None but a man like Wesley would have dared to use faithful dealing like this; and none but men like Wesley’s itinerants would have quietly submitted to such a castigation. He was evidently determined to kill or to cure; or, to employ his own expression, to “have a thorough reform of the preachers.” For the first time, we have a list of the questions proposed to every preacher on probation before his being received into full connexion.
“Have you faith in Christ? Are you going on to perfection? Do you expect to be perfected in love, in this life? Are you groaning after it? Are you resolved to devote yourself wholly to God and His work? Do you know the Methodist doctrine? Have you read the sermons, and the Notes on the New Testament? Do you know the Methodist plan? Have you read the Plain Account, and the Appeals? Do you know the rules of the society, and of the bands? and do you keep them? Do you take no snuff? Tobacco? Drams? Do you constantly attend the church and sacrament? Have you read the Minutes, and are you willing to conform to them? Have you considered the twelve rules of a helper; especially the first, tenth, and twelfth; and will you keep them for conscience sake? Are you determined to employ all your time in the work of God? Will you preach every morning and evening; endeavouring not to speak too loud, or too long; not lolling with your elbows? Have you read the ‘Rules of Action and Utterance’? Will you meet the society, the bands, the select society, and the leaders of bands and classes in every place? Will you diligently and earnestly instruct the children, and visit from house to house? Will you recommend fasting, both by precept and example?”
These questions,—with the exception of those concerning attendance at church and sacrament, the reading of the “Rules of Action and Utterance,” the meeting of the societies, etc., and an important modification of that concerning preaching every morning and every night,—are still put to all candidates for the Methodist ministry, and are expected to be answered affirmatively before such candidates are admitted to ordination. If answered sincerely and truly, the Methodist ministry, in diligence, in piety, and in success, would have no superiors.
Much space has been occupied with the proceedings of the conference of 1766, but they were far too important to be omitted, or materially abridged. Other matters claimed attention at that conference, though inferior to the foregoing. For instance, it was ascertained, that the debts on the Methodist chapels, throughout the kingdom, amounted to £11,383. “We shall be ruined,” writes Wesley, “if we go on thus.” It was resolved, that the obnoxious trust deed at Liverpool, which has been already mentioned, should be substituted by another; that no classes should meet in chapels; that the rules of the society should be given to every one when taken on trial; that the rules relating to ruffles, lace, snuff, and tobacco, should be calmly but vigorously enforced; and, that the sermons on wandering thoughts, indwelling sin, the Lord our Righteousness, and the Scripture way of salvation, should be carefully distributed.[671] This was one of the most important conferences that Wesley ever held. Considering the plain dealing that had been employed, it is as gratifying as it is a matter of surprise, to find Wesley saying: “Tuesday, August 12—Our conference began, and ended on Friday evening. A happier conference we never had, nor a more profitable one. It was both begun and ended in love, and with a solemn sense of the presence of God.”
On the day that Wesley opened his conference at Leeds, his house at Windmill Hill, London, was entered by burglars, and a quantity of linen and wearing apparel stolen.[672] On the 20th of August, he reached London himself; and, on the 25th, set out for Bath, Bristol, and Cornwall.
On his way to the west of England, Wesley opened the new chapel at Shaftesbury. He says: “August 29, 1766—I preached in the new house, filled within and without, to the no small astonishment, it seemed, of most of the hearers.”[673]
The next day, August 30, he writes: “We rode to Stallbridge, long the seat of war, by a senseless, insolent mob, encouraged by their betters, so called, to outrage their quiet neighbours. For what? Why, they were mad; they were Methodists. So, to bring them to their senses, they would beat their brains out. They broke their windows, leaving not one whole pane of glass, spoiled their goods, and assaulted their persons with dirt, and rotten eggs, and stones, whenever they appeared in the street. But no magistrate, though they applied to several, would show them either mercy or justice. At length they wrote to me. I ordered a lawyer to write to the rioters. He did so; but they set him at nought. We then moved the court of King’s Bench. By various artifices they got the trial put off, from one assizes to another, for eighteen months. But it fell so much the heavier on themselves, when they were found guilty; and, from that time, finding there is law for Methodists, they have suffered them to be at peace. I preached near the main street without the least disturbance, to a large and attentive congregation.”
At Ashburton, many of Wesley’s congregation “behaved with decency; but the rest with such stupid rudeness as he had not seen, for a long time, in any part of England.”
At Plymouth, “at the close of his sermon, a large stone was thrown in at one of the windows, and fell at his feet.”
At Truro, he says: “I was in hopes, when Mr. Walker died, the enmity in those who were called his people would have died also; but it is not so; they still look upon us as rank heretics, and will have no fellowship with us.”