For months Wesley’s health had been feeble and failing. On November 12, he preached at Leigh, in Essex, where he caught cold. On his return to London, two days after, he “had a settled pain in his left breast, a violent cough, and a slow fever.” At this period, Dr. John Fothergill, a Quaker, and the son of Yorkshire Quakers, was the most popular of all the metropolitan physicians, and, soon afterwards, attained a practice the profits of which amounted to £7000 a year. Like many of his sect, he had a dash of extravagant eccentricity in his mental constitution; but his heart was benevolent and good. While at Edinburgh, he gave great offence by walking up the High Street, naked to the waist, denouncing God’s vengeance on the inhabitants of auld Reekie; but, excepting occasional aberrations of this description, his habits were singularly temperate and discreet; and to him Methodism owes an incalculable debt, for, under God, he saved the life of Methodism’s founder in 1753. Wesley writes: “Dr. Fothergill told me plain, I must not stay in town a day longer; adding, ‘If anything does thee good, it must be the country air, with rest, asses’ milk, and riding daily.’”
Accordingly, Wesley was, at once, removed to the country house of his friend, Mr. Ebenezer Blackwell, at Lewisham, where he was kindly tended for the next five weeks. On the evening of his arrival, he wrote his epitaph. “Not knowing,” he remarks, “how it might please God to dispose of me, to prevent vile panegyric, I wrote as follows.”
Here lieth the Body
of
John Wesley,
A Brand plucked out of the burning;
Who died of a Consumption in the Fifty-first Year
of his Age,
not leaving, after his Debts are paid,
Ten Pounds behind him:
Praying,
God be merciful to me, an unprofitable Servant!
He ordered, that this, if any, inscription should be placed on his
tombstone.
The news of Wesley’s dangerous illness, caused deep and wide spread sympathy. Charles Wesley hurried up from Bristol, and though, he says, he found his brother considerably better, he was “still in imminent danger, being far gone, and very suddenly, in a consumption.” Charles fell on his neck and wept. Wesley requested his wife and his brother to forget their past differences, and to be reconciled to each other. They readily agreed to this; and, for a time, confidence seemed to be restored between Wesley and his brother, and friendship, or something like it, appeared to be created between Charles and Wesley’s wife. Charles preached at the Foundery on the power of prayer, and declared it to be his opinion, that, if the life of his brother was prolonged, it would be in answer to the prayer of faith. Whitefield was penetrated with the profoundest sorrow. He was in the west of England at the time, and wrote as follows to his old and faithful friend.
“Bristol, December 3, 1753.
“Rev. and very dear Sir,—If seeing you so weak when leaving London distressed me, the news and prospect of your approaching dissolution have quite weighed me down. I pity myself and the church, but not you. A radiant throne awaits you, and ere long you will enter into your Master’s joy. Yonder He stands with a massy crown, ready to put it on your head amidst an admiring throng of saints and angels; but I, poor I, that have been waiting for my dissolution these nineteen years, must be left behind. Well! this is my comfort, it cannot be long ere the chariots will be sent even for worthless me. If prayers can detain them, even you, reverend and very dear sir, shall not leave us yet: but if the decree is gone forth, that you must now fall asleep in Jesus, may He kiss your soul away, and give you to die in the embraces of triumphant love! If in the land of the dying, I hope to pay my last respects to you next week. If not, reverend and very dear sir, F-a-r-e-w-e-l-l! Præ sequar, etsi non passibus æquis. My heart is too big; tears trickle down too fast; and you, I fear, are too weak for me to enlarge. Underneath you may there be Christ’s everlasting arms! I commend you to His never failing mercy, and am, reverend and very dear sir, your most affectionate, sympathising, and afflicted younger brother, in the gospel of our common Lord,
“G. Whitefield.”[198]
This is beautiful. Differences of opinion had not been few between Whitefield, and his now, as he thought, dying friend. Only a few months previous to this, Wesley, at the request of his conference, had written him a letter painfully faithful; but the two friends knew and loved each other far too well for the least leaven of unkindly feeling to find a lodgment in the heart of either. Whitefield’s grief was on his own account and that of the church apparently about to be bereaved; on Wesley’s account, he was full of joy, and wished to exchange places with him. On the same day as the above was written, he addressed another friend as follows:—“The physicians think Mr. John Wesley’s disease is a galloping consumption. I pity the church, I pity myself, but not him. We must stay behind in this cold climate, whilst he takes his flight to a radiant throne. Lord, if it be Thy blessed will, let not Thy chariot wheels be long in coming. Even so, come Lord Jesus, come quickly! Poor Mr. Charles will now have double work.”[199]
Leaving Wesley and his friends in the midst of this deep sorrow, we conclude the present chapter with the customary review of Wesley’s publications, during the year 1753. Before proceeding to do this, however, there is one affair, which was arranged in 1753, in reference to Wesley’s book concern, which must not be overlooked. In his Journal, on February 8, 1753, Wesley wrote:—“A proposal was made for devolving all temporal business, books and all, entirely on the stewards; so that I might have no care upon me (in London at least) but that of the souls committed to my charge. O when shall it once be! From this day? In me mora non erit ulla.”
Wesley, apparently, was incredulous, and yet this proposal, to a great extent at least, was carried out. We have now before us a printed folio circular, with the autograph signatures of T. Butts and W. Briggs, which must have attention. The first four paragraphs contain nothing but Christian sentiment, and, for want of space, are here omitted. The rest of the circular is as follows.