Bishop. You Wesley. We

then states the reasons which satisfied him, that he ought to preach. These are, 1. That he was devoted to the service from his infancy. 2. That he was educated for it, at school and in the university. 3. That, as a son of the prophets, after having taken his degrees, he preached in the country, being approved of by judicious, able Christians, ministers and others. 4. That it pleased God to seal his labors with success in the conversion of several souls from ignorance and profaneness, to the power of godliness; that such conversions had taken place wherever he had been called to preach; at Radpole, Melcomb, Turnwood, Whitchurch, and at sea. He declares, that if this was not found to be the case upon examination, he was willing to be discharged from his ministry. "I will stand or fall, says he, on the issue thereof." He adds, 5. That the church seeing the presence of God going along with him, they did, by fasting and prayer, in a day set apart for that end, seek an abundant blessing on his endeavors. "A particular church! exclaims the bishop: yes, my lord, says Mr. Wesley, I am not ashamed to own myself a member of one. have no warrant for your particular churches. have a plain, full, and sufficient rule for gospel worship in the New Testament, recorded in the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles. B. We have not. W. The practice of the apostles is a standing rule in those cases which were not extraordinary. B. Not their practice but their precepts. W. Both precepts and practice. Our duty is not delivered to us in Scripture only by precepts, but by precedents, by promises, by threatenings mixed, not common-place wise. May it please your lordship, we believe that cultas non institutus est indebitus. B. It is false. W. The second commandment speaks the same: Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image. B. That is forms of your own invention. W. Bishop Andrews taking notice of non facies tibi, satisfied me, that we may not worship God but as commanded. B. You take discipline, church government, and circumstances, for worship. W. You account ceremonies parts of worship. B. Well then, you will justify your preaching, will you, without ordination according to law? W. All these things laid together are satisfactory to me for my procedure therein. B. They are not enough. W. There has been more written in proof of the preaching of gifted persons, with such approbation, than has been answered by any one yet. B. I am glad I heard this from your own mouth. You will stand to your principles, you say? W. I intend it, through the grace of God; and to be faithful to the King's Majesty, however you may deal with me. B. I will not meddle with you. W. Farewell to you, sir. B. Farewell, good Mr. Wesley."

It is to be hoped that the bishop was as good as his word. But there were some persons of influence in his neighborhood who were too much his enemies to permit him to continue quietly at Whitchurch, till the act of uniformity ejected him. For in the beginning of 1662, he was seized on the Lord's day as he was coming out of church, carried to Blandford, and committed to prison. Sir Gerrard Napper was one of the most furious of his enemies, and the most forward in committing him; but meeting with

an accident by which he broke his collar-bone, he was so far softened, that he sent some persons to bail Mr. Wesley, and told them if they would not, he would do it himself. How various are the ways by which God brings men to consciousness of their guilt! Mr. Wesley, however, was set at liberty, though bound over to appear at the next assizes. He appeared accordingly, and came off much better than he expected. On this occasion the good man recorded in his diary the mercy of God to him, in raising up several friends to own him; inclining a solicitor to plead for him, and restraining the wrath of man, so that the judge, though a very passionate man, spoke not an angry word.

Mr. Wesley came joyfully home from the assizes, and preached constantly every Lord's day till August 17th, when he delivered his farewell sermon to a weeping audience, from Acts xx. 32, "And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified." October the 26th, the place was declared vacant by an apparitor, and orders given to sequester the profits; but his people had given him what was due. On the 22d of February, 1663, he quitted Whitchurch, and removed with his family to Melcomb: upon which the corporation made an order against his settlement there, imposing a fine of £20 upon his landlady, and 5s. per week upon him, to be levied by distress. These violent proceedings forced him to leave the town, and he went to Bridgewater, Ilminster, and Taunton, in which places he met with great kindness and friendship from all the three denominations of Dissenters, and was almost every day employed in preaching in the several places to which he went; and got many good acquaintance, and friends, who were afterwards very kind to him and his numerous family. At length a gentleman who had a very good house at Preston, two or three miles from Melcomb, gave him free liberty to live in it without paying any rent. Thither he removed his family in the beginning of May, and there he continued as long as he lived. He records his coming to Preston with great wonder and thankfulness.

