Having again wended his way, viâ Southampton and Portsmouth, to London, he set out, on October 20, to Colchester, and “spent three days very agreeably, among a quiet and loving people.”
Returning again to London, he started, on October 26, on what he calls his “little tour through Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire,” which occupied the next five days.
On November 1, he set out to visit the societies in Kent and Sussex, and, at the end of the week, returned to London, where he buried the remains of his clerical coadjutor, Benjamin Colley. Here, he says, he received the following letter.
“Sir,—I was yesterday led to hear what God would say to me by your mouth. You exhorted us ‘to strive to enter in at the strait gate.’ I am willing so to do; but I find, one chief part of my striving must be to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to instruct the ignorant, to visit the sick, and such as are in prison, bound in misery and iron.
“But if you purge out all who scorn such practices, or at least are not fond of them, how many will remain in your society? I fear, scarce enough to carry your body to the grave. Alas, how many, even among those who are called believers, have plenty of all the necessaries of life, and yet complain of poverty! How many have houses and lands, or bags of money, and yet cannot find in their hearts to spare now and then to God’s poor a little piece of gold! How many have linen in plenty, with three or four suits of clothes, and can see the poor go naked! Pray sir, tell these, you cannot believe they are Christians, unless they imitate Christ in doing good to all men, and hate covetousness, which is idolatry.”
Wesley adds: “I do tell them so, and I tell them it will be more tolerable in the day of judgment for Sodom and Gomorrah than for them. I tell them, the Methodists, that do not fulfil all righteousness, will have the hottest place in the lake of fire.”
On November 30, Wesley started for Norwich, where he says: “Our friends, the mob, seem to have taken their leave; and so have triflers; all that remain seem deeply serious.”
On December 7, he writes: “I went on to Yarmouth, and found confusion worse confounded. Not only Benjamin Worship’s society was come to nothing, but ours seemed to be swiftly following. They had almost all left the Church again, being full of prejudice against the clergy and against one another.” On December 12, he came back to London, where he continued the remainder of the year, with the exception of a visit to Sheerness. He writes, December 16: “The governor of the fort having given me the use of the chapel, I began reading prayers, and afterwards preached to a large and serious congregation. The next evening it was considerably increased, so that the chapel was hot as an oven. In the afternoon of the day after, the governor sent me word, I must preach in the chapel no more; but, a room being offered, we had a comfortable hour. Examining the society, consisting of four or five and thirty members, I had the comfort to find many of them knew in whom they had believed; and all of them seemed desirous to adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour. Such a town as many of these live in is scarce to be found again in England. In the dock, adjoining to the fort, there are six old men-of-war. These are divided into small tenements, forty, fifty, or sixty in a ship, with little chimneys and windows; and each of these contains a family.”
The Whitefield section of the Methodists seem to have had a society in Sheerness previous to this. Cornelius Winter, now a young man of about five-and-twenty, and acting as a sort of itinerant local preacher, in the county of Kent, tells us that, in 1766, Wesley’s “people made an innovation upon the Calvinistic cause at Sheerness,” upon which he walked over from Sittingbourne, on a severe winter’s night, and preached from the words: “And Gideon said unto him, O my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where be all His miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? but now the Lord hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.” No doubt, the young preacher intended his text to be a stunning one, and to put an end to Wesley’s “Midianites” poaching on Calvinian preserves. He states that his sermon “had an amazing effect”; that he “became a frequent and acceptable visitor”; and that an “eminent old saint, by the name of Wadsworth, was so pleased with his services, that, when he died, he left him half-a-crown and his Bible,” the first legacy that Cornelius ever had.[715] Young Winter thought he had extinguished Wesley’s Methodism in Sheerness; but, like most young men, he proved himself to be liable to fall into mistakes.
It is a curious fact, that, in 1767, as in the year previous, Methodism was attacked chiefly by the muses. One of the principal poetic effusions was, “Methodism Triumphant; or, the decisive Battle between the Old Serpent and the Modern Saint,” 4to, 139 pages. In Nichols’ “Literary Anecdotes,” it is stated, that this skittish, satirical production was written by Dr. Nathaniel Lancaster, rector of Stanford Rivers,—“a man of strong natural parts, great erudition, refined taste, and master of a nervous and elegant style. He was a native of Cheshire, lived a recluse, and died deeply in debt, June 20, 1775.”[716]