Wesley had reached his home—City Road—the proper place from which to be translated to his heavenly mansion. He is waiting for the chariot. His friends are deeply anxious. Joseph Bradford sends the following dispatch to the preachers:
"Dear brethren, Mr. Wesley is very ill. Pray! Pray! Pray!"
Looking over the whole of an extended life of unparalleled labor and suffering, he exclaims:
"I the chief of sinners am,
But Jesus died for me."
The day following he was heard to say, "There is no way into the holiest but by the blood of Jesus."
He frequently, with full heart, sang Watts's rapturous hymn, beginning:
"I'll praise my Maker while I've breath."
The tide of life is rapidly ebbing, but light from the realms above reveals to his enraptured soul the glories of his eternal home. Collecting all his remaining strength, he joyfully exclaims, "The best of all is, God is with us."
The chamber where the good man gathered up his feet in death seemed radiant with the divine glory. A few of his preachers and intimate friends were there—Bradford, long his traveling companion; Dr. Whitehead, afterward his biographer; Rogers and his devoted wife, Hester Ann, who ministered to him in his last hours; the daughter of Charles Wesley; Thomas Rankin; George Whitefield, his book steward; and a few others. They knelt around the couch of the dying saint. Bradford prayed. Then with a low but almost angelic whisper he said, "Farewell." It was his last. And at the moment Bradford was saying, in a petition which must have reached the throne of God, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and this heir of glory shall come in." While they thus lingered "the weary wheels of life" stood still, and the unparalleled career of John Wesley was ended at 10 a. m., March 2, 1791.