At St. Ives in Cornwall there was a great uproar, but Wesley went amongst the mob and brought the chief mischiefmaker out. Strange to say, the preacher received but one blow, and then he reasoned the case out with the agitator, and the man undertook to quiet his companions.
Thus Wesley went fearlessly from place to place. He visited Ireland forty-two times, as well as Scotland and Wales. When he was eighty-four he crossed over to the Channel Islands in stormy weather; and there "high and low, rich and poor, received the Word gladly".
He always went on horseback till quite late in life, when his friends persuaded him to have a chaise. No weather could stop him from keeping his engagements. In 1743 he set out from Epworth to Grimsby; but was told at the ferry he could not cross the Trent owing to the storm.
But he was determined his Grimsby congregation should not be disappointed; and he so worked on the boatmen's feelings that they took him over even at the risk of their lives.
At Bristol, in 1772, he was told that highwaymen were on the road, and had robbed all the coaches that passed, some just previously. But Wesley felt no uneasiness, "knowing," as he writes, "that God would take care of us; and He did so, for before we came to the spot all the highwaymen were taken, and so we went on unmolested, and came safe to Bristol".
This immense labour had no ill effect upon his health. In June, 1786, when he was entering his eighty-fourth year, he writes: "I am a wonder to myself. It is now twelve years since I have felt such a sensation as weariness. I am never tired either with writing, preaching, or travelling."
When Wesley was on his death-bed he wrote to Wilberforce cheering him in his struggle against the slave trade.
"Unless God has raised you up for this very thing," writes Wesley, "you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils, but if God be for you who can be against you?… Go on in the name of God and in the power of His might till even American slavery, the vilest that ever saw the sun, shall vanish away before it."
Wesley died, at the ripe age of eighty-eight, in the year 1791. He had saved no money, so had none to leave behind; but he was one of those "poor" persons who "make many rich".
Amongst his few small gifts and bequests was "£6 to be divided among the six poor men named by the assistant who shall carry my body to the grave; for I particularly desire that there be no hearse, no coach, no escutcheon, no pomp".