B. Why, you may mistake the Apostles' intent. They went about to convert heathens. You have no warrant for your particular churches. W. We have a plain, full, and sufficient rule for Gospel-worship in the New Testament, recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, and in the Epistles. B. We have not. W. The practice of the Apostles is a standing rule in those cases which were not extraordinary. B. Not their practice, but their precepts. W. Both precepts and practice. Our duty is not delivered to us in Scripture only by precepts, but by precedents; by promises, and by threatenings mixed. We are to follow them as they followed Christ. B. But the Apostle said, "This speak I, not the Lord :" that is, by revelation. W. Some interpret that place, " This speak I now by revelation from the Lord; not the Lord in that text before instanced concerning divorces." May it please your Lordship, we believe that " Cultus non institutus, est indebitus."* B. It is false. W. The second commandment speaks the same. make to thyself any graven image." B. That is, forms of your own invention. "Thou shalt not W. Bishop Andrews, taking notice of "non facias tibi,"† satisfied me that we may not worship God, but as commanded. B. Well then, you will justify your preaching, will you, without ordination according to law? W. All these things, laid together, are satisfactory to me, for my procedure therein. B. They are not enough. W. There has been more written in proof of preaching of gifted persons, with such approbation, than has been answered yet by any one. B. Have you any thing more to say to me, Mr. Wesley? W. Nothing; your Lordship sent for me. B. I am glad to hear this from your mouth; you will stand to your principles you say? W. I intend it, through the grace of God; and to be faithful to the King's Majesty, however you deal with me. B. I will not meddle with you. W. Farewell to you, Sir. B. Farewell, good Mr. Wesley. It is to be hoped that the Bishop kept his word. But in the beginning of 1662, Mr. Wesley was seized on the Lord's-day as he was coming out of church, carried to Blandford, and committed to prison. Sir Gerard Napper was one of the most furious of his enemies, and the most forward in committing him; but meeting with an accident by which he broke his collar-bone, he was so far softened, that he sent to some persons to bail Mr. Wesley, and told them, if they would not, he would do it himself. How various are the ways by which God brings men to a consciousness of their guilt! Mr. Wesley was thus set at VOL. I. *Worship not enjoined is not binding. 4 liberty, though bound over to appear at the next Assizes. He appeared accordingly, and came off much better than he expected. On this occasion the good man recorded in his diary the mercy of God to him, in raising up several friends to own him; inclining a solicitor to plead for him; and in restraining the wrath of man, so that the judge, though noted as a passionate man, spoke not an angry word. Mr. Wesley came joyfully home from the Assizes, and preached constantly every Lord's-day till August 17th, when he delivered his farewell sermon to a weeping audience, from Acts xx, 32: "And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them that are sanctified." October the 26th, the place was declared vacant by an apparitor, and orders were given to sequester the profits; but his people had given him what was due. On the 22d of February, 1663, he quitted Whitchurch, and removed with his family to Melcomb; upon which the corporation there made an order against his settlement, imposing a fine of 201. upon his landlady, and 5s. per week upon himself, to be levied by distress. These violent proceedings forced him to leave the town, and go to Bridgewater, Ilminster, and Taunton, in which places he met with great kindness and friendship from all the three denominations of Dissenters, and was almost every day employed in preaching in the several places to which he went. At length a gentleman, who had a good house at Preston, two or three miles from Melcomb, gave him free liberty to live in it without paying any rent. Thither he removed his family in the beginning of May, and there he continued while he lived. He records his coming to Preston with great thankfulness. By the Oxford Act he was obliged for a while to withdraw from Preston, and leave his family and people. Upon his coming to the place of his retirement in March, 1666, he put this question to himself, "What dost thou here, at such a distance from church, wife, children," &c? In his answer, he sets down the oath required by Government, and then adds the reasons why he could not take it, as several ministers had done; and particularly, that to do it, in his own private sense, would be but juggling with God, with the King, and with conscience. After he had lain hid for some time, he ventured home again, and returned to his labour among his people, and occasionally among others. But notwithstanding all his prudence, he was often disturbed; several times apprehended; and four times imprisoned,—once at Pool for half a year, and once at Dorchester for three months; the other confinements were shorter. He was in many straits and difficulties, but wonderfully supported and comforted, and many times very seasonably and surprisingly delivered. "And having filled up his part of what is behind of the afflictions of Christ in his flesh, for his body's sake, which is the Church, and finished the work given him to do, he was taken out of this vale of tears to that world where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest, when he had not been much longer an inhabitant here below than his blessed Master, whom he served with his whole heart, according to the best light he had. The vicar of Preston would not suffer him to be buried in the Church."