perfectly courteous and self-possessed. He was more desirous now of getting well out of the business than he had been of engaging in it; and this he did with great civility, asking him if he was willing to go with him to the Doctor. Wesley said, immediately, if he pleased. Mr. Ustick replied, "Sir, I must wait upon you to your inn, and in the morning, if you will be so good as to go with me, I will show you the way." They rode there accordingly in the morning:-the Doctor was not at home, and Mr. Ustick, saying that he had executed his commission, took his leave, and left Wesley at liberty. The same evening, as Wesley was preaching at Gwenap, two gentlemen rode fiercely among the people, and cried out, "Seize him! seize him for His Majesty's service!" Finding that the order was not obeyed, one of thein alighted, caught him by the cassock, and said, "I take you to serve His Majesty." Taking him then by the arm, he walked away with him, and talked till he was out of breath of the wickedness of the fellows belonging to the society. Wesley at length took advantage of a break in his discourse to say, "Sir, be they what they will, I apprehend it will not justify you in seizing me in this manner, and violently carrying me away, as you said, to serve His Majesty." Rage by this time had spent itself, and was succeeded by an instant apprehension of the consequence which might result from acting illegally towards one who appeared likely to understand the laws, and able to avail himself of them.The colloquy ended in his escorting Mr. Wesley back to the place from whence he had taken him. The next day brought with it. a more serious adventure. The house in which he was visiting an invalid lady at Falmouth, was beset by a mob, who roared out, "Bring out the Canorum-where is the Canorum ?" a nickname which the Cornish-men had given to the Methodists--it is not known wherefore. The crews of some privateers headed the rabble, and presently broke open the outer door, and filled the passage. By this time the persons of the house had all made their escape, except Wesley and a poor servant girl, who, for it was now too late to retire, would have had him conceal himself in the closet. He himself, from the imprecations of the rabble, thought his life in the most imminent danger, but any attempt at concealment would have made the case more desperate; and it was his maxim always to look a mob in the face. As soon, therefore, as the partition was broken down, he stepped forward into the midst of them :-" Here I am! which of you has any thing to say to me? To which of you have I done any wrong? To you? or you? or you ?” Thus he made his way bare-headed into the street, and continued speaking, till the captain swore that not a man should touch him: a clergyman and some of the better inhabitants came up and interfered, led him into a house, and sent him safely by water to Penryn. Charles was in equal or greater danger at Devizes. The curate there took the lead against him, rung the bells backwards to call the rabble together; and two dissenters, of some consequence in the town, set them on, and encouraged them, supplying them with as much ale as they would drink, while they played an engine into the house, broke the windows, flooded the rooms, and spoiled the goods. The mayor's wife conveyed a message to Charles, beseeching that he would disguise himself in women's clothes, and try to make his escape. Her son, a poor profligate, had been turned from the evil of his ways by the Methodists, just when he was about to run away and go to sea, and this had inclined her heart towards those from whom she had received so great a benefit. This, however, would have been too perilous an expedient. The only magistrate in the town refused to act when he was called upon : and the mob began to untile the house, that they might get in through the roof. "I remembered the Roman senators," says Charles Wesley," sitting in the Forum, when the Gauls broke in upon them, but thought there was a fitter posture for Christians, and told my companion they should take us on our knees." He had, however, resolute and active friends, one of whom succeeded, at last, in making a sort of treaty with a hostile constable; and the constable undertook to bring him safe out of town, if he would promise never to preach there again. Charles Wesley replied, " I shall promise no such thing: setting aside my office, I will not give up my birth-right, as an Englishman, of visiting what place I please in His Majesty's dominions." The point was compromised, by his declaring that it was not his present intention; and he and his companion were escorted out of Devizes by one of the rioters, the whole multitude pursuing them with shouts and execrations. Field preaching, indeed, was at this time a service of great danger; and Wesley dwelt upon this with great force, in one of his Appeals to Men of Reason and Religion. "Who is there among you, brethren," he says, "that is willing (examine your own hearts) even to save souls from death at this price? Would not you let a thousand souls perish, rather than you would be the instrument of rescuing them thus? I do not speak now with regard to conscience, but to the inconveniences that must accompany it. Can you sustain them if you would? Can you bear the summer sun to beat upon your naked head? Can you suffer the wintry rain or wind from whatever quarter it blows? Are you able to stand in the open air, without any covering or defence, when God casteth abroad his snow like wool, or scattereth his hoar frost like ashes? And yet these are some of the smallest inconveniences which accompany field-preaching. For, beyond all these, are the contradiction of sinners, the scoffs both of the great vulgar and the small; contempt and reproach of every kind-often more than verbal affronts-stupid, brutal violence, sometimes to the hazard of health, or limbs, or life. Brethren, do you envy us this honour? What, I pray you, would buy you to be a field-preacher? Or what, think you, could induce any man of common sense to continue therein one year, unless he had a full conviction in himself, that it was the will of God concerning him? Upon this conviction it is (were we to submit to these things on any other motive whatever, it would furnish you with a better proof of our distraction than any that has yet been found) that we now do for the good of souls what you cannot, will not, dare not do. And we desire not that you should: but this one thing we may reasonably desire of you-do not increase the difficulties, which are already so great, that, without the mighty power of God, we must sink under them. Do not assist in trampling down a little handful of men, who, for the present, stand in the gap between ten thousand poor wretches and destruction, till you find some others to take their places." The wholesome prosecution of a few rioters, in different places, put an end to enormities which would never have been committed, if the local magistrates had attempted to prevent them. The of fenders were not rigorously pursued; they generally submitted before the trial: and it sufficed to make them understand that the peace might not be broken with impunity. "Such a mercy is it," says Wesley, "to execute the penalty of the law on those who will not regard its precepts! So many inconveniences to the innocent does it prevent, and so much sin in the guilty." CHAPTER XV. SCENES OF ITINERANCY. WHEN Wesley began his course of itinerancy, there were no turnpikes* in England, and no stage * Wesley probably paid more for turnpikes than any other man in England, for no other person travelled so much; and it rarely happened to him to go twice through the same gate in one day. Thus he felt the impost heavily, and, being a horseman, was not equally sensible of the benefit derived from it. This may account for his joining in what was coach which went further north than York. In many parts of the northern counties neither coach nor chaise had ever been seen. He travelled on horse back, always with one of his preachers in company; and, that no time might be lost, he generally read as he rode. Some of his journeys were exceedingly dangerous, through the fens of his native country, when the waters were out, and over the fells of Northumberland, when they were covered with snow. Speaking of one, the worst of such expeditions, which had lasted two days in tremendous weather, he says, "Many a rough journey have I had before, but one like this I never had, between wind, and bail, and rain, and ice, and snow, and driving sleet, and pierc ing cold. But it is past. Those days will return no more, and are therefore as though they had never been. Pain, disappointment, sickness, strife, For such exertions and bodily inconveniences he was overpaid by the stir which his presence every where excited, the power which he exercised, the effect which he produced, the delight with which he was received by his disciples, and, above all, by the approbation of his own heart, the certainty that he was employed in doing good to his fellow-creatures, and the full persuasion that the Spirit of God was with him in his work. At the commencement of his errantry, he had sometimes to bear with an indifference and insensi at one time the popular cry. Writing, in 1770, he says, “I was agreeably surprised to find the whole road from Thirsk to Stokesley, which used to be extremely bad, better than most turnpikes. The gentlemen had exerted themselves, and raised money enough to mend it effectually. So they have done for several hundred miles in Scotland, and throughout all Connaught in Ireland. And so undoubtedly they might do throughout all England, without saddling the poor people with the vile imposition of turnpikes for ever." |