[171] C. Wesley's Journal.
[172] In "The Life and Times of Wesley," William Seward is said to have died in 1741. This is a mistake; the proper date is 1740.
[173] "Brief Account of the Life of Harris." Trevecka, 1791, p. 110.
[174] Morgan's "Life and Times of Howell Harris," p. 30.
[175] In another letter, it is stated that "the usual preacher before the Society" was the Rev. Mr. Morgan. Query: Was this Charles Morgan the Oxford Methodist?
[176] One of Whitefield's assailants in the Weekly Miscellany of February 10, 1739, died a week after his attack was published. (Whitefield's Journal, p. 33.)
[177] Whitefield's Journal.
[178] In a letter to her son Samuel, dated March 8, 1739, Susannah Wesley writes:—"Mr. Whitefield has been taking a progress through these parts to make a collection for a house in Georgia for orphans and such of the natives' children as they will part with to learn our language and religion. He came hither to see me, and we talked about your brothers. I told him, I did not like their way of living, and wished them in some place of their own, wherein they might regularly preach. He replied, 'I could not conceive the good they did in London; that the greatest part of our clergy were asleep; and that there never was a greater need of itinerant preachers than now.' I then asked Mr. Whitefield if my sons were not making some innovations in the Church, which I much feared. He assured me they were so far from it, that they endeavoured all they could to reconcile Dissenters to our communion. His stay was short, so I could not talk with him so much as I desired. He seems to be a very good man, and one who truly desires the salvation of mankind. God grant that the wisdom of the serpent may be joined to the innocence of the dove!" ("Memorials of the Wesley Family," by G. J. Stevenson, p. 216.)
[179] This remarkable man, after a life of strange vicissitudes, was arrested for debt, on January 10, 1743, and put into Newgate prison, Bristol, where he remained until his death on the 31st of July next ensuing. Dr. Johnson writes: "He was treated by Mr. Dagge, the keeper of the prison, with great humanity; was supported by him at his own table without any certainty of recompence; had a room to himself, to which he could at any time retire from all disturbance; was allowed to stand at the door of the prison, and was sometimes taken out into the fields; so that he suffered fewer hardships in prison than he had been accustomed to undergo in the greatest part of his life. During the whole time of his imprisonment, the keeper continued to treat him with the utmost tenderness and civility. Virtue is undoubtedly most laudable in that state which makes it most difficult, and therefore the humanity of a gaoler certainly deserves this public attestation; and the man whose heart has not been hardened by such an employment may be justly proposed as a pattern of benevolence. If an inscription was once engraved 'to the honest toll-gatherer,' less honours ought not to be paid 'to the tender gaoler.'" It ought to be added, to the honour of Dagge, Whitefield's friend and admirer, that he defrayed the expense of burying Savage in the churchyard of St. Peter's.
[180] "Life and Times of Countess of Huntingdon," vol. ii., p. 357.