, will not, save all they can, in order to give all they can; and, without doing this, they _cannot grow in grace_, nay, they constantly grieve the Holy Spirit of God.”[291]

Thomas Taylor was at the conference of 1777, and tells us that, on the conference Sunday, the morning service, in the Broadmead chapel, lasted from half-past nine till nearly one o’clock; that, at five in the afternoon, Wesley preached to a large and serious crowd out of doors, and afterwards, in a full society meeting, “expatiated upon the rules, and said many useful things.” He preached again in the evening of the first day of conference, but not longer than twenty minutes. On August 7, Taylor writes: “that great and good man Mr. Fletcher came into conference. My eyes flowed with tears at the sight of him. He spoke to us in a very respectful manner, and took a solemn farewell. Dear, good man! I never saw so many tears shed in all my life.”[292]

Fletcher had sought health at Stoke Newington; but was now the guest of Mr. Ireland, of Bristol. Benson, his fellow sufferer in the Trevecca troubles, writes: “We have had an edifying conference. Mr. Fletcher’s visits have been attended with a blessing. His appearance, his exhortations, and his prayers, broke most of our hearts, and filled us with shame and self abasement for our little improvement.”[293]

This was a memorable scene. Fletcher, emaciated, feeble, and ghostlike, entered the conference leaning on the arm of his host, Mr. Ireland. In an instant, the whole assembly stood up, and Wesley advanced to meet his almost seraphic friend. The apparently dying man began to address the brave itinerants, and, before he had uttered a dozen sentences, one and all were bathed in tears. Wesley, fearing that Fletcher was speaking too much, abruptly knelt at his side and began to pray. Down fell the whole of Wesley’s preachers, and joined in the devotion of their great leader. The burden of Wesley’s supplication was, that his friend might be spared to labour a little longer; and this petition was urged with such fervency and faith, that, at last, Wesley closed by exclaiming with a confidence and an emphasis which seemed to thrill every heart: “He shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.”[294]

The event verified Wesley’s words; for though the pilgrim was already walking on the margin of the river of death, and had heaven’s own sunshine shining on him, it was not until eight years after that he passed the gates of the celestial city.

At the conference of 1776, it was reported, that there were 3148 Methodists in America; in the minutes of 1777, America is not mentioned. Still, American Methodism was not dead. “I have just received two letters from New York,” writes Wesley on January 11, 1777. “They inform me, that all the Methodists there are firm for the government, and, on that account, persecuted by the rebels, only not to the death; that the preachers are still threatened, but not stopped; and, that the work of God increases much in Maryland and Virginia.”[295]

The war was raging with terrific violence; and some of the preachers, as Mr. Rodda, were not so wise, politically speaking, as seemed desirable: but, despite all this, Methodism actually spread and prospered. Thomas Rankin, George Shadford, and others thought of fleeing from the field of conflict; and it was only by Asbury’s solicitation, that they were induced to stay awhile longer. The baptists too became a hindrance. “Like ghosts,” says Asbury, “they haunt us from place to place.” Wesley’s political tracts also were a serious stumbling block.[296] A Methodist backslider enlisted three hundred men for the British army, was arrested, and hanged as a rebel against the government of his country.[297] Even peaceful, prudent, and loyal Francis Asbury was fined £5 for preaching at Nathan Perrig’s; and, in October 1777, Rankin and Rodda returned to England, and Shadford soon after, leaving poor, persecuted, but faithful Asbury the only one of Wesley’s itinerants that now remained at the post of duty, and preaching peace to the people by Jesus Christ.

And here let us pause to say, that a grander specimen of a Christian apostle than Francis Asbury the world has never had. Much as we revere the memory of Wesley, we regard Asbury with an almost equal veneration. Among the self denying, laborious, Christian ministers of the past eighteen hundred years, we believe, that Francis Asbury has no superiors, and but few that can be considered equals. And yet, how little does the church catholic, indeed, how little does the Methodist section of it, know concerning this great and grand, because good, old man!

