[146]. Ibid., p. 299.
[147]. Ibid., p. 259.
[148]. Meaning his banker.
[149]. Newcombe’s Life of Sharpe.
[150]. Wesley’s Works, vol. vi. p. 69.
[151]. Clarke’s Wesley Family.
[152]. Methodist Mag., 1784, p. 606.
[153]. Kirk’s Mother of the Wesleys.
[154]. Three years previous to this, Thomas Firmin, a famous citizen of London, had died; a man held in high esteem for his charities of all sorts, private and public. Firmin, in early life, sat under the ministry of John Goodwin, but was afterwards converted to Socinianism by John Biddle, already mentioned in this history. Firmin was a man of great wealth, and promoted the printing of books against the Trinity, and distributed them freely over the nation, to all who would accept of them. The result was, the greatest mysteries in religion became the common topic of discourse, and were treated as the contrivances of priests to bring the world into blind submission to their authority. This raised a great outcry against Socinianism; and, as Tillotson and some of the bishops had lived in great friendship with Mr Firmin, (because of his charitable temper, which they thought it became them to encourage,) books like “Essays on the Balance of Power,” began to be put in circulation—(See Burnet’s History of His Own Time. 1st Edit., vol. ii. p. 212.)
[155]. Macaulay writes:—“Queen Anne had no will, no judgment, no conscience, but those of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. To them she had sacrificed affections, prejudices, habits, interests. In obedience to them, she had joined in the conspiracy against her father. She had fled from Whitehall in the depth of winter, through ice and mire, to a hackney coach. She had taken refuge in the rebel camp. She had consented to yield her place in the order of succession to the Prince of Orange. While a large party was disposed to make her an idol, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough regarded her merely as their puppet, and no person, who had a natural interest in Anne, could observe, without uneasiness, the strange infatuation which made her the slave of an imperious and reckless termagant.”