Before proceeding to trace Wesley’s steps during the subsequent part of 1757, it may be added, that Miss Bosanquet’s home, at Leytonstone, sheltered not only Sarah Ryan, but two other Methodist females, of great repute. One of them was Ann Tripp, who was born in 1745, and died at Leeds, in 1823, after being a member of the Methodist society more than sixty years. At the time of her decease, she was one of the oldest leaders in the Leeds society.[317] The other was the celebrated Sarah Crosby, who, in 1757, became a widow at the age of twenty, and continued such until her triumphant death in 1804.[318] She will be frequently mentioned in succeeding pages.
Having concluded his conference in London, Wesley set out, on August 22, 1757, for Cornwall, where he spent the next six weeks. At Camelford, he cured his toothache, by rubbing his cheek with treacle. At St. Agnes, he was the welcome guest of Mrs. Donythorne, a widow lady, ninety years old, of unimpaired understanding, almost without a wrinkle, who read without spectacles, and walked without a staff. At St. Just, he opened the new meeting-house, “the largest and most commodious” in Cornwall. At Gwennap, it rained all the time he preached; but he characteristically observes, “a shower of rain will not frighten experienced soldiers.” At Bezore, finding that he would have to sleep in the same room as a man and his wife, he preferred to walk to Truro. At Grampound, “a mean, inconsiderable, dirty village,” the mayor sent two constables, saying: “Sir, the mayor says you shall not preach within his borough.” Wesley answered: “The mayor has no authority to hinder me; but it is a point not worth contesting. So,” he adds, “I went about a musketshot farther, and left the borough to Mr. mayor’s disposal.” At St. Austle, where he attended church, the whole service was performed by Mr. Hugo, who was almost a centenarian, and had been vicar of St. Austle nearly threescore years and ten. At Liskeard, which he pronounces “one of the largest and pleasantest towns in Cornwall,” every one in the society had found peace with God. He got back to Bristol on October 8.
Here, and in the immediate neighbourhood, he spent the next four weeks. Part of the time he was disabled by a swelling in his face, which he cured by the application of boiled nettles. The Kingswood society was standing still. That at Bristol was reduced from nine hundred members to little more than half the number. That at Coleford was the most numerous and also the liveliest society in the county of Somerset. He opened the new meeting-house at Pill, lately an almost unparalleled “sink of sin”; but now a place where many were rejoicing in God their Saviour.
The chief event, however, which happened, during his Bristol sojourn, was an alarming fire at Kingswood school. On October 24, while Wesley was absent at Bath, about eight o’clock at night, a boy opened the staircase door, but was driven back by smoke. The lad shouted, “Fire! murder! fire!” Terrible alarm sprung up, and all in the house seemed paralysed. At length, John How, a neighbour, mounted a rotten ladder; and, with an axe, broke through the leaden roof. The suffocating smoke found vent; water was brought, and the fire quickly quenched. John How, under God, saved Kingswood school. Let his name be honourably borne in mind. Wesley first heard of the event the day after it occurred, when a man met him, and told him “the school was burned.” Wesley says: “I felt not a moment’s pain, knowing that God does all things well.” This was a rough beginning for Sarah Ryan.
On November 9, Wesley returned to London. A few days later, he set out for Norwich, where he was shown the unitarian chapel, occupied by Dr. Taylor—octagon in shape, built of the finest brick, with thirty-two windows, and eight skylights in the dome—the whole finished in the highest taste, and as clean as a nobleman’s saloon—the communion table of fine mahogany, and the pew door latches of polished brass. “How can it be thought,” he asks, “that the old coarse-gospel should find admission here?” Query, what would Wesley have said concerning some of the highly ornamented Methodist chapels of the present day?
Returning to London, he found much confusion occasioned by certain imprudent words spoken by one who seemed to be strong in faith. He heard all who were concerned, face to face; but what one side flatly affirmed, the other flatly denied; and he found himself utterly bewildered among the wilful lies or human infirmities of high professors. “For the present,” he writes, “I leave it to the Searcher of hearts, who will bring all things to light in due season.”
Having baptized a Jew of more than sixty years of age, he returned to Lewisham, to write his “Preservative against unsettled Notions in Religion”; and here he remained till Christmas, when he again returned to Bristol, where he witnessed the close of the year 1757.
Compared with former years, this was a period of peace. It is true, that persecution still dogged the steps of the poor Methodists; but it was not so violent as in days gone past. In Ireland, Whitefield was all but murdered by a mob of Irish papists. At Norwood, near London, a gang of godless rioters surrounded the house of Samuel Cole, and, because the Methodists held their meetings in it, threatened to burn it to the ground; for which threat Edward Frost, the leader of the rioters, was sent to Newgate prison.[319] Pamphleteers, also, were not idle; but almost all were ashamed to affix their names to their paltry publications. One of these anonymous attacks was entitled, “An Expostulatory Letter to the Rev. Mr. Wesley.” Another was “A Short Examen of Mr. John Wesley’s System.” A third, the most enigmatical, was: “Methodism Displayed and Enthusiasm Detected; intended as an antidote against, and a preservative from, the delusive principles and unscriptural doctrines of a modern sett of seducing preachers, and as a defence of our regular and orthodox clergy, from their unjust reflections.” 8vo, 36 pages. The reader is told, that the poor have become a prey to “ignorant, enthusiastic preachers”; and, that it is because of this, that “novel doctrines, extravagant follies, and destructive errors” are now so prevalent. Virtue was reclining her fainting head; morality, except in name, was almost banished; and vice, like a torrent, was deluging the land. While the infidel, on the one hand, was proud, presumptuous, and God-resisting; the enthusiast, on the other, was credulous, unscriptural, and unmeaning, deceiving himself and others by his mere pretences to inspiration, and all for the sake of making gain by his godliness. Methodist preachers sing “sweet syren songs”; they are “new doctors and modern teachers tickling the ears, pleasing the pride, and flattering the vanity of the human mind”; they are “quacks in divinity,” using “unedifying jargon, unscriptural harangues, and false encomiums on the virtue and dignity of man”; they are “flatterers of human nature, sleek divines, downy doctors, velvet mouthed preachers, miserable daubers, and soul deceivers.”
It is a strange fact, that the author of this pamphlet avows his firm belief in nearly all the doctrines that specially characterized Wesley’s ministry; and yet, these are some of the spicy appellatives applied to Methodist preachers. It is difficult to divine the writer’s object. At the beginning, he seems to belabour the poor Methodists; at the end, he defends and praises them.
The most malignant onset, however, during the year 1757, was published in the London Magazine, with the title, “A Dozen Reasons why the Sect of Conjurors, called Fortune Tellers, should have at least as much liberty to exercise their admirable art, as is now granted to Methodists, Moravians, and various other sorts of Conjurors.” Dr. Faustus, the writer, accuses the Methodists of defrauding “both men and women out of their lands, tenements, and money”; of “terrifying many of their followers out of their little wits, as Bedlam, and every private madhouse, about London, could testify”; of “very lately inducing a poor woman to literally fulfil the Scripture, by pulling out one of her eyes, because she had looked upon a handsome young fellow with a longing look”; and, finally, as being disturbers of public government. These silly calumnies, falsehoods of the first magnitude, were vigorously refuted, in three succeeding numbers of the London Magazine, by one who signed himself “A Methodist.”