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Age 6)

ence.

teach you, but those that are themselves saved from sin. 2. Beware of that daughter of pride, enthusiasm. Do not hastily ascribe things to God. Do not easily suppose dreams, voices, impressions, visions, or revelations to be from God. They may be from Him. They may be from nature. They may be from the devil. Try all things by the written word, and let all bow down before it. 3. Beware of antinomianism, making void the law, or any part of it, through faith. Do not put your head on the hole of a cockatrice's den. Beware of Moravianism, the most refined antinomianism that ever was under the sun, producing the grossest libertinism, and most flagrant breach of every moral precept, such as could only have sprung from the abuse of true Christian experi

Beware of Moravian bigotry, stillness, self indulgence, censoriousness, and solifidianism. 4. Beware of sins of omission.

Lose no opportunity of doing good in any kind. Give no place to indolence. Lose no shred of time. Do not talk much; neither long at a time: few can converse profitably above an hour. Keep at the utmost distance from pious chit-chat, from religious gossiping. 5. Beware of desiring anything but God. Admit no desire of pleasing food, or of any pleasure of sense ; no desire of pleasing the eye, or the imagination, by anything grand, or new, or beautiful; no desire of money, of praise, or esteem; of happiness in any creature. 6. Beware of schism, of making a rent in the church of Christ. Do not extol, or run down, any preacher. Never omit meeting your class or band ; never absent yourself from any public meeting. These are the very sinews of our society. Beware of impatience of contradiction, of touchiness, of testiness. Beware of tempting others to separate from you. Be particularly careful in speaking of yourself. Avoid all magnificent, pompous words. 7. Be exemplary in all things : particularly in outward things, as in dress ; in little things; in laying out your money, avoiding every needless expense; in deep, steady seriousness; and in the solidity and usefulness of all your conversation.”

Such are some of the salient points in Wesley's “Farther Thoughts upon Christian Perfection." Opinions respecting them will vary; but all will admit the sincerity and intense earnestness of the man who wrote them.

Let us now track his footsteps in 1763. With the exception of a brief visit to Norwich, and another to Bristol, the first four months were spent in London and its vicinity, during which two or three incidents occurred, besides the perfectionist agitation, that are worth mentioning.

One was the death of Mrs. Charity Perronet, the good vicar of Shoreham's wife, whom Wesley buried on February II.

Another was an effort to relieve the sufferings of the London poor. The year opened with one of the severest frosts

1763 on record. The Thames was so covered with ice, that pas-
Age 60 sengers and carriages crossed from one shore to the other ;

and booths were erected, and fairs held, on the river's ice-
glazed surface. Navigation was entirely stopped, and many
thousands of watermen, with their families, were plunged into
extreme distress. In some places, the ice was measured, and
found to be six feet thick. Sea gulls came up as high as
London Bridge ; and other birds, in great numbers, were
driven from their usual haunts, and were seen in the streets of
the metropolis. Many persons were frozen to death ; and large
bodies of famished men wandered throughout the capital,
begging bread and clothes. Wesley was not the man to
witness such suffering without endeavouring to relieve it.
“Great numbers," says Lloyd's Evening Post, "of poor people
had pease pottage and barley broth given them at the
Foundery, at the expense of Mr. Wesley; and a collection
was made, in the same place of worship, for further supplying
the necessities of the destitute, at which upwards of £100
was contributed.”? Considering the value of money at that
period, this was not amiss for the poor Foundery Methodists.

A third incident must be mentioned. We have just seen
Wesley trying to relieve misery; we shall now see him
endeavouring to put an end to vice. The Society for the
Reformation of Manners was first instituted about the year
1677. From 1730 to 1757, the society was defunct. In the
last mentioned year, and perhaps as one of the results of
Methodism, it was revived. The approbation of the lord
mayor of London, and of the court of aldermen, was obtained,
Thousands of books of instruction were sent to parish officers
and parish constables, to remind them of their duty. The
laws against immorality were again enforced. Streets, and
fields, and public houses were swept of their notorious offend-
ers. In five years, about ten thousand persons were brought
to justice, chiefly for gambling, swearing, sabbath breaking,
lewdness, and selling obscene engravings.

There can be little doubt that Wesley was connected with

i London Magazine, 1763, p. 48.
· Lloyd's Evening Post, Jan. 26, 1763.

3 For a full account of the society, see the Life and Times of the Rev.
Samuel Wesley," pp. 213-224.

the revival of this useful association, At all events, in 1763, 1763 when the society consisted of one hundred and sixty members, Age 60 nearly half of that number were Methodists. On January 30, the society met at Wesley's chapel, in West Street, Seven Dials; where he preached, before its members, the annual sermon, taking as his text the very scripture which had been selected by his father, when performing the same service sixtyfive years before: “Who will rise up with me against the wicked ?" Wesley attached considerable importance to this sermon, as is seen from the fact, that he retired to Lewisham to compose and write it, and that it was immediately published in an octavo pamphlet of thirty pages. Three years afterwards, the society, a second time, ceased to be; chiefly through an action instituted against it in the King's Bench, where an adverse verdict was obtained, by the false swearing of a man whom the society subsequently convicted of wilful perjury. Still the death blow to the society was struck. Wesley writes: “They could never recover the expense of that suit. Lord, how long shall the ungodly triumph?”

