The work and its accompaniments at Everton created anxiety in London. No wonder. Twenty years previously, the same sort of scenes had been witnessed at Bristol, Kingswood, and Newcastle. Thoughtful and even religious people disliked them; but what then? Were they altogether fanatical, the work of the devil, and intended to injure the work of God? Many thought so; but Wesley did not. After narrating what he saw at Everton, he writes: “I have generally observed more or less of these outward symptoms to attend the beginning of a general work of God; so it was in New England, Scotland, Holland, Ireland, and many parts of England; but, after a time, they gradually decrease, and the work goes on more quietly and silently. Those whom it pleases God to employ in His work ought to be quite passive in this respect; they should choose nothing, but leave entirely to Him all the circumstances of His own work.”
On the 8th of August, the day after his arrival in London, Wesley opened the annual conference of his preachers, which lasted the next three days. Almost the whole time was spent “in examining whether the spirit and lives of the preachers were suitable to their profession.” The conference throughout was marked with great unanimity and love.
Three weeks were spent in London and its neighbourhood; and then Wesley set out for Norwich, taking Everton on his way. He again preached in the church of his friend Berridge. He writes: “I went to the church unusually heavy, and hardly expecting to do any good. I preached on these words in the second lesson, ‘We know that we are of God.’ One sunk down, and another, and another. Some cried aloud in agony of prayer. I would willingly have spent some time in prayer with them; but my voice failed, so that I was obliged to conclude the service, leaving many in the church, crying and praying, but unable either to walk or stand.”
Arriving at Norwich, Wesley found that, in taking Wheatley’s chapel and congregation, he had not taken an unmixed comfort. He says: “August 30—I preached to a large, rude, noisy congregation. I took knowledge what manner of teachers they had been accustomed to, and determined to mend them or end them. Accordingly, the next evening, after sermon, I reminded them of two things: the one, that it was not decent to begin talking aloud as soon as service was ended, and hurrying to and fro, as in a bear garden; the other, that it was a bad custom to gather into knots just after sermon, and turn a place of worship into a coffee house. I, therefore, desired that none would talk under that roof, but go quietly and silently away. And on Sunday, September 2, I had the pleasure to observe, that all went as quietly away, as if they had been accustomed to it for many years.”
So far, so good. Having mended the bad manners of the Norwich congregation, his next effort was to mend the society. He found, that there were about five hundred members; but a hundred and fifty of those did not even pretend to meet in class at all; and the rest were very far from being what they ought to be. “I told them,” says he, “in plain terms, that they were the most ignorant, self conceited, self willed, fickle, untractable, disorderly, disjointed society, that I knew in the three kingdoms. And God applied it to their hearts; so that many were profited; but I do not find that one was offended.” Such was Wesley’s method of mending or ending James Wheatley’s “lambs” at Norwich.
Having spent eleven days at Norwich, Wesley returned to London, preaching at Colchester on his way, where, for the first time, since he was six years old, he had a sleepless night. “But,” he writes, “it is all one: God is able to give strength, either with sleep or without it. I rose at my usual time, and preached at five, without any faintness or drowsiness.”
At the commencement of his ministry, Wesley and his Oxford friends seemed ostracised. All the clergy shunned them, and not a few railed against, and censured them. Now it began to be otherwise: Venn, Romaine, Madan, Jones, Walker, Milner, Grimshaw, Berridge, Hicks, and others were zealously and successfully preaching their grand old doctrine of justification by faith only; and every year added to the number of their clerical adherents. During his northern journey, in 1759, Wesley formed a friendship with two who deserve a notice.
One of them was the Rev. Thomas Goodday, of Sunderland, in whose church, at Monkwearmouth, Wesley preached more than once in after years. The following extract from one of Mr. Goodday’s letters to Wesley will afford a glimpse of his religious character.[361]
“Monkwearmouth, July 13, 1759.
“Reverend and dear Sir,—Your kind letter reached me at a critical hour; and another favour, of the same nature, would be as refreshing to my soul as the dew of heaven to the parched glebe. Your seasonable hints are judicious and pertinent, and I shall endeavour to make them the rule of my future conduct. Your harmless, inoffensive, and good natured men are a very dangerous set of creatures; and such were most of my former associates. I have had enough to do also with the prudent children of this generation. They are perpetually pestering my ears with the rational scheme, and would fain persuade me, that it can in no way conduce to the glory of God, nor my own interest, to deviate, in the least, from the old beaten track I have been so long accustomed to, both in thinking, preaching, and praying. They are often whispering, ‘The world will call you a fool.’ O when will it once be, that, in the cause of God, I can set my face as a flint against those two busy demons, false shame, and the fear of man? I would be a Christian; but I know I am a fool, a babe, a mere novice in the faith; and yet, if another should tell me so, I have so much of the old tinder left in me, as to take fire immediately. Whenever my wife and myself put up our petitions to the God of all mercy, it is our bounden duty never to leave out this,—that He would be pleased to preserve the life of Mr. John Wesley long, as a blessing to the nation.