The son of peasant parents, Asbury began to preach in Staffordshire, while yet a boy seventeen years of age; and, in 1771, came to Bristol to embark for America, without a single penny in his pocket. His first text in America was in perfect harmony with the forty-five years he spent in wandering through its woods and prairies: “I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” As early as 1776, he made it a rule, besides travelling and preaching, to read a hundred pages daily, and to spend three hours out of every twenty-four in private prayer. Cabins of the most miserable description were, in thousands of instances, his happy homes; and often, when his horse cast a shoe in the wide wilderness, in the absence of a blacksmith’s shop, this grand old bishop of the American Methodists would make a piece of a bull’s hide, bound about his horse’s foot, serve in the place of iron. His daily rides were often from thirty to fifty miles, over mountains and swamps, through bridgeless rivers and pathless woods, his horse frequently weary and lame, and he himself wet, cold, and hungry. For forty-five years, when steamboats, stage coaches, railways, and almost roads, were utterly unknown, Asbury made a tour of the American states, travelling never less than five thousand, and often more than six thousand, miles a year, and this generally on horseback; climbing mountains; creeping down declivities; winding along valleys, whose only inhabitants were birds, wild beasts, and Indians; crossing extended prairies without a companion and without a guide; fording foaming rivers; and wading through the most dangerous swamps, where one false step might have engulfed him in a boggy grave. Usually, he preached at least once every week day, and thrice every Sunday; delivering, during his ministry in America, more than twenty thousand sermons. His custom was to pray with every family on whom he called in his wide journeyings; and if, as sometimes happened, he spent more days than one in some hospitable dwelling, he was wont to have household prayer as often as there were household meals, and to allow no visitor to come or go, without asking, on his knees, that God would bless him. Besides an unknown number of camp meetings and quarterly meetings, this venerable man attended and presided over seven conferences, widely separate, every year; and, during the same space of time, wrote to his preachers and his friends, upon an average, about a thousand letters. For this enormous service, his episcopal salary was sixty-four dollars yearly and his travelling expenses. Early educational advantages he had none. Most of his life was spent on horseback, in extemporised pulpits, or in log cabins crowded with talking men and noisy women, bawling children, and barking dogs,--cabins which he was obliged to make his offices and studies, and where, with benumbed fingers, frozen ink, impracticable pens, and rumpled paper, he had to write his sermons, his journals, and his letters. Not unfrequently did he, like others, suffer from the malaria of a new, uncultivated country; and had headaches, toothaches, chills, fevers, and sore throats, for his travelling companions. And yet, despite all this, Francis Asbury was by no means an unlettered man. He became proficient in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; read the Scriptures in the tongues in which they were originally written; was acquainted with several branches of polite literature; kept abreast with the history of his times; and, although not an orator, was a dignified, eloquent, and impressive preacher. Thin, tall, and remarkably clean and neat,--in a plain drab frock coat, waistcoat, and breeches, a neat stock, and a broad brimmed, low crowned hat,--this first and greatest Methodist American bishop rode on horseback till he could ride no longer; and then might be seen often hopping on crutches, and helped in and out of his light spring wagon as he still pursued his wide episcopal wanderings. Thus lived Francis Asbury, until, in 1816, at the age of threescore years and ten, he died, and was followed to his grave in Baltimore by about twenty-five thousand of his friends. Before his death, he solemnly enjoined that no life of him should be published; and that injunction, to the present, has been substantially observed; but, if the reader wishes to see his monument, we invite him to step within the living walls of the present Methodist Episcopal Church of America, and there, while surveying the grand edifice of spiritual order and beauty, we ask him, as the inquirer in St. Paul’s cathedral is asked, to “Look around!”

This was the only one of Wesley’s English itinerants left in America in 1777; but, though forsaken by his English colleagues, he was not alone. At this very time, there were fifteen widely spread circuits; thirty-four itinerant preachers, who had been raised up by Providence on the spot; and not fewer than 6968 full and accredited members of society. In other words, though it was only eight years since Wesley’s conference had sent out Boardman and Pilmoor, there were already more than one sixth as many Methodists in America as there were, at the end of thirty-eight years, throughout the whole of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.[298]

To return to Wesley. After the Bristol conference, he spent a week in London, during which he drew up proposals for the _Arminian Magazine_, and met the committee appointed to superintend the building of the new chapel, which was now ready for the roof.

