OTHER OXFORD METHODISTS.
It is difficult to determine the exact number, who, at one time or another, were Oxford Methodists. As early as the year 1733, four had left the brotherhood, three of the seceders being pupils of Wesley, and one under Clayton’s care. Wesley writes:—
“I think, in the year 1735, we were fourteen or fifteen in number, all of one heart and of one mind.”[275]
The “fourteen or fifteen” included the two Wesleys and Whitefield, Memoirs of whom have been designedly omitted in the present work. There were, also, Clayton, Ingham, Gambold, Hervey, and Broughton, with whom the reader has been made acquainted. Besides these, Robert Kirkham, Charles Morgan, William Smith, and Matthew Salmon, who have been briefly noticed, were, less or more, connected with them. Seven others, standing in the same relationship, must now be mentioned,—namely, Messrs. Boyce, Chapman, Kinchin, Hutchins, Atkinson, Whitelamb, and Hall. This is a greater number than that stated by Wesley; but it must be recollected, that, in 1735, Oxford Methodism was in the seventh year of its existence, and that some of its first members had then left the University.