1742

To his Brother Charles [1]

LONDON, May 17, 1742

DEAR BROTHER, -- I am in a great strait. I wrote to Lady Huntingdon (just as I did to you), 'I am inclined to believe one of us must soon take a journey into Yorkshire.' It was then in my mind to desire you to go first; only I was afraid you would think I shifted off the laboring-oar. But on the receipt of your last I altered my design, and determined to think of it no farther yet. I sent word this morning to Brentford and Windsor of my preaching there on Thursday in my way to Bristol; but within two or three hours I received a letter from Lady Huntingdon, part of which is as follows:

MY DEAR FRIEND, -- The very thought of seeing you here has filled us with great joy. Poor dear Miss Cooper is still living; and, it is very remarkable, in the beginning of her illness she said, ‘I should be glad to see one of them just before I died.’ Her eyes with mine overflow with the loving-kindness of the Lord, who has even a regard to the desires of our hearts. I beg you will set out as soon as may be after receiving this; as every day she has lived this last fortnight seems a fresh miracle, wrought for some purpose not yet known.

She then tells me she has ordered an horse for John Taylor [John Taylor and his brother David (see Journal, iii. 24-5n) were in the service of the Earl of Huntingdon. He went with Wesley to Birstall, and was with him at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and at Epworth, where he stood in the churchyard and gave notice as the people came out from the service: ‘Mr. Wesley, not being permitted to preach in the church, designs to preach here at six o'clock.’] to come down with me.

It seems to me I ought to go, and that without delay. I think of going early in the morning to Bexley and correcting Mr. Piers’s sermon, [The elaborate care which they used in revising such deliverances may be seen from the Diary notes in Journal, ii. 387-8.] and of setting out for Donnington on Wednesday. If you write thither as soon as you receive this, your letter will be there near as soon as me; and I will either go on into Lincolnshire for a week, or come straight to Bristol, as you will. Let all the brethren pray for me. Adieu!

To his Brother Charles [2]

LONDON, Saturday, July 31, 1742.

Yesterday, about three in the afternoon, as soon as Intercession was ended, I went up to my mother. I found her pulse almost gone and her fingers dead; so that it was easy to see her spirit was on the wing for eternity. After using the Commendatory Prayer, I sat down on her bedside, and with three or four of our sisters sung a requiem to her parting soul. She continued in just the same way as my father was, struggling and gasping for life, though (as I could judge by several signs) perfectly sensible, till near four o'clock. I was then going to drink a dish o’ tea, being faint and weary, when one called me again to the bedside. It was just four o’clock. She opened her eyes wide and fixed them upwards for a moment. Then the lids dropped, and the soul was set at liberty without one struggle or groan or sigh.

My heart does not, and I am absolutely assured [God does not condemn me for any want of duty toward] her in any kind, except only [that I have not reproved her so plainly and fully as I should have done]. Absurdum, iniquum, injustum, supra omnem modum mihi videtur, quod quis isto modo me lacessat. [‘Absurd, unfair, unjust beyond all measure it seems to me, that any one should attack me in that way.’]

Now, I would have you send me word immediately whom I shall take into the house, to keep the Accounts, &c. &c. &c., in the room of T. Meyrick, and what [woman as hired girl or a lady in place of Betty Brown]. I wait your answer.

I will carry the books to Evesham, [He was at Evesham on Aug. 17. The books were probably Charles Wesley’s Hymns and Sacred Poems, published that year.] if I do not send before. The day of my setting out hence (if I have life and health) is Monday fortnight, and on Thursday fortnight I hope to be at Bristol.

I shall write Lady Huntingdon [He was at this time on very intimate terms with Lady Huntingdon, and frequently visited her at Donnington Park (Life and Times, i. 58). His recent journey to the North had been suggested by a letter from her. See letter of July 12, 1743.] word of my mother's death to-night. She is to be buried to-morrow evening. Adieu.

To Captain Robert Williams [3]

LONDON, August 3, 1742.

SIR, -- To prove that Robert Williams traded very largely during the time he was at Savannah, that he built several considerable buildings both at Savannah and other parts of the colony, that he greatly improved large tracts of land there, and was esteemed to have one of the chief settlements in the colony, you have not so much as quoted ‘common fame.’ So he that will believe it, let him believe it.