He then, on August 18, hurried off to Cornwall; and then to Ireland, where, at Dublin, John Hampson and Samuel Bradburn had expelled thirty-four members of society, who were so dissatisfied with this act of imprudent zeal, that Wesley was obliged to go and give the contending parties a two days’ hearing. On Saturday, October 18, he got back to London.

The week after, he spent in Oxfordshire. At High Wycombe he meant to preach, “but good Mr. James had procured a drummer to beat his drum at the window of the chapel,” and thus, instead of preaching, Wesley could only pray and sing by turns, during the time allotted for the service.

The next week was occupied in a preaching tour in Northamptonshire; and the fortnight afterwards in meeting the classes in and around London.

On November 17, he went on a flying visit to Norfolk; and, on the 23rd, preached in Lewisham church for the benefit of the Humane Society, which had been established only three years before, by Dr. Cogan and Dr. Hawes. Here, of course, he was the welcome guest of his old friend, Mr. Blackwell; and, during his visit, he dined with the celebrated Dr. Lowth, bishop of London, whose brother had married into Mr. Blackwell’s family. “His whole behaviour,” writes Wesley, “was worthy of a Christian bishop; easy, affable, and courteous; and, yet, all his conversation spoke the dignity which was suitable to his character.” There is one incident, however, which Wesley, in his modesty, has not related. On proceeding to dinner, the bishop refused to sit above Wesley at the table, saying with considerable emotion, “Mr. Wesley, may I be found at your feet in another world!” Wesley objected to take the seat of precedence, when the learned prelate obviated the difficulty, by requesting, as a favour, that Wesley would sit above him, because his hearing was defective, and he desired not to lose a sentence of Wesley’s conversation.[299]

The remaining five weeks of the year 1777 were spent, partly in the three counties of Bedford, Huntingdon, and Hertford; partly at Bath, where he laid the foundation stone of a new chapel; and partly in London, where he parted with Fletcher on his way to Switzerland. He says: “We concluded the old year, and began the new, with prayer and thanksgiving. Four or five of the local preachers assisted me. I was agreeably surprised; their manner of praying being so artless and unlaboured, and yet rational and scriptural, both as to sense and expression.”

Such was Wesley’s watchnight service at the expiration of 1777; no preaching, no exhortatory platitudes, but simply prayer and thanksgiving, offered by himself and a selection of his London local preachers. Wesley’s successors have not improved on this.

It was during this memorable year, that a society was instituted, which was ultimately superseded by benevolent societies that yet exist. Six friends in London met, at each other’s house in rotation, every Sunday afternoon, for the purpose of singing and prayer only. They were soon entreated to visit the surrounding sick, and, finding many of them in deep poverty, began to relieve their wants. To do this, they found it desirable to provide a fund, by contributing themselves, and asking contributions of their friends; and shortly a society was formed, sometimes called “The Willow Walk Society, near Moorfields”; but more generally and properly, “The united Society for Visiting and Relieving the Sick.” A few years later, the “Strangers’ Friend Society” was started. John Gardner, a retired soldier, in his London visits, met a man in a miserable garret, dying of fistula. He lay on the floor, covered only with a sack, without shirt, cap, or sheet. The old soldier felt, as every one must feel, that to visit such cases, without relieving them, was not worthy of a Christian; and, returning home, he got fifteen of his Methodist friends to join in a penny a week subscription for such a purpose. His classleader, jealous of his class-pence moneys, instead of helping, opposed the scheme. Gardner, with a soldier’s pluck, was not to be silenced by a subordinate, but wrote at once to Wesley.

“REVEREND AND DEAR SIR,--A few of us are subscribing a penny a
week each, which is to be carried on the sabbath by one of
ourselves, who read and pray with the afflicted, who, according
to the rules enclosed, must be poor strangers, having no
parish, or friend at hand to help them. Our benevolent plan is
opposed by my classleader; therefore, we are constrained to
seek your approbation before we proceed. We are very poor, and
our whole stock is not yet twenty shillings: will thank you,
therefore, for any assistance you may please to afford your
very humble servant,

“JOHN GARDNER.”