In the early part of the year 1763, a shameful fraud was attempted upon Wesley, and is referred to in the following letter, published in the London Chronicle.

“April 5, 1763. “SIR,—Some time since, I heard a man in the street bawling, “The Scripture Doctrine of Imputed Righteousness, asserted and maintained by the Rev. John Wesley.' I was a little surprised, not having published anything on the head; and more so when, upon reading it over, I found not one line of it was mine, though I remembered to have read something like it. Soon after, to show what I really do maintain, I published 'Thoughts on the Imputed Righteousness of Christ': mentioning therein that'pious fraud,' which constrained me so to do.

“The modest author of the former publication now prints a second edition of it, and faces me down before all the world, yea, and proves, that it is mine.

“Would you not wonder, by what argument? Oh, the plainest in the world. "There is not,' says he, 'the least fraud in the publication, nor imposition on Mr. Wesley ; for the words are transcribed from the ninth and tenth volumes of his C istian Library.' But the Christian Library is

1 The figures were : Whitefield's followers, about 20; Wesley's, about 50; Churchmen, about 20; Dissenters, about 70.

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not Mr. Wesley's writing ; it is ‘Extracts from and Abridgments of
other writers; the subject of which I highly approve, but I will not be
accountable for every expression. Much less will I father eight pages of
I know not what, which a shameless man has picked out of that work,
tacked together in the manner he thought good, and then published in
my name. He puts me in mind of what occurred some years since. A
man was stretching his throat near Moorfields, and screaming out : 'A
full and true Account of the Death of the Rev. George Whitefield. One
took hold of him, and said: “Sirrah ! what do you mean? Mr. White-
field is yonder before you.' He shrugged up his shoulders, and said :
“Why, sir, an honest man must do something to turn a penny.'
“I am, sir, your humble servant,

"JOHN WESLEY." I On the 16th of May, a month later than usual, Wesley left London for the north. By travelling in postchaises, he reached Newcastle in three days, and in three more came to Edinburgh, where he had an interview with his old friend Whitefield. He writes: “Humanly speaking, he is worn out; but we have to do with Him who hath all power in heaven and earth.”

During the ten days which he spent in Scotland, Wesley preached at Aberdeen, in the college close, and in the college hall; and wrote: “What an amazing willingness to hear runs through this whole kingdom. There want only a few zealous, active labourers, who desire nothing but God; and they might soon carry the gospel through all this country, even as high as the Orkneys."

At Edinburgh, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland were holding their annual conference, and many of the ministers, nobility, and gentry flocked together to hear Wesley preach in the High School yard, at seven a.m. He says: “I spake as plain as ever I did in my life. But I never knew any in Scotland offended at plain dealing. In this respect, the north Britons are a pattern to all mankind.”

One of Wesley's hearers, on this occasion, was Lady Frances Gardiner, the widow of the renowned Colonel Gardiner, who fell at the battle of Preston Pans. A month afterwards, this Christian lady wrote to him, congratulating him on sending Mr. Hanby and Mr. Roberts to Edinburgh,

i London Chronicle, April 5, 1763.

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Age 60

where their labours had been greatly blessed ; and then adding: “I have never, I own, been at the preaching house in a morning yet, as they preach so early; but I ventured to the High School yard the morning you left Edinburgh; and it pleased God, even after I got home, to follow part of your sermon with a blessing to me.”l

A year later, Wesley formed an acquaintance, at Edinburgh, with Lady Maxwell, who about the year 1761 had been left a widow, at nineteen years of age. She now became a Methodist; and, in 1770, for the purpose of affording a Christian education to poor children, she established a school in Edinburgh, which she liberally sustained for forty years ; and, at her death, made provision for its existence to the end of time.2

In the same year, Wesley was introduced to Lady Glenorchy, who also, a few months afterwards, , became a widow at the age of thirty-one, and opened a chapel, which had been a popish church, for the supply of which Wesley obtained the services of the Rev. Richard de Courcy; the agreement being that, while this young minister of the Church of England should take the principal duties of the chapel, one night in the week should be set apart for the preaching of Wesley's itinerants; and that liberty should be given to any presbyterian clergyman, who might be willing occasionally to officiate. The plan was utopian, and was soon a failure.

Of the Methodist chapel which, during the year 1763, was built in Edinburgh, we know nothing ; but, in 1788, a second was erected, under the auspices of Zechariah Yewdall," which Valentine Ward described as “a dirty, damp, dark, dangerous hole, seating six hundred people;6 and which, twenty-seven years afterwards, was bought by the Edinburgh commissioners, for the sum of £1900, in order to build the bridge from Shakespeare Square to Calton Hill.?

During his present stay in Scotland, Wesley also preached at Dunbar, where, eleven years before, a company of English dragoons held a prayer-meeting, at which Andrew Affleck