“I am your affectionate brother,
“John Wesley.”[653]
We must again pursue Wesley in his journeyings.
Leaving Manchester, he came, on April 2, to Chester, whither the Gilbert family had removed from Kendal, and where he remained five days, preaching from the texts following: Romans viii. 32-34; John v. 8, 9; John xvii. 3; Matthew ix. 5; and Isaiah xxxv. 8.[654]
On April 7, he reached Warrington, where a society was already formed, and where he had “a large congregation,” at noonday, “of rich and poor, learned and unlearned.” He says: “I never spoke more plain; nor have I ever seen a congregation listen with more attention.” One of the members at this period was William Young, who, for about twenty years together, preached at Warrington every Monday night, extended his labours to many parts of Lancashire and Cheshire, and who died in 1823, uttering, as his last words on earth: “Come Lord Jesus; glory! glory! angels, angels, coming, coming to take me to Abraham’s bosom.”[655]
At Liverpool, Wesley examined the new trust deed of Pitt Street chapel, to which he objected, as follows: “1. It takes up three large skins of parchment, and so could not cost less than six guineas; whereas our own deed, transcribed by a friend, would not have cost six shillings. 2. It is verbose beyond all sense and reason; and withal so ambiguously worded, that one passage only might find matter for a suit of ten or twelve years in chancery. 3. It everywhere calls the house a meeting-house, a name which I particularly object to. 4. It leaves no power either to the assistant or me, so much as to place or displace a steward. 5. Neither I, nor all the conference, have power to send the same preacher two years together. To crown all,—6. If a preacher is not appointed at the conference, the trustees and the congregation are to choose one by most votes! Can any one wonder I dislike this deed, which tears the Methodist discipline up by the roots?”
On April 11, Wesley preached at Wigan, “to a large number of serious, well behaved people, mixed with a few as stupidly insolent creatures as he ever saw.” He then made his way to Brinsley, Bolton, Middleton, Chapel-en-le-Frith, Rotherham, Doncaster, Awkborough, Barrow, Grimsby, Louth, Horncastle, and other Lincolnshire towns and villages. He writes: “John Hill has done more mischief at Horncastle than a man of far greater talents can do good. By that unhappy division of the society, he has opened the mouths of all the gainsayers; and, to complete the scandal, he and six-and-twenty more have been dipped!” He adds: “I do not choose to preach above twice or thrice in a day; but when I am called to do more, it is all one: I find strength according to my need.”
On April 28, he got to York; and, the day after, preached in the new chapel at Thirsk; “almost equal,” he says, “to that at Yarm; and why not quite, seeing they had the model before their eyes, and had nothing to do but to copy after it? Is it not an amazing weakness, that, when they have the most beautiful pattern before them, all builders will affect to mend something?” This was a hard rap at good old Mr. Wells, who built the chapel;[656] but architects and builders who spoil chapels to gratify their own vain ambition have no right to wish or to expect tender treatment from those who suffer by their preposterous folly.
On reaching Newcastle, he spent nearly three weeks, partly in comparative rest, and partly in preaching, and in visiting neighbouring societies. He writes: “I know not to what it is owing, that I have felt more weariness this spring than I had done before for many years; unless to my fall at Christmas, which perhaps weakened the springs of my whole machine more than I was sensible of.”
On the 19th of May, he set out, with his wife and daughter,[657] for Scotland, preaching at Placey, Morpeth, Felton, Alnwick, Belford, and Berwick on the way. The next five weeks were employed in the towns and villages across the Tweed. The following are extracts from his Journal.