Wesley was the last man to stifle a project like this; and, hence, his answer “to Mr. John Gardner, No. 14, in Long Lane, Smithfield,” was as follows.

“HIGHBURY PLACE, _December 21, 1785_.

“MY DEAR BROTHER,--I like the design and rules of your society,
and hope you will do good to many. I will subscribe threepence
a week, and will give a guinea in advance, if any one will call
on me on Saturday morning.

“I am your affectionate brother,

“JOHN WESLEY.”

The scheme was now fairly launched; “Strangers’ Friend societies” sprung up in Bristol and other places; Wesley drew up their rules in 1790; and wrote thus in his journal: “Sunday, March 14--In the morning, I met the strangers’ society, instituted wholly for the relief, not of our society, but for poor, sick, friendless strangers. I do not know, that I ever heard or read of such an institution till within a few years ago. So this also is one of the fruits of Methodism.”[300]

Such then was the origin of the present “Strangers’ Friend Society,” which, until lately, was patronised by royalty, and which employed, in 1868, three hundred and fifty-two voluntary, unpaid agents in its work of Christian benevolence; these good Samaritans, during the same year, paying 32,460 visits, relieving 6577 cases of distress, and, besides blankets, flannels, and cast off garments, distributing £1926 14_s._ in ameliorating the miseries of “the destitute sick poor, without distinction of sect or country, at their own habitations.”

Considering Wesley’s wide wanderings, his daily preaching, his supervision of societies, and his multifarious correspondence, to say nothing of his publication of tracts and books, the reader wonders how an old man managed to keep the thousand wheels of his vast machinery in motion; and, yet, in the midst of what to others would have been an unceasing and worrying bustle, he was almost as tranquil as a hermit. The following extract from a letter, dated December 10, 1777, is racy and unique.

“You do not understand my manner of life. Though I am always in
haste, I am never in a hurry; because I never undertake any
more work than I can go through with perfect calmness of
spirit. It is true, I travel four or five thousand miles in a
year; but I generally travel alone in my carriage, and,
consequently, am as retired ten hours in a day as if I was in a
wilderness. On other days, I never spend less than three hours,
frequently ten or twelve in the day, alone. So there are few
persons in the kingdom who spend so many hours secluded from
all company. Yet I find time to visit the sick and the poor;
and I must do it, if I believe the Bible, if I believe these
are the marks whereby the Shepherd of Israel will know and
judge His sheep at the great day. Therefore, when there are
time and opportunity for it, who can doubt, but this is a
matter of absolute duty? When I was at Oxford, and lived almost
like a hermit, I saw not how any busy man could be saved. I
scarce thought it possible for a man to retain the Christian
spirit, amidst the noise and bustle of the world. God taught me
better by my own experience. I had ten times more business in
America (that is, at intervals) than ever I had in my life; but
it was no hindrance to silence of spirit.”[301]

Wesley’s incessant labours were not the only thing likely to perturb a human spirit. As usual, he was still the subject of acrimonious persecution. In his sermon at the laying of the foundation stone of the chapel in City Road, he gave a history of the rise and progress of Methodism, in which he stated, that Whitefield, by conversing with Dissenters, contracted strong prejudices against the Church, and that this led him to separate himself from Wesley and his brother. He also noticed the secession of Ingham from the Church; and the setting up of the college at Trevecca, which was really a school for training Dissenting ministers. His object, in all this, was to show that, though large numbers of reputed Methodists had left the Church, he and his societies still remained faithful, and were not deserving of the taunt of having formed a distinct party. “We do not,” says he, “we will not, form any separate sect, but, from principle, remain, what we always have been, true members of the Church of England.”

