“I do not envy you the happiness, which I know you will have from the conversation of so many pious men as you will meet with in London, because I assure myself that I shall have the benefit of it when I have the pleasure to see you again at Oxford.
“Mr. Hall is not yet come home, so that I am pretty much taken up amongst the poor people and the prisoners, and have not yet had time to consider of any improvements or additions to be made to the list of books for our pupils.
“I thank God that I have fully conquered my affection for a morning’s nap, and rise constantly by five o’clock at the farthest, and have the pleasure to see myself imitated by the greatest part of my pupils. I have talked with Mr. Clements, and I hope have made him a proselyte to early rising, though I cannot to constant communion.
“Pray God prosper all those designs you have undertaken of doing good at London, and send you a good journey to Oxford.
“I am, rev. and dear sir, your most affectionate friend, and most obliged humble servant,
“J. Clayton.”
“I hope you will not forget to pay my due compliments to Sir John Philips, Mr. Wogan, and all my other good friends.
“To the Rev. Mr. John Wesley. To be left with Mr. Rivington, bookseller, in St Paul’s Churchyard, London.”
This long epistle, besides unfolding Clayton’s character, helps us to a better understanding of the position and practices of the Oxford Methodists. The debtors in Bocardo, the prisoners in the Castle, and paupers in the streets were objects of their beneficent compassion. They had their schools for the children of the poor; and, in their mission of mercy, were about to visit the workhouse of St. Thomas’s. Early rising was a habit, and prayer for each other a daily practice. Constant communion was enforced; though the dogma of the real presence of the body and blood of Christ was, as yet at least, no article of their faith.
Wesley being absent, there was a lull in the storm of Methodist persecution; but this was of short duration. Within a month after the date of Clayton’s letter, poor William Morgan died; an event which furnished an occasion for a violent attack upon the Oxford brotherhood, in what was then one of the most literary and respectable papers published,—Fogg’s Weekly Journal. They were accused of mopishness, hypocrisy, censoriousness, enthusiasm, madness, and superstitious scruples. “Among their own party,” says the writer, “they pass for religious persons and men of extraordinary parts; but they have the misfortune to be taken by all who have ever been in their company, for madmen and fools.”