The next day, as he was walking in his garden, and mournfully surveying the ruins of his house, he descried part of a leaf of his Polyglott Bible, on which the only words legible were: “Vade, vende omnia quae habes, et attolle crucem, et sequere me.” “Go, sell all that thou hast; and take up thy cross, and follow me.”
The house, the furniture, and the rector’s library were burnt; but perhaps the severest loss, at least to posterity, was the destruction of manuscripts. This included Mr Wesley’s long-continued literary correspondence, the writings of his wife, and many important papers relative to the Annesley family, and particularly to Dr Annesley himself;—papers which the doctor had intrusted to Mrs Wesley as his best beloved child. Besides these, all the sermons of the rector were consumed, and likewise a large and important manuscript on Hebrew poetry, in which he had turned the book of Psalms, and all the Hebrew hymns in the Pentateuch, and in the book of Judges, into verse.
A few small mementoes of this terrible calamity were preserved, and among others a hymn, written by Samuel Wesley, with music adapted, probably by Henry Purcell or Dr Blow. This hymn is the only one, by the rector of Epworth, that finds a place in the Methodist Hymn-Book, and there even it is curtailed. We present it to the reader complete.
“Behold the Saviour of mankind
Nail’d to the shameful tree!
How vast the love that Him inclined
To bleed and die for thee!
“Though far unequal our low praise
To Thy vast sufferings prove,
O Lamb of God, thus all our days