CHAPTER XIV.

OUTCRY AGAINST METHODISM.-VIOLENCE OF MOBS AND MISCONDUCT OF MAGISTRATES.

METHODISM had now assumed some form and consistence. 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, assur ance, 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 self-sufficiency of fancied inspiration. Wesley himself added to the offence by the loftiness of his pretensions. In the preface to his 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 farther

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 so strong, that it sufficed sometimes to cure not only himself but his horse also. 66 My horse," he says, "was so exceedingly lame, that I was afraid I must have lain by. We could not discern what it was that was amiss, and yet he would scarce set his foot to the ground. By 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 headache ceased, and my horse's lameness in the same instant. Nor did he halt any more either that day or the next. A 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 judgement. 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 prepos terously 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 witnesses 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 claimed any such intention.

perfect sincerity, dis"I had no thoughts," Pretender, but for

he said, "of praying for the

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.

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