But you have quoted common fame to support several charges against John Wesley, clerk: as, that he seduced its common persons settled there to idleness; that he used too great familiarities with Miss Hopkey, and continued so to do till she was married to Mr. William Williamson of Savannah, a gentleman of considerable note there ('tis much a gentleman of so considerable note as Mr. William Williamson would marry her!); that he sent her several letters and messages after her marriage, desiring her to meet him at divers unseasonable hours and places, many of which (hours or places) were at his, the said Wesley's, own closet. A report was, you say, that these things were so. Would any man desire better proof

I am not surprised at all that upon such evidence you should advance such assertions. But I really am at what you afterwards assert as upon your own personal knowledge -- viz. that two Bills of Indictment being preferred against John Wesley and sent to the Grand Jury of Savannah (Bills of Indictment sent to a Grand Jury! What kind of proceeding is this), this deponent and the rest of the Grand Jury did UNANIMOUSLY agree to the said Bills. How dare you, sir, assert so gross a falsehood Have you no regard either for your reputation or your soul Do you think there is no God to judge the earth You know, you must know, how large a part of that Grand Jury did absolutely disagree to every Bill of the two presentments; and gave those reasons of their disagreement to the Trustees, which neither you nor any man has yet chose to answer.

You assert, farther, that I was bailed by two freeholders of Savannah for my appearance at the then next Sessions. Here I charge you with a second gross, willful falsehood. You know I never was bailed at all. If I was, name the men (Henry Lloyd is ready to confront you) or produce an attested copy of the Record of Court.

You assert, thirdly, that a little before the Sessions came on (viz. the next Sessions after the Bills were found) I deserted my bail. Here is another gross, willful, palpable untruth. For (1) no bail was ever given; (2) I appeared at seven Sessions successively after those Bills were found -- viz. on Thursday, Sept. 1, or Friday, Sept. 2; at three other Sessions held in September and October; on Thursday, Nov. 22 [3]; and lastly, on Thursday, Nov. 22 [24]. Your smaller falsehoods--as that I quitted the colony about the middle of the night, that from Purrysburg to Charlestown is about two hundred miles (you should have said about ninety), that I walked on foot from thence to Charlestown -- I pass over as not material.

You, lastly, assert that the Justices threatened to prosecute and imprison my bail for such my desertion, who were in the utmost confusion concerning the same; but by the interposition of this deponent and several others on behalf of the said bail, and to prevent destruction to their several families, the Justices respited their recognizances during pleasure.

This is altogether fit to crown the whole. Now, sir, as you know in your own soul that every word of this is pure invention, without one grain of truth from the beginning to the end, what amends can you ever make, either to God, or to me, or to the world Into what a dreadful dilemma have you here brought yourself! You must openly retract an open slander, or you must wade through thick and thin to support it; till that God, to whom I appeal, shall maintain His own cause and sweep you away from the earth. -- I am, sir,

Your friend.

N.B. -- This was written July 16, but I had not leisure to transcribe it before August 3, 1742. [Wesley left Bristol on July 18 and found when he got to London that his mother was dying. The letter was transcribed two days after her funeral. It appeared in the Weekly History for Aug. 14, 1742.]

To Howell Harris

LONDON, August 6, 1742.

MY DEAR BROTHER, -- I must write; though where my letter will find you, that I know not, only that it will be under the shadow of the Almighty -- yea, in the arms of Him that loveth you. Now, let Him cover your head in the day of battle! Let His faithfulness and truth be thy shield and buckler! Let Him comfort thy heart, and, after thou hast suffered awhile, make thee perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle thee!

I have just read yours dated at Trevecca, October 19, 1741 And what is it that we contend about Allow such a perfection as you have there described, and all farther dispute I account vain jangling and mere strife of words. As to the other point, we agree (1) that no man can have any power except it be given him from above; (2) that no man can merit anything but hell, seeing all other merit is in the blood of the Lamb. For those two fundamental points both you and I earnestly contend. Why then, if we both disclaim all power and all merit in man, what need of this great gulf to be fixed between us Brother, is thy heart with mine, as my heart is with thy heart If it be, give me thy hand. I am indeed a poor, foolish, sinful worm; and how long my Lord will use me I know not. I sometimes think the time is coming when He will lay me aside; for surely never before did He send such a laborer into such an harvest. But, so long as I am continued in the work, let us rise up together against the evildoers. Let us not weaken, but (if it be our Lord's will) strengthen one another's hands in God. My brother, my soul is gone forth to meet thee; let us fall upon one another's neck. The good Lord blot out all that is past, and let there henceforward be peace between me and thee! --I am, my dear brother, Ever yours.

PS.--On Friday last my mother went home with the voice of praise and thanksgiving. [See letter of July 31.]

To Captain Robert Williams [4]

BRISTOL, October 17, 1742

SIR, -- I really did you wrong. I believed the letter said to come from your very humble servant had been of your own composing till I had read it half through. But, on a narrower observation, I soon took knowledge both of the style and turn of thought so peculiar to Mr. Thomas Christie, once Recorder of Savannah, but now I fear (as before) wandering about to seek a piece of bread. I would not tread upon a worm; therefore let him pass. My concern, sir, is with you. Not that I should take notice of such a composition; only some might think silence a proof of guilt.