Soon after this he had some debates in his mind whether he ought not to remove beyond sea, to Surinam or Maryland; but after much consideration and advice, he determined to take his lot in his native country. He had some scruples also about attending public worship in the established church; but by several arguments in Mr. Nye's papers, he was determined to do it. After some time he was called by a number of serious Christians at Pool to be their pastor; and in that relation he continued to the day of his death, administering all ordinances to them as opportunity offered. By the Oxford Act he was obliged for a while to withdraw from Preston, and leave his family and people. But he preached wherever he came, if he could but have an audience. Upon his coming to the place of his retirement in March, 1666, he put this question to himself, "What dost thou here, at such a distance from church, wife, children, &c.?" And in his answer, sets down the oath required by government, and then adds the reasons why he could not take it, as several ministers had done; and particularly,

that to do it in his own private sense, would be but juggling with God, with the king, and with conscience. But after all this and a good deal more against taking the oath, he thankfully mentions the goodness of God in so overruling the law-makers, that they did not send the ministers farther from their friends and flocks; and that they had so much time to prepare for their removal, and had liberty to pass on the road to any place. After he had lain hid for some time he ventured home again, and returned to his labor among his people and among others occasionally. But notwithstanding all his prudence in managing his meetings, he was often disturbed; several times apprehended, and four times imprisoned; once at Pool for half a year, and once at Dorchester for three months: the other confinements were shorter. He was in many straits and difficulties, but wonderfully supported and comforted, and many times very seasonably and surprisingly delivered. The removal of many eminent Christians into another world, who were his intimate acquaintance and kind friends; the great decay of serious religion among many that made a profession, and the increasing rage of the enemies of real godliness, manifestly sunk his spirits. "And having filled up his part of what is behind of the "afflictions of Christ in his flesh, for his body's sake, which is the “church, and finished the work given him to do, he was taken* "out of this vale of tears to that world where the wicked cease “from troubling, and the weary are at rest, when he had not been "much longer an inhabitant here below than his blessed Master, "whom he served with his whole heart, according to the best light "he had. The vicar of Preston would not suffer him to be buried "in the church."†

There are several things in this account of Mr. Wesley which deserve the reader's notice. 1. He appears to have made himself master of the controverted points in which he differed from those of the established church, and to have taken up his opinions from a conviction of their truth. 2. He showed an ingenuous mind, free from low cunning, in an open avowal of his sentiments to the bishop. 3. He appears to have been remarkably conscientious in all his conduct, and a zealous promoter of genuine piety both in himself and others. 4. He discovered great firmness of mind and an unshaken attachment to his principles in the midst of the most unchristian persecution, and a train of accumulated evils which he suffered on that account. These are prominent features in his character, and which we cannot but admire, however we may differ from him in opinion; they show a mind elevated far above the common level, even of those who have had the advantages of an academical education.

* I conjecture that he died about the year 1670.

+ See the Nonconformist's Memorial, vol i. p. 478 to 486.

CHAPTER II.

Of his Grandfather, Dr. Annesley.

SAMUEL ANNESLEY, LL. D., grandfather of the late Mr. Wesley by the mother's side, was born of religious parents at Killingworth near Warwick, in the year 1620, and was their only child. It has been said, that he was first cousin to the Earl of Anglesey. His grandmother, an eminently pious woman, dying before his birth, desired the child, if a boy, might be called Samuel; assigning as the reason of her request, "I can say I have asked him of the Lord." In his infancy he was strongly impressed with the thoughts of being a minister, for which indeed his parents intended him from his birth; and such was the ardor of his mind in pursuing his design, that when about five or six years old, he began a practice, which he afterwards continued, of reading twenty chapters every day in the Bible. The continuance of this practice laid an excellent foundation of useful knowledge, for the future exercise of his ministry. He who studies the Scriptures well, and believes them to be, not merely a sufficient, but the only safe rule of faith and practice, will generally exhibit a more uniform character as a minister of the gospel, than he who takes his religious opinions from the subtle reasonings and systems of men. This observation was admirably illustrated and confirmed by the steady, uniform conduct of Dr. Annesley, through some of the most trying situations in which his principles were put to the test.

