“From Newcastle to London, and from London to Bristol, God is everywhere reviving His work. I find it so now in Dublin, although there has been great imprudence in some, whereby grievous wolves have lately crept in among us, not sparing the flock; by whom some souls have been utterly destroyed, and others wounded, who are not yet recovered.[97] Those who ought to have stood in the gap did not; but I trust they will be wiser for the time to come. After a season, I think it will be highly expedient for you to labour in Ireland again.
“I see a danger you are in, which perhaps you do not see yourself. Is it not most pleasing to me, as well as to you, to be always preaching of the love of God? Without doubt so it is. But yet it would be utterly wrong and unscriptural to preach of nothing else. Let the law always prepare for the gospel. I scarce ever spoke more earnestly here of the love of God in Christ than I did last night; but it was after I had been tearing the unawakened in pieces. Go thou and do likewise. It is true, the love of God in Christ alone feeds His children; but even they are to be guided as well as fed, yea, and often physicked too; and the bulk of our hearers must be purged before they are fed, else we only feed the disease. Beware of all honey. It is the best extreme; but it is an extreme.
“I am your affectionate brother,
“John Wesley.”[98]
Upon the whole, Wesley was well satisfied with the work in Ireland. He writes: “I had the satisfaction of observing how greatly God had blessed my fellow labourers, and how many sinners were saved from the error of their ways. Many of these had been eminent for all manner of sins. Many had been Roman Catholics; and I suppose the number of these would have been far greater, had not the good protestants, as well as the popish priests, taken true pains to hinder them.”[99]
Wesley’s “fellow labourers,” however, gave him trouble as well as joy. Dr. Whitehead has inserted, in his Life of Wesley, the following extracts of letters, written to Edward and Charles Perronet, during the present year. They seem somewhat testy, and, we incline to think, were written in a querulous frame of mind, to which all men are, more or less, liable. We give them as we find them.
“I have abundance of complaints to make, as well as to hear. I have scarce any one on whom I can depend, when I am a hundred miles off. ’Tis well if I do not run away soon, and leave them to cut and shuffle for themselves. Here” [in Ireland] “is a glorious people; but oh! where are the shepherds? The Society at Cork have fairly sent me word, that they will take care of themselves, and erect themselves into a Dissenting congregation. I am weary of these sons of Zeruiah: they are too hard for me. Charles and you behave as I want you to do; but you cannot, or will not, preach where I desire. Others can and will preach where I desire; but they do not behave as I want them to do. I have a fine time between the one and the other. I think both Charles and you have, in the general, a right sense of what it is to serve as sons in the gospel; and if all our helpers had had the same, the work of God would have prospered better, both in England and Ireland. I have not one preacher with me, and not six in England, whose wills are broken to serve me thus.”[100]
This is a dark picture; but we still think, that, though Wesley’s first helpers were far from perfect, his complaint concerning them is too strongly worded. Biliousness makes even the best men fretful, and it may be fairly supposed that Wesley himself was not free from this.
Wesley’s passage from Dublin to Bristol was stormy and dangerous. There was a combination of wind, thunder, rain, and darkness. The sea ran mountains high. The ship had no goods, and little ballast, and rolled most fearfully. He and Christopher Hopper began to pray; the wind was hushed; the sea fell; the clouds dispersed; and, on July 24, they arrived in safety.
Ten days before his arrival, a long and most scandalous letter, of nearly three folio columns, was published in The Bristol Weekly Intelligencer; but was far too scurrilous to be answered. Some parts of it are literally obscene, and must not be quoted. The following are among the most mildly expressed charges. The “gifted itinerants,” who “had been bred up as tailors, masons, colliers, tinkers, and sow-gelders,” made it their “business to talk about the other world, in order to maintain themselves in this.” They were “of a gloomy temper, and rueful countenance,” holding the doctrines, that “the Deity is an arbitrary being; that positive institutions are more obligatory than moral duties; and that man is not a free agent, but a mere machine.” Their followers were—(1) The most ignorant and credulous, who were “apt to admire everything that was new, surprising, and mysterious”; (2) the old, melancholy, and sick, who were ready to trust any one, that could, with confidence, promise to put them in a way of safety; (3) notorious bad livers, who made a great noise about religion, hoping to be happy hereafter without being good here; and (4) the female sex, who received the preachers very kindly into their houses, and, for their sakes, neglected and left their husbands and their families. In their preaching, the itinerants “interlarded their miscellaneous thoughts with a whole effusion of Scripture texts, without regard to their just sense or proper application; they roared, raved, thundered, and stunned their congregations, using every variation of voice, and all manner of bodily agitations, and attributed the whole to the powerful operations of the Holy Ghost. Their proper friends were the Jesuits, and they opposed peace and order, and a regular government in church and state. They bred ill opinions about the clergy, by insinuating that they had more regard for their tithes than for their flocks, their pleasures than their prayers; and that they strove more for good livings than for eternal life.”