That Mr. Wesley's answer is so indirect and full of evasion as to be a justification rather than confutation of your charge; that his leaving any doubt as to your great and well-known improvements plainly shows his malice and insincerity; and that Mr. Christie has still farther mementoes to convince the world what a base and jesuitical man he is, -- these, being mere rhetorical flowers fit to embellish the discourse, need no particular reply.

But the fact (says your friend) with regard to the indictments stands in a different light than he tells it, and, as to his relation of persons dissenting on the Grand Jury, must be a story of his own making. That is easily known. The original paper is lodged at the Trustees’ Office at Palace Yard. And Mr. Fallowfield, one of those dissenters, you know succeeded Mr. Causton when Mr. Christie and he were displaced from their offices.

’Tis great pity that your friend, too, did not make affidavit of the extraordinary particulars following: that Mr. Wesley continued to disturb the public peace; that he endeavored to make an insurrection in the public Court while sitting; that the Magistrates received several petitions, laying fresh accusations to his charge, and declaring his design of leaving the colony privately (an extremely private design, of which five days before I had given notice by an advertisement set up in the market-place!); that several persons took an opportunity of going off with him with several sums of money; that they gave out that they would oppose with violence any person that should attempt to seize any of them; and that, immediately after, a great reward was affixed publicly for apprehending of Mr. Wesley. You can't but own these are a great improvement upon your design, and would sound as well as your own affidavit itself.

But would it not be needful first for Mr. Christie and you to confer together and agree upon your story else he may again blunder out more than you desire and confute you instead of me. This it is undeniable he has done now, and that in the most material parts of your evidence. For, first, you aver that Mr. Wesley, being bailed for the appearance at the then next Sessions, a little before the Sessions came on, deferred his bail and went away. No, says Mr. Christie, Mr. Wesley, after he was bailed, did appear at the next Court. I desired his trial might be brought on, or his recognizance estreated. Again, Mr. Christie flatly affirms that Mr. John Coats, who was one of his bail, went off with Mr. Wesley and never returned; whereas you aver upon oath that the Justices threatened to prosecute and imprison his bail, who were in the utmost confusion. But by the interposition of this deponent and several others, on behalf of the said bail, and to prevent destruction to their respective families, the Justices respited their recognizances during pleasure.

Now, sir, feeling these accounts are utterly inconsistent, feeling it is impossible ever to reconcile them, give me leave to ask you one plain question, which I would beg you seriously to consider. Is Thomas Christie, Esq., a gross, notorious liar, one who neither fears God nor regards man Or is Robert Williams, merchant, a vain, weak man, who, having causelessly and willfully forsworn himself, neither knows how to get backward or forward, how to retract his perjury or how to defend it -- I am, sir,

Your friend.

To a Gentleman [5]

NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE, November 16, 1742

My father’s method was to visit all his parishioners, sick or well, from house to house, to talk with each of them on the things of God and observe severally the state of their souls. What he then observed he minuted down in a book kept for that purpose. In this manner he went through his parish (which was near three miles long) three times. He was visiting it the fourth time round when he fell into his last sickness.

To Mrs. Hall (Martha Wesley) [6]

NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE, November 17, 1742.

DEAR SISTER, -- I believe the death of your children is a great instance of the goodness of God towards you. You have often mentioned to me how much of your time they took up! Now that time is restored to you, and you have nothing to do but to serve our Lord without carefulness and without distraction till you are sanctified in body, soul, and spirit.

As soon as I saw Mr. Hall I invited him to stay at the Foundry, but he desired I would have him excused. There is a strange inconsistency in his tempers and sentiments with regard to me. The still brethren have gradually infused into him as much as they could of their own contempt of me and my brother, and dislike of our whole method of proceeding, which is as different from theirs as light from darkness: nay, they have blunderingly taught him to find fault even with my economy and outward management both of my family and Society; whereas I know this is the peculiar talent which God has given me, wherein (by His grace) I am not behind the very chiefest of them. Notwithstanding this there remains in him something of his old regard for me which he had at Oxford, and by-and-by it will prevail. He will find out these wretched men, and the clouds will flee away.

My belief is that the present design of God is to visit the poor desolate Church of England, and that therefore neither deluded Mr. Gambold [Gambold had preached before the University at Oxford in 1741 but formally separated from the Church of England in 1742, and joined the Moravians, among whom he became an assistant bishop in 1754. He was estranged from the Wesleys. See Tyerman’s Oxford Methodists, pp. 176-8.] nor any who leave it will prosper. O pray for the peace of Jerusalem! ‘They shall prosper that love thee.’

