gry at one another. And so we did for two miles, till he caught me unawares, and dragged me into the dispute before I knew where I was. He then grew warmer and warmer, told me I was rotten at heart, and supposed I was one of John Wesley's followers. I told him no, I am John Wesley himself!' Upon which,

Improvisum aspris veluti qui sentibus anguem

Pressit,

he would gladly have run away outright; but being the better mounted of the two, I kept close to his side, and endeavoured to show him his heart, till we came into the street of Northampton."

CHAPTER XXVI.

WESLEY'S CLERICAL COADJUTORS. MR. GRIMSHAW.DR. COKE. THE GREEK BISHOP.-WESLEY'S CREDULITY.

A FEW years before this final and irreparable breach with the Calvinists, Wesley had attempted to form an open and active union between all such clergymen as have more recently arrogated to themselves the appellation of Evangelical, or Gospel ministers. With this hope he sent round a circular letter, to some fifty ministers of the Church of England, wherein he proposed that, leaving free the disputable points of predestination on one side, and perfection on the other; laying no stress upon expressions, and binding themselves to no peculiar discipline, but some remaining quite regular, others quite irregular; and others, again, partly the one and partly the other, they should think and speak kindly of each other, form, as it were, a defensive league, and each help the other on in his work, and enlarge his influence by

all rightful means. Íf any thing more were meant by this than that each should occasionally accommodate the others with his pulpit, and that they should countenance his itinerant lay-preachers, the meaning is not obvious. On this occasion, also, Mr. Wesley looked for an omen, and relates, with evident complacency, at the end of the letter, that, one of his friends having objected to him the impossibility of effecting such an union, he went up stairs, and, after a little prayer, opened Kempis on these words: Expecta Dominum; viriliter age; noli diffidere; noli discedere; sed corpus et animam expone constanter pro gloria Dei.

The greater part of the methodizing clergy adhered to Lady Huntingdon's party in the dispute. Among those who remained attached to Mr. Wesley, Vincent Perronet, the vicar of Shoreham, was one, who was, either by birth or extraction, a Swiss, and who, in the Romish church, would have been beatified or canonized, for what, in mystical language, would be called his rapts, as well as for the uniform piety of his life. William Grimshaw, who held the perpetual curacy of Haworth, in one of the wildest parts of the West Riding, was a more active associate. In his unconverted state, this person was certainly insane; and, had he given utterance at that time to the monstrous and horrible imaginations, which he afterwards revealed to his spiritual friends, he would deservedly have been sent to Bedlam. His change of mind, which was not till he had been ten years in holy orders, was preceded by what he supposed to be a miraculous impression upon his senses, and which may possibly have been an electrical* or galvanic effect: and, in the course of his ministry,

* Mr. Joseph Williams, of Kidderminster, relates the fact from Grimshaw's own testimony. "At last the time of his deliverance came. At the house of one of his friends he lays his hand on a book, and opens it with his face towards a pewter shelf. Instantly his face is saluted with an uncommon flash of heat. He turns to the title-page, and finds it to be Dr. Owen on Justification. Immediately he is surprised with such another flash. He borrows the book, studies it, is led into God's method of justifying the ungodly, hath a new heart given him, and now, behold, he prayeth!"

he was favoured with a vision in a trance; that is to say, he mistook* delirium for reality. He became, however, a very zealous parish priest; and his oddities, which procured him the name of Mad Grimshaw, did not prevent him from being very useful among a set of parishioners, who are said to have been as wild as the bleak barren country which they inhabited, and to have had little more sense of religion than their cattle.

