The taste for reading once awakened, he soon grew weary of a life of sin and folly. One evening he turned into a chapel in Broadmead to hear Mr. Wesley, who was preaching there. The old fire of religious enthusiasm was once more enkindled, and burned as fiercely as ever. His companions were soon brought to join the Wesleyan Society, and for a time the little knot of shoemakers working together lived a life of intense religious devotion, working hard and singing hymns or holding religious conversation all day, reading the works of leading evangelical divines during the greater part of the night, and seldom allowing themselves more than three hours’ sleep.
The religious was combined with the philosophic mind. He bought copies of such books as Plato on the “Immortality of the Soul,” Plutarch’s “Lives,” the “Morals of Confucius,” etc.; and, speaking of this time, he says: “The pleasures of eating and drinking I entirely despised, and for some time carried the disposition to an extreme. The account of Epicurus living in his garden, at the expense of about a halfpenny per day, and that when he added a little cheese to his bread on particular occasions he considered it as a luxury, filled me with raptures. From that moment I began to live on bread and tea, and for a considerable time did not partake of any other viand, but in that I indulged myself three or four times a day. My reasons for living in this abstemious manner were in order to save money to purchase books, to wean myself from the gross pleasures of eating, drinking, etc., and to purge my mind and make it more susceptible of intellectual pleasures.”
Leaving Bristol in 1769, he lived for a year at Kingsbridge, Devonshire, where he worked as a maker of stuff and silk shoes. In 1770 he went back to Bristol, and lodged once more with his old friends, the Joneses. At the end of that year he married Nancy Smith, an old sweetheart, whom he had fallen in love with seven years previously, “being at Farmer Gamlin’s at Charlton, four miles from Taunton, to hear a Methodist sermon.” Nancy was dairymaid then, and was accounted handsome; she was a devout Methodist, and an amiable, industrious, thrifty woman. But they were wretchedly poor at the time of their marriage, and had to go and live in lodgings at half a crown a week. “Our finances,” he remarks, “were but just sufficient to pay the expenses of the (wedding) day, for in searching our pockets (which we did not do in a careless manner), we discovered that we had but one halfpenny to begin the world with. ’Tis true we had laid in eatables sufficient for a day or two, in which time we knew we could by our work procure more, which we very cheerfully set about, singing together the following strains of Dr. Cotton:
‘Our portion is not large indeed,
But then how little do we need!
For Nature’s calls are few.
In this the art of living lies,
To want no more than may suffice,
And make that little do.’
“The above, and the following ode by Mr. Samuel Wesley, we did scores of times repeat, even with raptures: