Defoe then proceeds to say, that the reason why Dissenters have erected and opened private academies, to teach their children by themselves, is because the Church party, by imposing unreasonable terms, have shut them out of theirs. He states that, if they will admit the youth of the Dissenters into their universities, without imposing upon them unfair oaths and obligations, the Dissenters, though objecting to “university morals, as to the trifles of drunkenness and lewdness,” yet, would engage to have always as many as two thousand of their young people students in these seats of learning.
The remainder of Defoe’s pamphlet is devoted to a violent refutation of Sacheverell’s second sermon at Oxford; a sermon in which, he declares, there are fourteen positive untruths, to the reproach of the preacher’s coat, and the scandal of his ministerial function.
Mr Wesley, in his first reply to Mr Palmer, used the Latin line as his motto, Noli irritare crabones. He wished not to irritate the wasps; but whether he wished it or not, the thing itself was done. We have seen what Palmer and Defoe say of him and of his unlucky letter; and, we are bound to add, that others have been not less pointed and severe. Dunton writes—“Mr Wesley’s first piece was a most unkind satire. The world had not known him unless he had thought to make himself public. I am afraid Mr Wesley’s vein has almost spent itself; the dregs come the last. His taxing the morals and behaviour of the Dissenting ministers was a malicious falsehood, published on purpose to carry favour with the High Flyers, and to enlarge his preferments.” Chadwick, in his Life of Defoe, broadly asserts that Samuel Wesley himself published his letter respecting dissenting academies; and that his traducing the Dissenters “was intended, through the royal patronage, to send this time—serving flatterer into the archbishopric of Canterbury, upon the back of that unprincipled miscreant, Dr Sacheverell.” Milner, in his “Life and Times of Dr Isaac Watts,” observes—“It is difficult to shield Mr Wesley from the charge of seeking to further the designs of tyranny by private slander; and of endeavouring to enlarge a scanty income by gratifying the heads of the Church, in vilifying the seceders from its communion. There is too much reason to fear that hopes of preferment led him to join the party of Sacheverell in the work of abuse and defamation. Mr Southey says, the reason why he left the Dissenters, was his falling in with bigoted and ferocious men, who defended the execution of King Charles, and shocked and disgusted him by their Calves—head Club. The only authority for this extraordinary assertion is the evidence of Samuel Wesley, the younger, a violent Jacobite; and Mr Southey introduces the statement into his pages as if no suspicion was to be entertained of the truth of the facts it expresses. It may be true that Mr Wesley was a member of the Calves—head Club; it may be true that he frequented the blind alley, near Moorfields, on the 30th of January; but it is not true that any other cause beside his own imprudence introduced him into such society; it is not true that the scenes he there witnessed led to his secession from the Dissenters; for they had no more to do with such disgraceful proceedings than their accusers; so that, the only inference we can derive from the representation of Mr Southey is, that the elder Wesley, in his youth, associated with a band of profligates; and, as extremes in politics often meet, the furious republican became at last a blind worshipper of the royal prerogative.”
In these extracts, the reader has before him the substance of all the charges which Dissenting ignorance and hatred have brought against the character of this venerable man. It is scarce worth while to refute them; for they are all in flat contradiction to the facts published in the previous pages of this narrative; and yet, perhaps, a brief reply may be of service:—
| Charges. | Answers. |
| Defoe says that Wesley was a “mercenary renegado.” | Defoe gave utterance to a malicious slander; in support of which he does not even attempt to adduce the slightest evidence. |
| Defoe says that Wesley was hired to expose the private academies of Dissenters. | Who hired him? What was his remuneration? This also is an unfounded assertion, unsupported by a single particle of proof. |
| Defoe says that Wesley ingenuously confesses himself guilty of many crimes in his youth; and that he was a little rakish while he was among the Dissenters. | All that Mr Wesley acknowledges is, that he wrote some “silly lampoons on Church and State,” at the instigation and urgent request of some Dissenting ministers, who ought to have known better than expose a youth from the country to such temptations. He further maintains that if he was not an “exemplary liver” while with the Dissenters, he was, at least, not a “scandalous one.” |
| Defoe says Mr Morton never taught antimonarchical principles. | Mr Wesley says the same; and also adds, that whenever Mr Morton heard any of his pupils talking disaffectedly, or disloyally, he never failed to rebuke them. |
| Defoe meanly insinuates that Mr Wesley fell into ill company after he left the Dissenters. | We have no account of his being in any ill company after he left the Dissenters, except on one occasion, when he was in company with a number of Dissenting scoffers at the Calves-head Club. |
| Leaving Defoe, turn to Dunton. The latter says that Wesley’s letter “taxing the morals and behaviour of Dissenting ministers was a malicious falsehood.” | The Dissenter who purloined the manuscript from under Wesley’s pillow while he slept, and then dishonourably read it, freely acknowledged that there was nothing in the letter but what was true. |
| Dunton says that Wesley published the letter “to curry favour with the High Flyers, and to enlarge his preferment.” | Mr Wesley did not publish it at all. That was done by Mr Clavel, who published it without either Wesley’s consent or knowledge. Besides, so far from it being intended to “curry favour with the High Flyers,” it was written at a time when Wesley undeniably belonged to the Low Church party, the head of which was the man he so greatly praised two or three years afterwards, viz., Archbishop Tillotson. |
| Chadwick says Wesley published the letter himself. | That is an unblushing falsehood. |
| Chadwick says Wesley traduced the Dissenters in order to become Archbishop of Canterbury. | This provokes a smile, but is too absurd to deserve a serious answer. |
| Milner accuses Wesley of seeking to further the designs of tyranny. | Mr Wesley was an enemy of tyrants. Witness what he said when James II. exhibited his tyranny at Oxford. |
| Milner says that Wesley “endeavoured to enlarge a scanty income by gratifying the heads of the Church in vilifying the seceders from its communion.”[communion.”] | Mr Wesley never intended his letter to be even seen by the heads of the Church; much less hoped that, through them, it would be the means of enlarging his scanty income. |
| Milner says there is reason to fear that hopes of preferment led him to join the party of Sacheverell. | Where is the reason to be found? |
| Milner says that Samuel Wesley, jun., was a violent Jacobite. | Samuel Wesley’s brother John says, “he was no more a Jacobite than he was a Turk.” (See Gentleman’s Magazine for 1785, page 246.) |
| Milner says that Samuel Wesley, jun., is the only authority attesting the truthfulness of the story about the Calves-head Club. | Nay; the story is recited by Samuel Wesley, sen., in the Defence of his Letter, published by himself, in 1704. |
| Milner dishonourably insinuates that “it may be true that Wesley was a member of the Calves-head Club, and that he frequented its meetings on the 30th of January.” | When Mr Milner wrote this, he knew that Mr Wesley was not a member of the club; and that, so far from frequenting its meetings, he was never there but once, and then he came away disgusted. |
| Milner says it was his own imprudence that introduced him into such society. | Perhaps it was imprudent for him to have been in such a disreputable place; but he left it, “indignant at the villanous principles and practices” he had witnessed: and never went again. |
| Milner says it is not true that the scene at the Calves-head Club was the cause of his leaving the Dissenters. | No one says it was. He left the Dissenters years before this. But, if the scene at the Calves-head Club was not the cause of his leaving the Dissenters, it was the cause of his writing his letter respecting Dissenting Academies. |
| Milner says that he infers that Wesley, in his youth, “associated with a band of profligates.” | The only band of profligates with whom Wesley associated in his youth were the profligates at the Dissenting academies, and, in one instance, a band of profligates at the Calves-head Club, who called themselves Dissenters. |
| Milner says the Dissenters had no more to do with the disgraceful proceedings of the Calves-head Club than their accusers had. | We do not, for a single moment, entertain the thought that the Calves-head Club had the approbation of the Dissenters as a whole, or of even any considerable minority; but still, there cannot be a doubt that the members of the club were men who considered themselves Dissenters, notwithstanding their utter unfitness to be members of any Dissenting Church. |
We have thus fully stated all the hard things which Mr Wesley’s enemies have thought fit to say against him, and, in this summary way, have replied to them. Those who wish for further refutations must refer again to the pages they have already read. Defoe’s accusation is calumnious slander of the worst description. Chadwick is a man whose vulgar ravings are hardly worthy of being noticed. The life of a man like Dr Watts is blurred and blotted by such utterly false, if not malignant, charges as those which the writer has brought against Mr Wesley. We have no quarrel with Mr Milner on account of his attempt to show that the Calves-head Club was an infamous association, which the Dissenting body, as a whole, condemned; but he had no right to impeach the veracity of Mr Wesley, and, by a mean insinuation, to try to cast upon him the disgrace of the possibility that he himself was a member of this godless gang. That is an ungenerous reproach, which none but an irritated man would have ventured to employ. The barbarous Calves-head Club was a disgraceful association, of which the great bulk of the Dissenters totally disapproved; for it is cheerfully acknowledged that some classes of the Dissenters were deeply averse to the murder of King Charles I., and were among the first to welcome his son Charles II., to the English monarchy; but while all this is most readily allowed, we submit that this is no refutation of the statement that the members of that abominable club declared themselves to be Dissenters; nor is it any excuse for Mr Milner’s attack on Mr Wesley’s veracity, and especially for his unworthy suggestion that Mr Wesley himself might be an associate of the profligate fellows of which the Calves-head Club consisted.
Believing Mr Wesley to be unimpeachable in the painful business that has been here discussed, and feeling that his character and rank in society make it of some importance to keep his fair fame without a blot, we offer no apology for this lengthened, and, perhaps, tedious chapter in his history. Dr Adam Clarke sums up the whole in terms to which we find it impossible to assent. He writes: “In the heat of his zeal for the Church, after his conversion from dissenting principles, Mr Samuel Wesley, in his controversial writings, often overstepped the bounds of Christian moderation.” Did he? We have read the whole of his controversial writings; and, finding no proof of this, we respectfully doubt it.
CHAPTER XV.
THE IMPRISONED FATHER.—1705–1709.
It was about this period of Mr Wesley’s history that he wished and proposed to go as a missionary to the East Indies. The only English missionary society then existing was the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts. This society was instituted by King William III. in 1701, and had for its object the maintenance of clergymen in the British plantations, colonies, and factories. It was managed by a board of ninety persons, including the two archbishops, several bishops, and a number of the nobility, gentry, and clergy.
Mr Wesley’s scheme was threefold. First, he proposed to inquire into the state of English colonists, in all the English factories and settlements, from St Helena to India and China; travelling wherever it was possible to travel, either by land or sea; and where that could not be done, making the same inquiry by means of correspondence from Surat, which he seems to have intended to be his place of residence. He wished to inquire into the number of the English colonists, their morals, and their ministers; and to revive among them the spirit of Christianity, by catechising, by good books, and by other means of the same description.