The parish contained four hamlets, in each of which he made it a rule to preach three times a month, partly for the sake of the old and infirm, but chiefly for those who scarcely ever attended the church because of the distance. As he found that people were willing to hear him, he extended his preaching into his neighbour's parishes, without troubling himself to ask the consent of the minister, or caring whether he liked it or not. In this way he established two circuits of his own, which he went round every fortnight in the more populous, he preached from four-and-twenty to thirty times in the week; and, in the other, about half as often, wherefore he called this his idle week. While he was at home, he had a morning meeting for prayer and exhortation at his own house, at five o'clock in the summer, and at six in winter. At church he would stop in the midst of the prayers, if he saw any person inattentive, and rebuke the offender; and, while the psalms were singing before sermon, he would go out to see if any persons were idling in the churchyard, or in the street, or in the alehouses, and drive as many as he could find into the church before him. These were not the only means which he used for bringing his parishioners into order. Having taken up the dismal puritanical notion, that it is sinful to walk in the fields for recreation on the Sabbath day, he would set out himself, in order to reprove such persons as he detected in the fact. This odd hu

*The case seems to have been an apoplectic affection of the slightest kind: the detail may be seen in his life by Mr. Myles (p. 14.) as given by himself to Mr. Williams, of Kidderminster. A more remarkable case of the same kind is noticed in the Quarterly Review, vol. x. pp. 117, 118.

mour led him also, like the Caliph Haroun Alraschid, in the Arabian Tales, to go out in disguise, and see in what manner his instructions were observed, and how far the people were, in reality, what they made themselves appear to him. Thus he went to the door of a great professor of charity, and begged a night's lodging, in the character of a poor man, and was turned away with abuse. And he teased a purblind woman, by touching her repeatedly with a stick, like a mischievous boy, till, taking him for one, and finding threats insufficient, she gave her tongue the reins, and began to swear. Neither of these were fair trials: but discretion was no part of his character. Such, however, was the effect which he produced by his zeal, his vigilance, and his real worth, that a man who, being on his way for a midwife one Sunday, wanted his horse shod in the village, could not prevail upon the blacksmith to do the job, till they had gone together to Mr. Grimshaw, and he had granted permission, being satisfied of the necessity of the case. And it was believed, long after his death, that he had put a stop to the races at Haworth by his prayers, because, when he had often and vainly attempted to dissuade the people from subscribing and promoting these meetings, for the benefit of the publicans, he prayed at length that the Lord would be pleased to put a stop to the evil proceedings in his own way, a heavy rain during the whole three days spoiled the sport, and, after that time, the mischievous custom was not revived.

Grimshaw entered entirely into Mr. Wesley's views, acted as assistant in the circuit wherein he resided, and attended the Conference every third year, when it was held at Leeds. When Whitefield or Wesley came to visit him, a scaffold was erected for them in the church-yard, the church not being large enough to hold the concourse that assembled. Prayers, therefore, were read in the church, the preaching was in the open air, and the sacrament was afterterwards administered to successive congregations, one church-full after another. Whitefield happened,

in one of his sermons, to speak as if he believed his hearers had profited much by the exertions of the faithful pastor who had so long laboured among them: but Grimshaw stood up, and interrupted him immediately, saying, with a loud voice; "Oh, Sir, for God's sake do not speak so! I pray you, do not flatter them: I fear the greater part of them are going to hell with their eyes open." His admiration of the itinerants was very great; his house was their home, they preached in his kitchen, and he always gave notice at church when this was to be; and, that their flock might not be scattered after his death, when a more regular and less zealous minister should succeed him, he built a chapel and dwelling-house at his own expense, and settled it upon the Methodist plan. He not only received the preachers as his guests, but as many visitors as his house would hold; giving up his own bed, and sleeping, unknown to them, in the hayloft. No office appeared to him too humble on such occasions, no mark of respect too great for a successful preacher of the Gospel. He was once found cleaning the boots of an itinerant: once he embraced a preacher after his sermon, and said, "the Lord bless thee, Ben, this is worth a hundred of my sermons!" and he fell down before another, saying, he was not worthy to stand in his presence. The only son of this singular man was educated at Kingswood, and became a drunkard, "notwithstanding he had been favoured with a religious education," says his father's biographer," and had been prayed for by some of the holiest men in the land." The severe and injudicious system under which he had suffered at school, and the eccentricities which he had seen at home, may easily explain the wonder. The poor fellow, however, had a sense of his own worthlessness and degeneracy; and when he was riding home, in a state of intoxication, would sometimes say to his horse, the one which Grimshaw had ridden upon his circuits,Once thou carried a saint, but now thou carriest a devil." Disease and strong pain, the bitter consequences of his course of life, brought him to repentance and to the grave; and some of his last