“Whether we may not lend smaller sums to those that are of any trade, that they may procure themselves tools and materials to work with?
“Whether we may not give to them who appear to want it most, a little money, or clothes, or physic?
“Whether we may not supply as many as are serious enough to read, with a Bible and a Whole Duty of Man?
“Whether we may not, as we have opportunity, explain and enforce these upon them, especially with respect to public and private prayer, and the blessed sacrament?”[7]
Such, at the end of 1730, was the plan of benevolent action drawn up by the Oxford Methodists. Who can find fault with it? Wesley tells us, that they met with none who answered these questions in the negative, and that several helped them with quarterly subscriptions.[8]
Thus encouraged, the two Wesleys, Kirkham, and Morgan, cheerily pursued their way, “in spite of the ridicule which increased fast upon them during the winter.” The men of wit, in Christ Church, called them Sacramentarians. Their allies, at Merton, styled them The Holy Club. Others stigmatized them as The Godly Club; and others the Enthusiasts, or the Reforming Club; but ridicule, though far from pleasant, failed to check them in their laborious career.
In the summer of 1731, Mr. Morgan was disabled, by an attack of sickness, and retired to Holt; but under the date of June 11th, Wesley writes:—
“The poor at the Castle, however, have still the Gospel preached to them, and some of their temporal wants supplied, our little fund rather increasing than diminishing. Nor have we yet been forced to discharge any of the children which Mr. Morgan left to our care: though I wish they too do not find the want of him; I am sure some of their parents will.”[9]
Mr. Morgan’s affliction excited great interest in the Wesley family. Matthew Wesley, an eminent physician in London, was on a visit to his brother Samuel, the Rector of Epworth, and from thence went to Scarborough. In a letter to her son John, dated, “Epworth, July 12, 1731,” Susannah Wesley wrote:—