private journal may possibly throw a different light upon the matter, but from the narrative of his accredited biographers it appears that he was ready, on worthless evidence, to believe and perpetuate charges against a man of unblemished honour which we should be slow to believe of the most profligate of mankind.

Mrs. Williamson retained none of the anxiety to conform herself to Wesley's codes which had distinguished Sophia Hopkey; and one day, when he walked home with her from the Communion, in order to mention to her some things he thought reprovable in her behaviour,' she broke from him with the exclamation that she did not expect such usage. At the following Communion she was repelled from the table. We cannot tell what the offence was for which he thought her unfit to partake in the rite which should be the bond of all mutual forgiveness; and some will doubt whether in any case the feast at which Christ received Judas was meant to be turne into an occasion of heartburning and censoriousness. Such a doubt will assuredly be strengthened by the result in the present case. Mrs. Williamson's uncle took up the case warmly; legal proceedings, lasting nearly four months, were instituted against Wesley for defaming her character, and the inhabitants took up the quarrel and ranged themselves on one or the other side. Wesley had made himself thoroughly unpopular, and his parishioners desired nothing more than to get rid of him; but as he had done nothing illegal, and they were his prosecutors, they had to disguise this aim under elaborate precautions to prevent his departure; and a minority of the 'Grand

Jury' summoned to debate the matter transmitted a protest to the Trustees in England, in which they declared their opinion that the charge was a mere artifice intended to blacken his character. On the other hand, Wesley took the extraordinary step of reading out a statement of the quarrel to his congregation at evening service, an addition to the liturgy which must have been a considerable attraction to the part of his congregation which he would least have wished to gratify. But the calumny of the surgeon's wife and the warping influences of ecclesiasticism had hurt both the fine feeling of the gentleman and the humility of the Christian; and his conduct at this time is matter only for warning.

He saw at last that the legal proceedings were elaborate and cumbrous acting, and felt that every object Iwith which he had come to America was defeated. Under these circumstances he felt, and was encouraged in this decision by his friends, that his wisest course was an immediate return to England. He accordingly put up an advertisement in the great square on Nov. 24th, to the effect that, as he designed to return shortly to England, his acquaintances were requested to return his books; obtained his travelling expenses from Mr. Causton; and in the end of November, in spite of a pretence of the magistrates to forbid his departure, not meant to deceive any one, he finally left Savannah.

Such was the disastrous and humiliating experience of John Wesley in that continent where the religious sect associated with his name was destined 'to spring up,' to use an expression taken from an American

I

review of the present day, 'like the volcanic mountains of Mexico, which still amaze us by the figure they make in our geography.' Eight millions of religionists now call themselves disciples of a man who left their continent in disgrace which we can. hardly refrain from calling well deserved.

CHAPTER V.

ENGLAND AT THE RISE OF METHODISM.

WHEN Wesley recrossed the Atlantic in the year 1737-38, he had reached a crisis of his life where his own individuality impinges on the history of his country, and a consideration of his own career involves some attempt to estimate the condition of his cotemporaries. We can never do justice to a Reformer till we understand the tendencies against which his efforts were directed, and by which his views of truth are modified; and before proceeding to the account of Wesley's active labours in this character, an attempt will be made to present the reader with a view of some characteristics of his countrymen during the years 1700-1740. To understand these characteristics rightly two facts must be borne in mind. The first of these, that the reaction against the Puritan rule of the preceding century had not yet spent its force, is somewhat surprising. Considering how short a time Puritan ascendency lasted, and how completely it had been swept away, the reader who comes fresh to the consideration of this century would probably anticipate that from its commencement the orgies of the Restoration, not the reign of the saints, would be the object of horror and

aversion. It was not so. Nearly half a century of licence had not dimmed the hatred with which men thought of a Government that had undertaken to repress vice by penal laws; and their effect was still visible in a gross and general immorality which has left its trace in the laments common to the most opposite utterances of the day. So much of this testimony crowds on our hands, that it is difficult to pick out the most convincing portions. The following samples, however, taken from the utterances of those on the one hand who may be considered the forerunners of Methodism, of those on the other who would have looked down upon it with the greatest contempt, may be given here.

Our great enjoyments in liberty, laws, trade, &c.,' wrote Dr. Woodward in the last year of the seventeenth century, in his account of the religious societies which formed the nidus of Methodism, 'are in manifest danger of being lost by those horrid enormities which have for some years past abounded in this our nation; for indeed they are gross, scandalous, and crying, even to the reproach of our Government and the great dishonour of our religion.' 'All men agree'-thus begins the 'Proposal for a National Reformation of Manners,' published in 1694, a proposal carried out in the establishment of the society with this aim-'that atheism and profaneness never got such a high ascendant as at this day. A thick gloominess hath overspread our horizon, and our light looks like the evening of the world.' Notwithstanding a recent proclamation, which the writer expected to have had a great effect, 'vice and wickedness abound in every place, drunkenness