Mr. Hall has paid me for the books. I don't want any money of you; your love is sufficient. But write as often and as largely as you can to.

Your affectionate friend and Brother.

Editor's Introductory Notes

[1] On Monday, May 17, 1742 Wesley had arranged to set out for Bristol, but was unexpectedly prevented. In the afternoon he received a letter from Lady Huntingdon at Donnington Park telling him that Miss Cooper was at the point of death and pressing him to come and pay the last office of friendship. He set out on Thursday, and reached Lady Huntingdon’s on Saturday afternoon. He found his friend just alive; but she revived on his coming, and for three days they ‘rejoiced in the grace of God, whereby she was filled with an hope full of immortality.’ Lady Huntingdon sent a touching account of her death to Mrs. Bethel, of Bath: ‘Her last hours were all spent in prayer; and when her change came, her countenance spoke her blessed; and I for a moment tasted her joy, for I thought my whole soul was so filled with delight it could have followed.’ See Journal, iii 9-11; Life and Times of the Countess of Huntingdon i. 52-3 and letter of February 17, 1780.

Henry Piers, Vicar of Bexley, found peace with God through Charles Wesley and John Bray on June 10, 1738. In 1742 when he preached at Sevenoaks, before the clergy of the Deanery of Shoreham, on I Cor. iv. 1-2, Wesley revised his sermon. He went with the Wesleys and John Meriton to St. Mary’s, Oxford, on August 24, 1744, when John Wesley preached on Scriptural Christianity. A dishonest agent in the West Indies involved him in financial difficulties in 1759. He died on January 27, 1770, aged seventy-five. See C. Wesley's Journal, i. 103-4 W.H.S. v. 225-7.

[2] Wesley returned to London on July 20, after his visit to Epworth. He found his mother ‘on the borders of eternity.’ She died on Friday afternoon, the 30th. Early editions of the Journal give that date, but in later ones and on the tombstone the 23rd is put in error. This letter and that of August 6 to Howell Harris give the date as July 30.

The pieces of the letter within brackets are in shorthand in the original, and difficult to decipher. They seem to point to some unjust criticism of his relations to his mother. The reproof probably refers to her attitude to his Methodist beliefs such as Charles Wesley had in mind when he wrote the verses for her tombstone, which spoke of her ‘legal night of seventy years.’ See her letter to her son Samuel in Priestley's Letters, pp. 91-4. Works, xiii. 409; letter of Dec. 24, 1785.

Thomas Meyrick was one of the preachers who had been trained for the Law, and had evidently taken charge of Book Affairs at the Foundery. He was now resuming his itinerancy. The Journal gives a remarkable account of his recovery from a malignant fever, and also contains a grateful letter from him to Wesley. He afterwards became curate of a chapel near Halifax, where he died about 1770. See Journal, iii. 56, 173-4; Atmore's Memorial, pp. 270-2: and for the history and purchase of the Foundery, Works, viii. 37-8; Journal, ii. 316-19n; Jackson's Charles Wesley, ii. 534-6.

[3] A scurrilous attack in Hudibrastic verse was published at Bristol in 1743, The Progress of Methodism in Bristol, with an Appendix on the charges made by Robert Williams that two freeholders of Savannah became bail for Wesley's appearance at the Sessions, and that he left them in the lurch. See Journal, i. 85-6, iii. 456, viii. 256-7; Tyerman’s Wesley, i. 429-30; Green’s Bibliography, No. 20, and Anti-Methodist Publications, No. 156; and letters of April 12, 1740, and October 17, 1742.

[4] This letter is to be read in connection with that of August 3. Thomas Christie issued the warrant for the arrest of Wesley at Savannah on August 8, 1737. So far from leaving secretly, Wesley put up this advertisement in the great square on November 24: ‘Whereas John Wesley designs shortly to set out for England, This is to desire those who have borrowed any books of him, to return them as soon as they conveniently can.’ See Journal, i. 376-400, viii. 304-7.

[5] This gentleman asked Wesley to send him an account of what his father called his Notitia Parochialis (Clarke's Wesley Family, i. 355). Samuel Wesley's Advice to a Young Clergyman is printed in Jackson's Charles Wesley, ii. 500-34 (for Notitia, see p. 506). Wesley published it in 1735 (Rivington).

[6]Martha Wesley married Westley Hall in 1735. Next year he became curate at Fisherton, near Salisbury, where they had a large house and garden near the church. Nine of the ten children died in infancy. See letter of August 18, 1743.

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