“June 25, 1751.
“Because you have wrought folly in Israel, grieved the Holy Spirit of God, betrayed your own soul into temptation and sin, and the souls of many others, whom you ought, even at the peril of your own life, to have guarded against all sin; because you have given occasion to the enemies of God, whenever they shall know these things, to blaspheme the ways and truth of God:
“We can in nowise receive you as a fellow labourer, till we see clear proofs of your real and deep repentance. Of this you have given us no proof yet. You have not so much as named one single person, in all England or Ireland, with whom you have behaved ill, except those we knew before.
“The least and lowest proof of such repentance which we can receive is this: that, till our next conference (which we hope will be in October), you abstain both from preaching and from practising physic. If you do not, we are clear; we cannot answer for the consequences.
“John Wesley,
Charles Wesley.”
This was the first judicial sentence pronounced upon a culprit Methodist preacher. For some weeks, Wheatley went from house to house, justifying himself, and condemning Wesley and his brother for the action they had taken. He then proceeded to Norwich, where he was unknown. Reaching the gates, he gave the bridle to his horse, and was taken to one of the public inns. Before the door he observed a soldier, and, by the soldier, was introduced to a small company of serious people, who were known in Norwich by the name of puritans. He began to preach out of doors. Thousands, who had been notorious for all kinds of profaneness and irreligion, ran to hear him. Nearly two thousand of them were united together in Christian fellowship. The change in the city was most marvellous. A temporary building was erected on Timber Hill, in imitation of the one erected for Whitefield in Moorfields, and was called the Tabernacle. Meanwhile, however, a Jacobite party, commonly called the “Hell Fire Club,” a lawless fraternity who met at the Blue Bell on Orford Hill,[151] in conjunction with the papists and protestants of the city, began to oppose the growing reformation. The windows of Wheatley’s Tabernacle were smashed in pieces, and the chapel itself unroofed. Wheatley was stripped, and dragged to one of the bridges for the purpose of being drowned, but was mercifully rescued by the mayor. Horns were blown; and fireworks, dirt and stones were hurled in all directions at his followers. Some were scorched with fire; others wounded; and others had arms and legs violently broken. A plan was laid to convey the preacher to a mud pit, ten or twelve feet deep, and there to suffocate him. One day, the mob went in procession through most of the streets of Norwich, with a mock burial of the preacher, having upon his coffin the inscription—“Antichrist, Enthusiasm, Imposture, Blasphemy, and Schismatic.” They paraded twice through the Bell Yard, where the Hell Fire Club was kept; then walked three times round a fire in the castle ditch; and then, with mock solemnity, committed the coffin to the flames, and the preacher to the devil. Mrs. Overton and her daughter were beaten, had their eyes plastered up with clay, and their house filled with filthy water. Mr. Standen was left speechless; and numbers more had to be put under the surgeon’s care. On one occasion, the mob stuck a lamb upon a pole, and carried it through the streets, blasphemously crying, “Behold the Lamb of God!” They crowned a man with thorns, and scourged him, calling him by the holy name of Jesus. They carried about a picture, alleging it was the Holy Ghost, and cursed it as they went. Men, women, and children were maimed without mercy. One poor creature, big with child, died of the kicks and bruises she received; another young woman was dragged into the street, and was treated by brute after brute in a manner too shocking to relate, until she was carried home insensible, and with little hopes of living.[152] Two letters, published in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1752, and dated respectively, Norwich, February 19, and March 22, state that, for several months, the city had been disturbed and alarmed by the violent proceedings of an enraged populace, on account of their taking offence “at some encouragement given by the magistrates to Mr. Wheatley, a Welsh cobbler, lately turned Methodist preacher.” “On the 12th of January he had three constables to guard him; but the mob beat both him and them, and so covered them with mud that they could hardly be recognised. They went to his Tabernacle, broke the pulpit and windows, pulled down the seats, and untiled and destroyed a great part of the edifice. The mayor and swordbearer read the proclamation, to which the rioters responded, ‘Church and king! down with the meetings!’” It was alleged that Wheatley, by the number of his religious services, was the occasion of great numbers of both men and women neglecting their occupations; and that, as a consequence, the workhouse was filled, and the parishes burdened with helpless children. Wheatley, it is said, came to the town without a groat in his pocket, but was now receiving from ten to twelve guineas every week. He had been a noted bad liver; but now was well dressed, in a grey coat and black under habit, like a clergyman. His dear hearers, who regarded him as a holy inspired preacher, were roughly treated; for the populace, when meeting them, called out, “Bah! bah!” in reference to their being his own dear lambs; and, at a recent election of a coroner, had trundled some of them down the Castle Hill, and afterwards pumped on one, and wounded several others.
This was rough treatment; but Wheatley had been well schooled, and, in the midst of all, continued firm. His courage and his success ultimately turned the tide in his favour; and, in April, 1752, steps were taken to erect for him one of the largest chapels in the city. For a time, this was supplied by him, and Cudworth, and Robinson, afterwards the noted Socinian minister at Cambridge.
Space forbids our following the history of James Wheatley further; except to say, that, in 1754, he again disgraced himself; and the judge of the ecclesiastical court at Norwich, before whom his case was tried, on February 4, 1756, declared him to be “a lewd, debauched, incontinent, and adulterous person; and stated, he had committed the crimes of adultery, fornication, and incontinence, to the great scandal of good men, and the pernicious example of others; and, that he (the judge) decreed, that the said Wheatley be enjoined a public penance, to be performed in a linen cloth, with a paper pinned to his breast, denoting his crime; and, that he further pay the costs of his prosecution.”[153]
For a time, poor Wheatley was obliged to leave the kingdom. He then returned to Norwich, and preached to his “dear lambs” for several years, after which he lost his voice, and went to Bristol, where he was suddenly seized, in a barber’s shop, with a violent fit of coughing, and expired. John Pawson, who knew him, and from whose manuscript letters this is taken, adds: “He was one of the greatest mysteries that ever bore human shape. Such a degree of hypocrisy hardly ever lodged in a human heart before.”
The detected immorality of James Wheatley, and his accusation of other preachers, led Wesley and his brother to determine upon instituting a more strict inquiry into the life, and behaviour of the preachers in connection with them.