L. Tyerman

“ With such affection subsisting between them, is it likely that a man of the high character of Samuel Wesley would permit a paltry quarrel about King William to lead to such a lengthened connubial separation, involving not only a cruel neglect of his wife and family, but a criminal absence from his flock, and a public disgrace cast upon his hitherto spotless reputation? Those who can and do believe a legend so unlikely, have more faith than is desirable. ”

“ A PRAYER FOR ONE IN AFFLICTION AND WANT. “O God! who art infinite in power, and compassion, and goodness, and truth! who hast promised in Thy holy Word, that Thou wilt hear the prayer of the poor destitute, and wilt not despise his desire. Look down, I beseech thee, from heaven, the habitation of Thy holiness and glory, upon me a miserable sinner, now lying under Thy hand in great affliction and sorrow. ”

“ John Owen, whose proficiency in learning was such, that he was admitted to the University when he was a child only twelve years old; and who pursued his studies with such diligence that, for several years, he allowed himself but four hours’ sleep a-night; tall in stature, affable in temper, charitable in spirit, and a friend of peace; a man of enormous learning, and whose labours as a minister were almost incredible; eminent for piety, an excellent preacher, and whose writings are almost enough to fill a library. ”

“ Shall a wretched mortal, a worm of the same dust with ourselves, presume to affront my Father, my Patron, my Friend, my Benefactor, my Saviour, and shall I want courage, or honesty to oppose him, to detect him, and to bring him to that shame and punishment he so highly merits? Whom are we afraid of, that we forget the Lord our Maker? Let all the potsherds of the earth fall down together, and humble themselves before the King, the Lord of hosts, and let Him alone be exalted, whose glory is above the heavens, and who shakes the earth at His displeasure. ”

“ In surveying the character of Christ as here delineated, no remarkable incident in His life, from the cradle to His cross, has been omitted; nay, if we even take a wider range, every event of moment is noted, from the espousals of His mother to His resurrection from the dead, and His final ascension to glory. Indeed, the life of Christ, being closely connected with both time and eternity, presented to the poet an occasion to draw aside the curtain which divides the visible from the invisible world. Both heaven and hell are permitted to burst upon us ”

“ The man that does not prefer his own Church to any other Church is a man without principle; yea, a man whose principle is bad; for, in matters of supreme importance, he is adhering to a system of ecclesiastical doctrine and discipline, not because he thinks it the best, but to serve some other purpose—mercenary, mean, and miserable. Samuel Wesley thought the Church of England the best; but he was not the narrow-minded and little-hearted bigot to unchurch other churches, and deny that so far from being equally good, they were not good at all. ”

“ A prince will be the breath of his subjects’ nostrils, to be blown in or out at their caprice and pleasure, and a worse vassal than the meanest of his guards. Such villainous and seditious principles as these, demand a confutation from that government they so insolently threaten and arraign, and are only proper to be answered by that sword they would make our princes bear in vain, by the so long-called-for censure of an ecclesiastical synod, and the correction of a provoked and affronted legislature, to whose strict justice and undeserved mercy I commit both them and their authors. ”

“ But Mr Wesley’s talents as a writer are the least of his praise. He was not merely a man of learning and ability. His piety and integrity were striking and exemplary. He was given to hospitality; and in every respect a most excellent parish priest. The last moments of this valuable man were crowned with most striking fortitude, magnanimity, and Christian resignation. It is no exaggeration to say, that a better man, or a more vigilant and faithful pastor, he did not leave behind him. He united the zeal and courage of a martyr, with the simplicity and evangelical spirit of an apostle ”

“ If the Church of England can have no other way of showing her charity than by prostituting her purity, and debauching her religion, I hope they will pardon her if she imitate her blessed Author and Founder, under a temptation not unlike it, who, with scorn and disdain, turned His back upon the devil when he asked Him to fall down and worship him. We must watch against these crafty, faithless, and insidious persons, who can creep to our altars, and partake of our sacraments, that they may be qualified more secretly and powerfully to undermine us. ”

