But leaving the quadruple alliance already mentioned, we must return to Wesley’s gospel wanderings.
On the 10th of March, he set out, from London, on his long journey to the north. Coming, as usual, to Bristol, he wrote: “I rode to Kingswood, and having told my whole mind to the masters and servants, spoke to the children in a far stronger manner than ever I did before. I will kill or cure. I will have one or the other: a Christian school, or none at all.”
From Bristol, Wesley made his way to Stroud and Cheltenham. The latter town, like Bath, was a place of fashion and of pleasure, and, therefore, not a friendly soil for Methodism. Wesley had preached here twenty-two years before, “to a company,” he says, “who seemed to understand just as much of the matter as if he had been talking Greek.” He now tried again, out of doors, in the midst of a piercing wind, and none, rich or poor, went away till his sermon was concluded. Three years afterwards, the Methodist itinerants began to visit Cheltenham; and, among others converted, was Miss Penelope Newman,[641] who soon became the leader of two classes, and a select band,[642] and who, for years, was one of Wesley’s correspondents. Before her conversion, she kept a bookshop; afterwards, she devoted herself wholly to the work of God, making visits to adjacent towns and villages, and, like Sarah Crosby and others, occasionally giving public exhortations.[643] For long years, the meeting place of the Methodists at Cheltenham was a small house in Pitville Street, which was alternately occupied by them and by the baptists;[644] and such was the slow progress of Methodism in this place of fashionable resort, that it was not until the year 1813 that the Methodists obtained a chapel of their own, and even then there were only twenty in society.[645]
Leaving Cheltenham, Wesley proceeded to Evesham, where the mob, encouraged by the magistrate, made noise enough; but as they used neither stones nor dirt, Wesley says, “We were well contented.”
After preaching at Birmingham, Wesley, on March 20, paid his first visit to Burton on Trent, where Thomas Hanby had introduced Methodism by preaching in the house of a shoemaker, the mob smashing poor Crispin’s windows, and the preacher having to hide himself from his murderous enemies beneath the cutting board.[646]
Proceeding to Nottingham, Wesley preached in the octagon chapel, which had just been built at the cost of £128 2s. 7d. No wonder that he says, “it was filled with serious hearers.” Up to the present, the Nottingham Methodists had held their meetings in the house of Matthew Bagshaw, who, to accommodate the people, fixed, in the floor of his chamber, a large trap door, which, when lifted up, converted Matthew’s dormitory into a sort of gallery; and the preacher, standing in the aperture, with his head just through the floor, was thus enabled to preach to the female part of his congregation in the room below, and, at the same time, to the men occupying the room above.
From Nottingham, Wesley made his way to Sheffield. Here two Methodist meeting-houses had been demolished by Sheffield mobs; but a third was now erected in Mulberry Street, fifty-four feet long, and six-and-thirty wide, and in this Wesley preached on March 26. He writes: “We had a numerous congregation. There has been much disturbance here this winter; but to-night all was peace.” The disturbance mentioned was occasioned by a buffoon general leading on a mob of empty headed young fellows from sixteen to twenty years of age. Often were the cloaks and gowns of females cut into tatters with knives or scissors. Sometimes the chief, dressed as a harlequin, would enter the chapel, concealing, beneath his clothing, cats, or cocks and hens, whose mewings, cacklings, and crowings, were not calculated to improve the devotion of the people. When expelled from the interior of the building, he would contrive to climb the roof, where, in front of a large skylight nearly over the pulpit, he was wont to mimic the action of the preacher down below. The chapel windows were smashed, and when shutters were put up, these were pelted with bricks, stones, and sticks. For some reason, the captain and his gang were quiet at the time Wesley preached; but their annoyances and persecutions were continued for three months longer; at the end of which the poor wretch was bathing in the Don, and, after besporting himself in the dingy river for a considerable time, exclaimed, with an air of mockery and mirth, “Another dip, and then for a bit more sport with the Methodists!” In he plunged; down he sunk; and, sticking in the mud, was drowned, before his associates could get him out.[647]
From Sheffield, Wesley proceeded to Eyam, Stockport, and Manchester. Here, as in London and Bristol and other places, there was a large decrease in the number professing Christian perfection. The fifty at Manchester had dwindled down to one third of that number.
Why was this? The reader must imagine an answer for himself; we profess only to furnish facts. Whitefield, of course, was an opponent of Wesley’s doctrine; perhaps because he scarcely understood it. In a letter dated “June 2, 1766,” he writes: “That monstrous doctrine of sinless perfection, for a while, turns some of its deluded votaries into temporary monsters.”[648] Charles Wesley was almost equally incredulous. Wesley addressing him on July 9, 1766, remarks: “That perfection which I believe, I can boldly preach; because, I think, I see five hundred witnesses of it. Of that perfection which you preach, you think you do not see any witness at all. I wonder you do not, in this article, fall in plumb with Mr. Whitefield. For do not you, as well as he, ask, ‘Where are the perfect ones?’ I verily believe there are none. I cordially assent to his opinion, that there is no perfection here such as you describe; at least, I never met with an instance of it, and I doubt I never shall. Therefore, I still think, to set perfection so high is effectually to renounce it.”[649]
Thus was Wesley between two fires; Whitefield setting the doctrine too low, and Charles Wesley setting it too high; and both of them ready to ridicule what Wesley called its witnesses. There can be no question, that some of those witnesses injured the doctrine instead of helping it. Wesley himself, on June 28 of this very year, writes to “Mrs. R.,” probably Sarah Ryan, finding fault with her in reference to this matter. “You appear,” says he, “to be above instruction from man. You appear to think that none understands the doctrine of sanctification like you. Nay, you sometimes speak as if none understood it beside you. You appear to undervalue the experience of almost every one, in comparison of your own. I am afraid, also, you are in danger of enthusiasm. We know there are Divine dreams and impressions; but how easily may you be deceived herein! It has also been frequently said, with some appearance of truth, that you endeavour to monopolize the affections of all that fall into your hands; that you destroy the nearest and dearest connection they had before, and make them quite cool and indifferent to their most intimate friends.”[650]