Devouring by degrees, the neighbouring shores.
Let earth go where it will, I’ll not repine,
Nor can unhappy be, while heaven is mine.”
Here, in this miserable hovel, Wesley and his noble young wife resided. Here five of their children were born, and here Wesley wrote some of the most able works he ever published. Samuel Wesley was one of the rural clergy, but differed widely from the great mass of his brethren, who are thus described by Macaulay:—
“The rural clergyman, generally, began life as a young Levite, who every day said grace, at the table of a coarse ignorant squire, in full canonicals; and received, as pay, his board, a small garret, and ten pounds a year. In fine weather, he was always ready for bowls; and in rainy weather, for shovelboard. Sometimes he nailed up apricots, and sometimes curried coach horses, and cast up farriers’ bills. He was permitted to dine with the family; but was expected to content himself with the plainest fare. A waiting woman was generally considered as the most suitable help-meet for him. Quitting his chaplainship for a benefice and a wife, he found he had only exchanged one class of vexations for another. Often it was only by toiling on his glebe, by feeding swine, and by loading dungcarts, that he could obtain daily bread; nor did his utmost exertions always prevent the bailiffs from taking his concordance and his inkstand in execution. It was a white day on which he was admitted into the kitchen of a great house, and regaled by the servants with cold meat and ale. His children were brought up like the children of the neighbouring peasants. His boys followed the plough, and his girls were sent out to service. Study he found to be impossible, for the advowson of his living would hardly have sold for a sum sufficient to purchase a good theological library; and he might be considered as unusually lucky, if he had ten or twelve dog-cared volumes among the pots and pans on his household shelves. It is true that at that time (1685) there was no lack in the English Church of ministers distinguished by abilities and learning; but these men were to be found, with scarce a single exception, at the universities, at the great cathedrals, or in the capital. Barrow had lately died at Cambridge, and Pearson had gone thence to the Episcopal bench. Cudworth and Henry More were still living there; South and Pococke, Jane and Aldrich were at Oxford. Prideaux was at Norwich, and Whitby at Salisbury. In London were Sherlock, Tillotson, Sprat, Wake, Jeremy Collier, Burnett, Stillingfleet, Fowler, Sharp, Tennison, and Beveridge. Of these, ten became bishops and four archbishops. Thus the Anglican priesthood was divided into two sections—one trained for cities and courts, comprising men familiar with all ancient and modern learning; men able to encounter Hobbes or Bossuet at all the weapons of controversy; men who could, in their sermons, set forth the majesty and beauty of Christianity with such justness of thought, and such energy of language, that the indolent Charles roused himself to listen, and the fastidious Buckingham forgot to sneer; men with whom Halifax loved to discuss the interests of empires, and from whom Dryden was not ashamed to own that he had learned to write. The other section was destined to render humbler service. It was dispersed over the country, and consisted chiefly of persons not at all wealthier, and not much more refined, than small farmers or upper servants. And yet, it was in these rustic priests, who derived their scanty subsistence from their tithe sheaves and tithe pigs, and who had not the smallest chance of ever attaining high professional honours, that the professional spirit was strongest. Among those divines, who were the boast of the universities, and the delight of the capital, a party leaned towards constitutional principles of government, lived on friendly terms with Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, would gladly have seen a full toleration granted to all Protestant sects, and would even have consented to make alterations in the Liturgy, for the purpose of conciliating honest and candid Nonconformists. But such latitudinarianism was held in horror by the country parson. He was, indeed, prouder of his ragged gown than his superiors of their lawn and of their scarlet hoods. The very consciousness that there was little in his worldly circumstances to distinguish him from the villagers to whom he preached, led him to hold immoderately high the dignity of that sacerdotal office, which was his single title to reverence.”
We raise no objection to this graphic description of the country clergy living about the time that Samuel Wesley was appointed to South Ormsby. We believe it to be strictly accurate; and yet to all general rules there are exceptions, and, in this instance, Samuel Wesley was one. It is true that he was poor and pinched. It is quite possible that he sometimes found it necessary to load his dungcart, plough his glebe, and feed his swine; but Samuel Wesley was not the man to waste his time at bowls and shovelboard; or to stoop to the indignity of being regaled, by servants, with cold meat and ale, in the kitchen of the squire’s forbidden hall. His children might be coarsely clad, but his boys never followed the plough, nor did his girls go out to service. His fifty pounds a year might afford him next to nothing to buy books; and yet, somehow he read most of the best books in the English language. He was most faithfully devoted to the service of the Church; but he was far too great a man to think that the mere accidents of the sacerdotal office were sufficient to raise him above his neighbours. He was a country parson; but in learning, mental abilities, and the faithful discharge of ministerial duties, he differed from his country brethren, and was not unworthy to be ranked and associated with the greatest men at that time flourishing in the universities, in cathedrals, and in the capital. He might, like hundreds of others, have spent his time in agricultural toils and village sports, but there was within him the stirring of a high-born genius, which, wherever it exists, invariably impels its possessor to rise above the mediocrity of the common herd, and to attempt something honourable to the man who does it, and of service to those on whose behalf he labours. Human humdrums have always been inconveniently numerous, but Samuel Wesley was not one of them.
As already stated, he was the clergyman of an obscure village, with about two hundred inhabitants. There was plenty of opportunity to live a lazy life. He might have droned away his time, and wasted “the uncomfortable day in sighs;” but, like all men of genius and of mark, he could be happy only by being hard at work. His scanty income, and his increasing family, might be one of the inducements which led him to devote himself to literary labour; but had his income been even larger than his necessities required, it is almost certain that he would have pursued the same course of conduct; for, to a literary man, literary labour is not merely toil, but likewise luxury.
Samuel Wesley’s first publication was the “Maggots,” already noticed. His next undertaking was the Athenian Gazette, projected by his brother-in-law, John Dunton, just before Wesley removed from London to South Ormsby. The title of the new work was the “Athenian Gazette; or, Casuistical Mercury, Resolving all the Nice and Curious Questions Proposed by the Ingenious.” The Gazette was published twice a week, every Tuesday and Saturday, each number consisting of a single folio. The first number made its appearance on Tuesday, March 17, 1691, and the last on June 14, 1697. Each number was sold at one penny, and thirty numbers, that is, sixty pages, made what was called a volume; and which, stitched in marble paper, was sold for half-a-crown. In the first number that was issued, seven questions are answered in the following order, viz.:—1. Whether the torments of the damned are visible to the saints in heaven? 2. Whether the soul is eternal, or pre-existent from the creation, or contemporary with its embryo? 3. Whether every man has a good and bad angel attending him? 4. Where was the soul of Lazarus for the four days he lay in the grave? 5. Whether all souls are alike? 6. Whether it is lawful for a man to beat his wife? 7. How came the spots in the moon?
In an advertisement, at the end of No. 1, correspondents are requested to send their questions, “by a penny post letter, to Mr Smith’s, at his Coffee-house, in Stocks Market, in the Poultry.”
As already stated, thirty numbers made what was called a volume; but to each of the first five volumes was attached a supplement, quite as large as the volume itself, containing “the transactions and experiments of the foreign virtuosos, and also their ingenious conferences upon many nice and curious questions; together with an account of the design and scope of most of the considerable books printed in all languages, and the quality of the author, if known.”