Whether Wesley was strictly correct in this will admit of doubt; but, unquestionably, he believed it to be the truth; and, as might be expected, it aroused the anger of his quondam friends. Rowland Hill worked himself into a rage, and published, in 1777, an octavo pamphlet of 40 pages, with the title, “Imposture Detected, and the Dead Vindicated; in a Letter to a Friend: containing some gentle Strictures on the false and libellous Harangue, lately delivered by Mr. John Wesley, upon his laying the first stone of his new Dissenting meeting-house, near the City Road.” Wesley’s sermon is designated “a wretched harangue, from which the blessed name of Jesus is almost totally excluded.” Mr. Hill remarks: “by only erasing about half-a-dozen lines from the whole, I might defy the shrewdest of his readers to discover whether the _lying apostle_ of the Foundery be a Jew, a papist, a pagan, or a Turk.” He speaks of “the late ever memorable Mr. Whitefield being scratched out of his grave, by the claws of a designing wolf,” meaning, of course, Wesley. He brands Wesley as “a libeller,” “a dealer in stolen wares,” and “as being as unprincipled as a rook, and as silly as a jackdaw, first pilfering his neighbour’s plumage, and then going proudly forth, displaying his borrowed tail to the eyes of a laughing world.” Hill continues: “persons that are toad eaters to Mr. John Wesley stand in need of very wide throats, and that which he wishes them to swallow is enough to choke an elephant.” “He is for ever going about, raising Dissenting congregations, and building Dissenting meeting-houses the kingdom over.” “Venom distils from his graceless pen.” “Mr. Whitefield is blackened by the venomous quill of this grey headed enemy to all righteousness.” “Wesley is a crafty slanderer, an unfeeling reviler, a liar of the most gigantic magnitude, a Solomon in a cassock, a wretch, a disappointed Orlando Furioso, a miscreant apostate, whose perfection consists in his perfect hatred of all goodness and good men.” “You cannot love the Church,” continues this meek and elegant evangelist, “unless you go to Wesley’s meeting-house; nor be a friend to the established bishops, priests, and deacons, unless you admire Wesley’s ragged legion of preaching barbers, cobblers, tinkers, scavengers, draymen, and chimney sweepers.”

Has the reader had enough from the “gentle strictures” of this young divine, not yet thirty-two years of age? Let him turn to the _Gospel Magazine_. In reviewing Wesley’s sermon at City Road, the _Gospel_ editor describes Wesley’s Methodism as a “jumble of heresies, truly and properly called Wesleyism”; and nothing “uttered by Satan himself can be more _impudent_ and more glaringly untrue” than when Wesley calls it “the old religion of the Bible, of the primitive church, and of the Church of England.” For him to say, that Lady Huntingdon “labours to form independent congregations, is as gross a falsehood as was ever coined at the Foundery itself. Mr. Wesley’s apostasy from the Church is a chief reason why her ladyship has justly discarded him; and her disavowal of him, of his Dissenting principles, and of his sectarian conduct, is the true reason, why he has the insolence to spit his venom against one of the most respectable characters that ever existed.” “With a baseness hardly to be paralleled, Mr. Wesley rakes into the ashes of a man, whose name will descend with lustre to the latest posterity; while that of the Foundery wolf will moulder with his pilfered writings, or only be remembered with contempt and execration. O Wesley, Wesley, hide thy diminutive head! nor let the most pestilent _Dissenter_ in the kingdom arraign the spotless memory of a _Churchman_, whose fervour and steadiness of attachment to his ecclesiastical mother have scarcely been equalled in the present age, and never exceeded in any. The truth is, Mr. Whitefield was _too much_ a Churchman for Mr. Wesley’s fanaticism to digest. O ye deluded followers of this horrid man, God open your eyes, and pluck your feet out of the net! lest ye sink into the threefold ditch of antichristian error, of foul antinomianism, and of eternal misery at last.”[302]

This was tolerably strong; but it was not enough. The same periodical, in its review of Rowland Hill’s polite pamphlet, begins thus: “Hob in the well again; or pope John once more in the suds! Seldom has literary punishment been administered with greater keenness and spirit, than in this pamphlet; and, surely, never was a punishment administered on a juster occasion, nor to a more deserving delinquent. When you take Old Nick by the nose, it must be with a pair of red hot tongs.” The red hot reviewer reiterates the slander, that Charles Wesley offered the Greek bishop, Erasmus, forty guineas, upon condition that he would give his brother episcopal ordination; and continues: “Mr. Wesley’s vile ingratitude to the name and memory of Mr. Whitefield deserves the abhorrence and execration of all good men.” Wesley is “an unfeeling and unprincipled slanderer, a vile traducer,” and, in fact, guilty of “an extreme of malignity and baseness, for which language has no name.”[303]

