“The school was, I think, of Mr. Wesley’s own setting up. At all events, he paid the mistress, and clothed some, if not all, of the children. When they went thither, they enquired how each child behaved; saw their work (for some could knit and spin); heard them read; heard them their prayers and catechism; and explained part of it.
“In the same manner, they taught the children in the workhouse; and read to the old people as they did to the prisoners.
“Though some practices of Mr. Wesley and his friends were much blamed,—as their fasting on Wednesday and Friday, after the custom of the Primitive Church,—their coming on those Sundays, when there was no sacrament in their own colleges, to receive it at Christ Church,—yet nothing was so much disliked as these charitable employments. They seldom took any notice of the accusations brought against them; but, if they made any reply, it was commonly such a plain and simple one, as if there was nothing more in the case, but that they had heard such doctrines of their Saviour, and believed and done accordingly,—‘Shall we be the more happy in another life, the more virtuous we are in this? Are we the more virtuous, the more intensely we love God and man? Is love, as all habits, the more intense, the more we exercise it? Is either helping, or trying to help man, for God’s sake, an exercise of love to God or man? Particularly, Is the feeding the hungry, the giving drink to the thirsty, the clothing the naked, the visiting sick persons, or prisoners, an exercise of love to God or man? Is the endeavouring to teach the ignorant, to admonish sinners, to encourage the good, to comfort the afflicted, to confirm the wavering, and to reconcile enemies, an exercise of love to God or man? Shall we be the more happy in another life, if we do the former of these things, and try to do the latter? Or if we do not the one, nor try to do the other?”
In the above extracts, the reader has the practices which principally distinguished the Oxford Methodists from their fellows. The account is full of interest, and of great importance, being written by one of the members of this godly brotherhood, and immediately after that brotherhood was broken up. The remainder of Gambold’s narrative is chiefly a defence and eulogy of Wesley, their “Curator;” and only such parts of it will be given as affect the whole of these earnest students. Gambold continues:—
“What I would chiefly remark upon, is the manner in which Mr. Wesley directed his friends.
“Because he required such a regulation of our studies, as might devote them all to God, he has been cried out upon as one that discouraged learning. Far from that;—the first thing he struck at in young men, was that indolence which would not submit to close thinking. Nor was he against reading much, especially at first; because then the mind ought to fill itself with materials, and try every thing that looks bright and perfect.
“He earnestly recommended to them a method and order in all their actions. After their morning devotions (which were at a fixed and early hour, from five to six being the time, morning as well as evening), he advised them to determine with themselves what they were to do all the parts of the day. By such foresight, they would, at every hour’s end, not be in doubt how to dispose of themselves; and, by bringing themselves under the necessity of such a plan, they might correct the impotence of a mind that had been used to live by humour and chance, and prepare it by degrees to bear the other restraints of a holy life.
“The next thing was to put them upon keeping the fasts, visiting poor people, and coming to the weekly Sacrament: not only to subdue the body, increase charity, and obtain Divine grace; but (as he expressed it) to cut off their retreat to the world. He judged, that, if they did these things, men would cast out their name as evil, and, by the impossibility of keeping fair any longer with the world, oblige them to take their whole refuge in Christianity. But those, whose resolutions he thought would not bear this test, he left to gather strength by their secret exercises.
“It was his earnest care to introduce them to the treasures of wisdom and hope in the Holy Scriptures: to teach them not only to endure that book, but to form themselves by it, and to fly to it as the great antidote against the darkness of this world. For some years past, he and his friends read the New Testament together at evening. After every portion of it, having heard the conjectures the rest had to offer, he made his observations on the phrase, design, and difficult places. One or two wrote these down from his mouth.
“He laid much stress upon self-examination. He taught them (besides what occurs in his Collection of Prayers) to take account of their actions in a very exact manner, by writing a constant diary. In this, they noted down in cipher, once if not oftener in the day, what chiefly their employments had been in the several parts of it, and how they had performed each. Mr. Wesley had these records of his life by him for many years past. And some I have known, who, to seal their convictions and make their repentance more solemn, would write down such reflections upon themselves as the anguish of their soul at that time suggested, adding any spiritual maxim which some experience of their own had confirmed to them.