He shines in wit, and yet is so sedate,
That none can equal, best but imitate.
In Palmer see, in Palmer all admire,
What nature, books, and honour can inspire.
Were Wesley but impartial, he would own
His learned answer lash’d him to the bone.
A better vindication none could write,
Nor any satire show us half the wit.”[[165]]
Samuel Palmer, as Dunton intimates, pursued his academical studies under Dr Kerr, a gentleman of considerable reputation for classical learning, who was first a tutor in Ireland, but was driven thence by the tyranny of the Earl of Tyrconnel, and then settled at Bethnal Green, where he met with great encouragement, and trained several Dissenting ministers, who were ornaments to religion and learning. Palmer entered upon the ministry at Grave Lane Chapel, Southwark, in 1698. His first two publications were his replies to Wesley, published respectively in 1703 and 1705, and which were accounted very able performances, and procured the author considerable reputation. Within a year or two after the second of these publications, he, like Wesley, left the Dissenters, and took orders in the Church of England, and had conferred upon him the living of Malden in Essex. It is said that this conversion to the Church of England arose out of his disappointment at not being rewarded according to his apprehended merit for his pamphlets against Wesley. It is further said, that, after he joined the Establishment, he grew lax in his morals until his conduct became scandalous. We are not informed as to the time and place of his decease; but, in 1710 he published an octavo volume, entitled “Moral Essays, founded upon English, Scotch, and Foreign Proverbs.”[[166]] Such was Wesley’s principal antagonist.
Mr Wesley’s letter gave the Dissenters great offence, but the reader must not forget the circumstances under which it was written, and the dishonourable way in which it was afterwards published. About the year 1690, Wesley was introduced to the meeting of the Calves-head Club already mentioned. Rightly or wrongly, Wesley regarded Charles I. as a “royal martyr,” for thus he emphatically speaks of him in the dedication he prefixed to his “History of the Old and New Testaments in Verse;” but, at the meeting at which he was now present, the name and memory of Charles were treated with even profane derision and contempt. Is it surprising that this spirited young man should leave the place with a feeling of disgust, and that, in the heat of the moment, he should sit down to write what he had often been solicited to write, an account of the “Education of the Dissenters in their private academies”? He tells us that he began to write his letter as soon as he left the club, and that he finished it before five o’clock next morning. He then went to bed, placing his manuscript beneath his pillow. While he slept, a Dissenting friend, who had seen him thoughtful, came and stealthily took the manuscript away and read it. Such behaviour was highly dishonourable, and can be excused only on the ground of supposing that Wesley and this Dissenter were intimate and confidential friends. Be that as it may, when Wesley awoke and missed his letter, he charged the Dissenter with having it. The purloiner produced the missing manuscript, said he had read it, and that there was nothing in it but what was true. Still he was doubtful respecting the expediency of divulging such revelations, and persuaded Wesley not to send the letter to the person for whom it was intended.