“5. I remember no extracts but that from the ‘Catena,’ which is 616 folio pages; but I think I have got the main of it into thirty quartos, which I finished yesterday, though there is no haste in sending it, for I design it for the appendix.
“As for the ‘Testimonia Arianorum’ περί του Λογου, it happens well that I have a pretty good copy, though not so perfect as that which is lost, and will get Mr Horberry to transcribe it as soon as he returns from Oxford; though I think it will not come in till towards the latter end of the work, as must your collation at the very end, only before the appendix;[[299]] and I shall begin to revise it to-morrow. Blessing on you and yours, from your loving father, Samuel Wesley.”[[300]]
Mr Wesley was a strict disciplinarian, not only in his family, but in his parish. According to the canonical law of the Church of England, churchwardens took an oath to bring to justice all who “offended their brethren by adultery, whoredom, incest, drunkenness, swearing, ribaldry, usury, or any other uncleanness or wickedness of life,” (Canon 109.) And when churchwardens violated their oaths by neglecting their duty, it then became imperative that the clergyman of the parish should present to his ordinary, the appointed judge of ecclesiastical causes, all the crimes and persons which he thought needed reformation. (Canon 113.) If the accused person was found guilty of adultery, or incontinency, the punishment usually inflicted was to do a public penance in the parish church, or in the market-place, when the offender, or offenders, stood in a white sheet, bare-legged and bare-headed, and made an open confession of their crime in a prescribed form of words. The judge, however, had authority, after the penance had been enjoined, to permit a commutation of it, by the criminal paying a sum of money for pious uses in satisfaction thereof. These remarks will help the reader to a better understanding of the following letters:—
“Epworth, Dec. 30, 1730.
“Mr Terry,—On account of our old friendship, I beg your advice as to the greatest parochial difficulty I have met with since my residence here.
“I have two couples of sinners at present upon my hands—the first very lean; the latter very fat; and I hope your courts will manage them both very well when they are blended together.
“The lean ones are Benjamin Becket, a widower, and Elizabeth Locker, a widow. Though they had not much less than half-a-score of children between them before, yet he has ventured to increase the number by getting a chopping bastard on her. She had weekly relief from the town; and he was prevented doing the same by being made sexton last year. They continue both unmarried. What aggravates his crime is, that, some years since, he did public penance here for ante-matrimonial fornication with his first wife. He and the widow are now desirous to do penance for this crime; and the fellow would undergo even a third penance by marrying her. I am desirous that their punishment should be as exemplary as their crime; and that both of them may perform their penance at three churches of the Isle;—my own at Epworth, at Haxey, and at Belton. I will see the court charges defrayed, which I hope will be as moderate as possible, because most of it is like to come out of my own pocket, and because the second couple will make amends.
“Their names are, Mr Aaron Man, one of the most substantial yeomen in my parish, reckoned worth about £100 a-year; a married man, with five grown-up children. He has long haunted a widow here of a character scarce better than his own. Her name is Sarah Brumby, with whom he has been seen both day and night, till at last she proved with child, and told several persons, who are ready to witness it, that he was the father of it. Notwithstanding this, he is so impudent and cunning that nobody doubts but he will do all he can to baffle justice, and even prevail upon Brumby to retract her confession, and lay it upon some other. He threatens any one who says he is the father, to put him into the spiritual court, or bring an action against him.
“Your advice, what steps to take in order to bring these criminals to public justice, would be very obliging and serviceable to me, and to the best of my parish. Our opinion is, that, being guarded with his impenetrable brass, he will obstinately deny the fact; and, when he is presented, will refuse public penance. Perhaps he might be willing to commute, though we are inclined to believe that he would stand an excommunication, which we know he does not value, though a capias carried to an outlawry, we believe, would make him bend.
“I would not willingly be baffled in this matter, because I look upon the whole exercise of discipline, in my parish, in a great measure to depend upon this event.—I am, my most worthy friend, your entire friend and servant, Samuel Wesley.”