“ It is scarce likely that a young man of intelligence, scholarship, and honour, like Samuel Wesley; a young man whose father and grandfather had been ejected from their churches, and hunted to their graves by the myrmidons of Stuart perfidy; and a young man, whose entire life had been spent in the society and schools of those who hated, and had just cause to hate, the Stuart dynasty; we say it is scarce likely that such a young man would feel either much attachment, or any attachment at all, to a despotic and royal traitor like the one just mentioned. ”

“ Our infamous theatres seem to have done more mischief to the faith and morals of the nation than Hobbes himself. With as much reason may we exclaim against our plays and interludes as did the old zealous fathers against the pagan spectacles, and as justly rank these, as they did the others, among those pomps and vanities which our baptism obliges us to renounce and to abhor. What communion hath the temple of God with idols?—with those abominable mysteries of iniquity, which outdo the old Fescenina of the heathen, the lewd orgies of Bacchus, and the impious feasts of Isis and Priapus? ”

“ No doubt of it; and, for that reason, there was unquestionably a great end to be answered by the supernatural noises at Epworth parsonage.
The Wesley family were foreordained to exercise upon succeeding generations, and upon mankind at large, an influence, the effects of which are without a parallel; and, to qualify them for such a work, it is not surprising that a more than ordinary agency should have been employed. No man can really be in earnest in converting sinners unless he has, not merely opinions respecting an unseen world, but a deep and felt conviction that such a world exists. ”

“ I hinted at one thing, which I mentioned in my letter to your brother, whereon I depend more than upon all my own simple reasoning; and that is, earnest prayer to Him who smiles at the strongest resolutions of mortals, and can, in a moment, change or demolish them; who alone can bend the inflexible sinew, and order the irregular wills of us simple men to His own glory, and to our happiness. While the anchor holds, I despair of nothing, but firmly believe that He who is best will do what is best, whether we earnestly will it or will it not. ”

“ Indeed we find in John Wesley’s history an epitome of the Methodism 51which sprang up, through the instrumentality of his grandsons John and Charles; his mode of preaching, matter, manner, and success, bearing a striking resemblance to theirs and to their coadjutors.
We can only add, that a portrait of John Wesley is published in the Methodist Magazine for 1840. The hair is long, and parted in the middle. The forehead is capacious, the nose large, the eyes soft and sweet, the face without whiskers, and the general expression of the countenance highly sad and thoughtful. ”

“ Help me, and any who are in the same circumstances, in patience to possess our souls, and let all Thy fatherly chastisements advance us still nearer towards Christian perfection. Teach us the emptiness of all things here below—wean us more and more from a vain world. Fix our hearts more upon heaven, and help us forward in the way that leads to everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost, be glory, honour, and power, now and for ever. ”

“ Wesley. Yea to the power of godliness, from ignorance and profaneness. If it please your lordship, to lay down any evidences of godliness agreeing with the Scriptures, and if they be not found in those persons intended, I am content to be discharged from my ministry; I will stand or fall by the issue thereof.
Bishop. You talk of the power of godliness such as you fancy.
Wesley. Yea, the reality of religion. Let us appeal to any commonplace book for evidences of grace, and they are found in and upon these converts.
Bishop. How many are there of them?
Wesley. I number not the people. ”

“ A late writer says of him, “In metaphysical acumen, in theological learning, and in purity of diction, Dr Norris acknowledges no superior. He carries the whole circle of the sciences in his head, and piety and religion illustrate all his actions. Never was any question proposed by ingenious malice or curiosity, but, with the utmost readiness and facility, he gave not only fair and amusing ideas of it, but full and most evident demonstrations. He was good, great, and learned; and a worthy companion of so great a man as Samuel Wesley.” ”

“ Samuel Wesley was present, and was an intensely interested spectator of the disreputable scene. “You have not dealt with me like gentlemen!” cried the weakly, arrogant, and furious king; “you have been unmannerly as well as undutiful. Is this your Church of England loyalty? I could not have believed that so many clergymen of the Church of England would have been concerned in such a business. Go home!—get you gone! I am king! I will be obeyed! Go to your chapel this instant, and admit the Bishop of Oxford. Let those who refuse look to it; they shall feel the whole weight of my hand ”