He lost his father when four years old; but his pious mother took great care of his education; nor did he want the means of obtaining the best instruction, as the paternal estate was consider. able. Though a child when he first formed his resolution concerning the ministry, yet he never varied from his purpose: nor was he discouraged by an affecting dreain, in which he thought that he was a minister, and sent for by the Bishop of London, to be burnt as a martyr. At the age of fifteen he went to the university of Oxford, and took his degrees in the usual course. piety and diligence at Oxford, were so much out of the common His way of the place, that he attracted considerable notice. In 1644 he was ordained as chaplain in the ship called the Globe, under the Earl of Warwick, then Lord High Admiral of England. He went to sea with the fleet, and kept a diary of their voyage. But having no great liking to a sea-faring life, he soon quitted it, and settled at Cliff in Kent, where at first he met with a storm more violent than any he had experienced at sea. The minister of this place had been turned out for his barefaced encouragement of licentiousness, as Dr. Williams reports, by attending the meetings of the people for dancing, drinking, and merriment on the Lord's day. The people on this account were exceedingly fond of him, and greatly prejudiced against his successor, Dr. Annesley, who was a man of a very different character. When he first went among them, they rose upon him with spits, forks, and stones, threatening to destroy him. This was no small trial to a young

man of about twenty-five years of age. But he remained firm as a rock in his Master's cause, and as the people were not hardened against the evidence of gospel truth, he had some hopes of doing them good, notwithstanding their profaneness and violence. He therefore told them, that, "Let them use him as they would, he was resolved to continue with them, till God had prepared them by his ministry to entertain a better, who should succeed him: but solemnly declared, that when they became so prepared, he would leave the place." His labors were incessant, and the success of his preaching and engaging behavior was surprising; so that in a few years the people were greatly reformed, and became exceedingly fond of him. Though he enjoyed here an income of four hundred pounds per annum, yet he paid so conscientious a regard to his first declaration, that he thought himself bound to leave them; which he accordingly did, and the people, who at his coming threatened to stone him, now parted with him with cries and tears, testifying their affection for him.

A very signal providence directed him to a settlement in London in 1652, by the unanimous choice of the inhabitants of the parish of St. John the Apostle. Soon after he was made lecturer of St. Paul's, and in 1658 Cripplegate was made happy by his settlement there.

He was a man of great uprightness, never regulating his religious profession by his secular interests. He was turned out of his lecture because he would not comply with some things which he deemed extravagant and wrong; he thought conformity in him would be a sin, and he chose to quit a full maintenance rather than injure his conscience. He was acknowledged by all parties to be an Israelite indeed, and yet he suffered much for Nonconformity; but such was the spirit of party, that an angel from heaven would have been persecuted and abused, if he had been a Dissenter. In his sufferings God often appeared remarkably for him; one person died while signing a warrant to apprehend him. He afterwards suffered, because he thought it his duty to bear witness for the old truth against Antinomianism. His integrity made him a stranger to all tricks or little artifices to serve his temporal interest; and his charitable and unsuspecting temper, sometimes gave those who practised them, an opportunity to impose upon him.

In ministerial labors he was abundant. Before he was silenced, he often preached three times a day; during the troubles almost every day; afterwards twice every Lord's day. His sermons were not raw and uninteresting, but instructive and affecting: and his manner of delivery very peculiarly expressed his heartiness in the things he spoke.

His care and labor extended to every place where he might be useful. In some measure the care of all the churches was upon him. When any place wanted a minister, he used his endeavors to procure one for them; when any minister was oppressed by poverty, he soon employed himself for his relief. "O! how many places," says Dr. Williams, "had sat in darkness, how many ministers had been starved, if Dr. Annesley had died thirty years since!" He was the chief, often the sole instrument in the