Such scurrility as this, heaped upon an old man, seventy-four years of age, who had spent his long life in unparalleled labours to honour God, and to benefit his fellow men, is almost incredible. But even this was not the worst that the immaculate _Gospel Magazine_ provided for its readers. In the same number, from which the above abuse is extracted, there is a long poem, entitled, “The Serpent and the Fox; or, an interview between old Nick and old John”; which strongly reminds us of a series of most infamous rhymed effusions which will have to be noticed in the ensuing year, and in which Wesley is always represented as a fox. The poem now published was not only foul, but, in the highest degree, profane. It would be a crime to reproduce it. Suffice it to say, that, as if to aggravate its infernal features, it immediately follows a really beautiful hymn of six stanzas “To God the Holy Ghost.” As a contrast, and to furnish a specimen of the medley often found in this Calvinistic periodical, we furnish the reader with the last verse of the thoroughly good hymn, and the first verse of the thoroughly bad poem. Addressing the Divine Spirit, John Stocker writes:

“Thou my dross and sin consume;
Let Thy inward kingdom come;
All my prayer and praise suggest;
Dwell and reign within my breast.”

We shrink from the task of so closely annexing to such a stanza, the first, and by far the least objectionable, lines of the ribald poem of “The Serpent and the Fox”; but historical fidelity compels us.

“There’s a Fox who resideth hard by,
The most perfect, and holy, and sly,
That e’er turned a coat, or could pilfer and lie;
As this reverend Reynard, one day,
Sat thinking what game next to play,
Old Nick came a seasonable visit to pay.”

Then follows a conversation, in which Wesley proposes to burn the Calvinists in Smithfield, as Bonner once burnt the protestants, and the devil promises, that, while Wesley shall be exalted “with state” to heaven’s “third storey,” all the Whitefields and Hills shall be “turned back from the gate.”

_Quantum sufficit!_ of Rowland Hill, both in prose and verse. What had Wesley to say to all this? In his journal he writes: “1777, June 26--I read the truly wonderful performance of Mr. Rowland Hill. I stood amazed! Compared to him, Mr. Toplady himself is a very civil, fair spoken gentleman! June 27--I wrote an answer to it; ‘not rendering railing for railing’ (I have not so learned Christ); but ‘speaking the truth in love.’”

Wesley’s reply was a penny tract of 12 pages, 12mo, with the title, “An Answer to Mr. Rowland Hill’s Tract, entitled, ‘Imposture Detected.’” He begins as follows: “In the tract just published by Mr. Rowland Hill, there are several _assertions_ which are _not true_. And the whole pamphlet is wrote in an _unchristian_ and _ungentlemanly manner_. I shall first set down the _assertions_ in order, and then proceed to the _manner_.” This is the strongest language Wesley uses. Indeed, he writes as though Hill’s pamphlet amused him rather than otherwise. Some of his friends, however, were not so lenient. Thomas Olivers rushed to the rescue, with his characteristic fire, and unmercifully put into the hands of the public a sixpenny “Rod for the Reviler”; and Matthew Goodenough, a mechanic, of Bishopsgate Street, published “A Letter to Mr. Rowland Hill,” 12mo, 21 pages, in which he tells “the reviler” that he had used a vindictive style of which a chimney sweep might properly be ashamed; and, from his malign spirit and rude manner of attacking Mr. Wesley, he might be mistaken for the chief of Billingsgate. Hill, as a preacher, is taunted with ranting, and roaring, and squealing, and bawling, and twisting, and twirling himself about like a merryandrew; and is told that, though “a Pelagian Methodist stinks,” it was a comfort that the name of Rowland Hill was “an odoriferous perfume, a charming nosegay, diffusing its fragrance wherever it appears, and sweetly and effectually extinguishing the fœtid exhalations of Pelagian ordure!”