“ He was an Arian, a Socinian, a Deist, an Atheist. He had never been christened, for his parents were Anabaptists. He had lost their religion when a boy, and he had never found another. In ribald lampoons he was nicknamed “Undipped John.” The parish register of his baptism was produced in vain. This storm of obloquy, which he had to face for the first time at more than sixty years of age, was too much for him. His spirits declined, his health gave way, and in 1695 he died, and Samuel Wesley, his sincere and warm admirer, wrote and published his elegy. ”

“ He might, like hundreds of others, have spent his time in agricultural toils and village sports, but there was within him the stirring of a high-born genius, which, wherever it exists, invariably impels its possessor to rise above the mediocrity of the common herd, and to attempt something honourable to the man who does it, and of service to those on whose behalf he labours. Human humdrums have always been inconveniently numerous, but Samuel Wesley was not one of them. ”

“ Yes; and the deeper, and more living and influential, becomes the man’s conviction of the existence of heaven, of hell, of angels, of devils, and of the other great certainties of the world to come—the more impellent becomes his earnestness, and the more excited and self-sacrificing are his labours to turn men from sin to holiness, and from the power of Satan unto God. ”

“ If I should say that a mercenary renegado was hired to expose the private academies of the Dissenters, as nurseries of rebellious principles, I should say nothing but what is in too many mouths to remain a secret. The Reverend Mr Wesley, author of two pamphlets calculated to blacken our education in the academies of the Dissenters, ingenuously confesses himself guilty of many crimes in his youth, and is the willinger to confess them, as he would lay them at the door of the Dissenters and their schools, among whom he was educated ”

“ My Lord,—It is happy for me that your Grace has entertained no ill opinion of me, and will not alter what you have entertained without reason. But it is still happier that I serve a Master who cannot be deceived, and who, I am sure, will never forsake me. A jail is a paradise in comparison of the life I led before I came hither. No man has worked truer for bread than I have done, and few have lived harder, or their families either. ”

“ Answer.—If God has blessed him with a numerous offspring, he has no reason to be ashamed of them, nor they of him, unless perhaps one of them. Neither does his conscience accuse him that he has made no provision for those of his own house; which general accusation includes them all. But has he none, nay, not above one, two, or three, to whom he has given the best education which England could afford, by God’s blessing on which they live honourably and comfortably in the world? ”

“ We are not to fix our eye on one single point of duty, but to take in the complicated view of all the circumstances in every state of life that offers. Thus in the case before us, put all circumstances together. If you are not indifferent whether the labours of an aged father, for above forty years in God’s vineyard, be lost, and the fences of it trodden down and destroyed ”

“ Is it too much to say that the marvellous musical genius of his two grandsons, Charles and Samuel Wesley, was inherited from himself? So remarkable was this talent for music that Charles surprised his father, by playing, with correctness, a tune on the harpsichord before he was three years old; while Samuel taught himself to read from Handel’s oratorios ”

“ Too many of the subordinate magistrates will not act, nor the people generally assist them in the punishment of evil-doers. It is reckoned a part of good breeding, or at least an argument of wit and spirit, to ridicule all that is sacred, and to profane the glorious and fearful name of God; and it is regarded as the rudest and the most clownish thing in the world to reprove, to detect, and punish such offenders, though by the most legal, prudent, and advisable methods.”
The Society for the Reformation of Manners was of great service, but it was not perfect. ”

“ Be constant at sacraments, and in prayer, public, domestic, and private. Neglect not to sing the high praises of God. Remember the poor, especially God’s poor. Pity the afflicted, especially our dear brethren who now ‘suffer for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus.’ Oh the peace, the joy, the triumph, the exultation of mind which a good man possesses, when he reflects on any sufferings he undergoes for the cause of God, and for the cause of despised religion and virtue! ”

“ The shortness, the baseness, the nastiness of the pleasure would be enough to make one nauseate it did not the devil and the flesh unite in their temptations to it. However, conquered it must be, for we must part with that or heaven! Ah, my boy, what sneaking things does vice make us! What traitors to ourselves, and how false within! And what invincible courage, as well as calmness, attends virtue and innocence! ”