creed was a matter of passionate sentiment and affection, and was cherished as warmly under Low-church William as during Queen Anne's High-church régime." 1

She believed in the divine right of kings, and in the headship of the legitimate king over the Church of England. The use of the word "Jacobite" arose from the primary manifestation of the spirit in connection with James II., who was compelled to abdicate-Jacob being the Latin form of James.

Adam Clarke says that he had from the lips of John Wesley this anecdote: "Were I," said John Wesley, "to write my own life, I should begin it before I was born, merely for the purpose of mentioning a disagreement between my father and mother. Said my father to my mother one day after family prayer, 'Why did you not say "Amen" this morning to the prayer for the king?' 'Because,' said she, 'I do not believe the Prince of Orange to be the king.' 'If that be the case,' said he, 'you and I must part; for if we have two kings we must have two beds.' My mother was inflexible. My father went immediately to his study, and after a season by himself set out for London, where, being Convocation-man for the diocese of Lincoln, he remained without visiting his own house for the remainder of the year. On March 8th, in the following year (1702) King William died, and as both my father and mother were agreed as to the legitimacy of Queen Anne's title, the cause of disagreement ceased. My father returned to Epworth, and conjugal harmony was restored."

Mr. Tyerman undertakes to show that the portion of this strange story which reflects so severely on Samuel Wesley cannot be true. They had lived together a dozen years

1 "The Churchmanship of John Wesley," by James H. Rigg, D.D. (London, Wesleyan Conference Office).

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since William and Mary's accession, and every Sunday and Friday Samuel Wesley had prayed for King William. Quoting a beautiful passage from a letter of the father to his son Samuel, he shows how deeply they loved each other: "Reverence and love your mother. Though I should be jealous of any other rival in your breast, yet I will not be of her; the more duty you pay her, and the more frequently and kindly you write to her, the more you will please your father." Tyerman assumes the absolute improbability of such a story, and, entering into details, proves that Convocation was summoned twice in the year 1701: first, February 10th and lasted till June 24th, when it was prorogued; convened again December 31st; and between nine and ten weeks after, when King William died, March 8, 1702, it was again prorogued. Further, on the 14th and 18th of May of that same year he finds that Samuel Wesley was at Epworth attending his wife with affectionate tenderness when she became the mother of twins. He adduces letters written by Samuel Wesley from Epworth to Archbishop Sharpe at that time, and thus, as well as in other ways, furnishes satisfactory proof that he was not away from his family or charge for a longer period than ten or twelve weeks.

This incident, doubtless, has a foundation of truth as respects a temporary disagreement, though the extent of it is exaggerated. That its cause was a question of judgment and conscience, indicates the strength of will which characterized the parents of Wesley, and the influence of ecclesiastical and civil ideas upon their characters and actions.

An examination of Mrs. Wesley's letters, and a comparison of English and American writers, justifies Isaac Taylor's estimate: "The Wesleys' mother was the mother of Methodism in a religious and moral sense; for her cour

age, her submissiveness to authority, the high tone of her mind, its independence and its self-control, the warmth of her devotional feelings and the practical direction given to them, came up and were visibly repeated in the character and conduct of her sons.

"When Mrs. Wesley, writing to her husband concerning the irregular services she had carried on during his absence in the rectory kitchen for the benefit of her poor neighbors, said, 'Do not advise, but command me to desist,' she was bringing to its place a corner-stone of the future Methodism. In this emphatic expression of a deep compound feeling-a powerful conscientious impulse and a fixed principle of submission to rightful authority-there was condensed the very law of her son's course as the founder and legislator of a sect." 1

1 "Wesley and Methodism," by Isaac Taylor (American edition, Harper Brothers, 1860).