Not only in the Welsh cobbler, but in the Bishopsgate mechanic, Rowland met with an Oliver; but, like a beaten bull dog, was not satisfied. He at once issued another octavo pamphlet of 45 pages, entitled, “A Full Answer to the Rev. J. Wesley’s Remarks,” etc., in which he humbly apologises for using too strong language in his former pamphlet; and yet, with a strange inconsistency, commits the same fault in this. Wesley is again accused of “pompous falsehood,” “barefaced untruth,” “ungodly craft,” “of calumniating the living, and traducing the dead.” “For full thirty years, Wesley had been travelling towards _Trent_, and was now got to his journey’s end”; while Fletcher--poor Fletcher, apparently dying of consumption--had “published, at the end of his third volume, a most horrible manifesto, in language almost blasphemous, and had forged my brother’s name” (Sir Richard Hill), “and mine, at the conclusion of it.”

But here we must leave this doughty warrior, to whom the very name of Wesley was what a scarlet cloak is to an infuriated bull. Some will object to the reviving of these disgraceful reminiscences. Our reiterated answer is, that, without them, it is impossible for the reader rightly to estimate the character of Wesley. If they reflect dishonour on Rowland Hill, we cannot help it. Rowland Hill was a public man, and, like all other public men, he must be content to pay a public penalty for his public crimes. Unfortunately, this is not the last we shall hear of him.

Besides those already mentioned, Wesley published, in 1777--

1. The sermon he preached, on April 21, at the laying of the foundation stone of City Road chapel. 12mo, 47 pages.

2. An Extract from his Journal, from September 2, 1770, to September 12, 1773. 12mo, 119 pages.

3. “A Short Account of the Death of Elizabeth Hindmarsh,” a native of Alnwick, “who died September 6, 1777, in the twenty-first year of her age.” 12mo, 12 pages.

4. “Thoughts upon God’s Sovereignty.” 12mo, 11 pages.

5. “A Sermon, preached November 23, 1777, in Lewisham Church, before the Humane Society.” 12mo, 24 pages.

FOOTNOTES:

[281] _Methodist Magazine_, 1783, p. 358.

[282] Life of C. Wesley, vol. ii., p. 311.

[283] Memoir of Ball, p. 137.

[284] Life of Mrs. Smyth, p. 33.

[285] Bardsley’s manuscript letters.

[286] Manuscript memoir of Mr. Sagar.

[287] Taylor’s manuscript diary.

[288] _Methodist Magazine_, 1844, p. 70.

[289] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 406.

[290] Mr. Moore says: “this good man was possessed of
eminent ministerial gifts, but he fell into the
mystic delusion. He then became high minded and
censorious; and Mr. Charles Wesley, in his hours
of depression, used too much to listen to him. The
quakers were jealous of him, and kept him silent a
long time, to his great mortification. But it was the
very thing he needed, it was good medicine to heal
his sickness. In one of his last conversations with
me, he said: ‘I would not have thy people to think of
changing; they may be disappointed,’ He was then in a
sweet and humble spirit, very different from that in
which he left us.” (Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. ii.,
pp. 273, 274.)

[291] _Methodist Magazine_, 1807, p. 328.

[292] Taylor’s manuscript diary.

[293] Treffry’s Life of Benson.

[294] “Anecdotes of the Wesleys,” p. 272.

[295] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 398.

[296] Asbury’s Journal, vol. i., p. 177.

[297] Smith’s History of Methodism, vol. i., p. 440.

[298] Minutes of Methodist Conferences in America, 1795.

[299] Jackson’s “Centenary of Methodism,” p. 201.

[300] See _Methodist Magazine_, 1845, p. 661.

[301] _Methodist Magazine_, 1799, p. 564.

[302] _Gospel Magazine_, 1777, p. 182.

[303] Ibid. p. 337.

1778.
Age 75

Never in his life was Wesley the subject of a more infamous press persecution than in 1778.

First of all, there was a pamphlet published, in which Thomas Maxfield was pitiably preeminent. This mendacious publication asserted that, when Whitefield went to America, in 1741, he handed over to the two Wesleys thirty thousand people, whose hearts the Wesleys so turned against him, that, when he returned to England, not three hundred would come to hear him. It further alleged, that “vile contentions” followed, in which the Wesleys “raked the filthiest ashes, to find some black story against their fellow preachers;” and that what had been published, on both sides, by the friends of Whitefield and Wesley, within the last six years, was a disgrace to all concerned.