One was the death of Mrs. Charity Perronet, the good vicar of Shoreham’s wife, whom Wesley buried on February 11.
Another was an effort to relieve the sufferings of the London poor. The year opened with one of the severest frosts on record. The Thames was so covered with ice, that passengers 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.[513] 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.”[514] 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.[515] 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 offenders. 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 the revival of this useful association. At all events, in 1763, when the society consisted of one hundred and sixty members, nearly half of that number were Methodists.[516] 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 sixty-five 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 Christian Library.’ But the Christian Library is 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. Whitefield 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,