+ *I conjecture that he died about the year 1670. SAMUEL ANNESLEY, LL. D., grandfather of the late Mr. Wesley, by the mother's side, was born at Killingworth near Warwick, in the year 1620. He was first cousin to the Earl of Anglesea. His grandmother, an eminently pious woman, dying before his birth, desired that the child, if a boy, might be called Samuel, assigning as the reason of her request, "I can say I have asked him of the Lord." In his infancy, he was strongly impressed with the thoughts of being a minister; and such was his ardour in pursuing this design, that when about five or six years old, he began a practice, which he afterwards continued, of reading twenty chapters every day in the Bible. This practice laid an excellent foundation of useful knowledge, for the future exercise of his ministry. He lost his father when four years old; but his pious mother took great care of his education; nor did he want the means of obtaining the best instruction, as the paternal estate was considerable. At the age of fifteen he went to the university of Oxford, and took his degrees in the usual course. His piety and diligence at Oxford were so much out of the common way of the place, that he attracted considerable notice. In 1644 he was appointed chaplain in the ship called the Globe, under the Earl of Warwick, then Lord High Admiral of England. He went to sea with the fleet, and kept a diary of the voyage. But he soon quitted the sea, and settled at Cliff in Kent. The minister of this place had been turned out for his barefaced encouragement of licentiousness, as Dr. Williams reports, by attending meetings for dancing, drinking, &c, on the Lord's day. The people on this account were exceedingly fond of him, and greatly prejudiced against his successor, Dr. Annesley, who was a man of a very different character. When he first went among them, they rose upon him with spits, forks, and stones, threatening to destroy him. This was no small trial to a young man of about twenty-five years of age. But he remained firm as a rock in his Master's cause; and as the people were not hardened against the evidence of gospel truth, he had some hopes of doing them good, notwithstanding their profaneness and violence. He therefore told them, that, "Let them use him as they would, he was resolved to continue with them, till God had prepared them by his ministry to entertain a better; and solemnly declared, that when they were so prepared he would leave the place." His labours were incessant, and the success of his preaching and engaging behaviour was surprising; so that in a few years, the people were greatly reformed, and became exceedingly fond of him. Though he enjoyed here an income of four hundred pounds per annum, yet he paid so conscientious a regard to his first declaration, that he thought himself bound to leave them, which he accordingly did, and the people who at his coming threatened to stone him, now parted from him with cries and tears, thus testifying their affection for him.-It is by no means clear, however, that he acted right in all this. In matters of a mere personal nature we may use much freedom: but where the souls of men are concerned, it is very different. A very signal providence directed him to a settlement in London in 1652, by the unanimous choice of the inhabitants of the parish of St. John the Apostle. Soon after he was made Lecturer of St. Paul's; and in 1658 Cripplegate was made happy by his settlement there. He was a man of great uprightness, never regulating his religious profession by his secular interests. He was turned out of his Lecture, because he would not comply with some things which he deemed extravagant and wrong: he thought conformity in him would be a sin, and he chose to quit a full maintenance rather than injure his conscience. He was acknowledged by all parties to be an Israelite indeed, and yet he suffered much for Nonconformity; but such was then the spirit of party, that an angel from heaven would have been persecuted and abused, if he had appeared as a Dissenter. In his sufferings, God often interposed remarkably for him: One person died, while signing a warrant to apprehend him. He afterwards suffered, because he thought it his duty to bear witness for the old truth against Antinomianism. His integrity made him a stranger to all tricks or little artifices to serve his temporal interest; and his charitable and unsuspecting temper sometimes gave to those who practised them an opportunity to impose upon him. In ministerial labours he was abundant. Before he was silenced, he often preached three times a day; during the troubles almost every day; afterwards twice every Lord's-day. His sermons were instructive and affecting; and his manner of delivery very peculiarly expressed his heartiness in the things which he spoke. His care and labour extended to every place where he might be useful. In some measure the care of all the churches was upon him. When any place wanted a minister, he used his endeavours to procure one for them when any minister was oppressed by poverty, he soon employed himself for his relief. "O! how many places," says Dr. Williams, "had sat in darkness, how many ministers had been starved, if Dr. Annesley had died thirty years since! He was the chief, often the sole instrument in the education as well as the subsistence of several ministers. The sick, the widows, the orphans, whom he relieved, were innumerable. As a minister, his usefulness was extensive, and God kept him faithful in his work to the last, for which he thus thanked Him on his deathbed: "Blessed be God, I can say, I have been faithful in the ministry above fifty-five years." Many called him FATHER, as the instrument of their conversion; and many called him a coмFORTER. He had uninterrupted peace, and assurance of God's love and favour, for above thirty years of the latter part of his life. This assurance had not one cloud in all his last sickness. A little before his departure, his desire of death appeared strong, and his soul was filled with the foretaste of glory. He often said, "Come my dearest Jesus! the nearer the more precious, the more welcome." Another time his joy was so great, that in an extasy he cried out, "I cannot contain it: what manner of love is this to a poor worm? I cannot express the thousandth part of what praise is due to Thee! We know not what we do when we offer at praising God for his mercies. It is but little I can give thee; but, Lord, help me to give thee my all! I will die praising thee, and rejoice that others can praise thee better. I shall be satisfied with thy likeness; satisfied! satisfied! Oh! my dearest Jesus, I come!" Thus departed this excellent man, December 31, 1696, in the 77th year of his age; leaving us an example how to live and how to die. CHAPTER II. SAMUEL WESLEY, SENIOR. MR. JOHN WESLEY, of whom I have spoken above, left two sons, Matthew and Samuel. Matthew, following the example of his grandfather, studied physic, and made a fortune by his practice.* Samuel, the father of the late Mr. John Wesley, was born about the year 1662, or perhaps a little earlier; but he could not, I think, have been more than eight or nine years old when his father died. The first thing that shook his attachment to the Dissenters was, a defence of the death of King Charles the First; and, afterwards, the proceedings of the Calf's Head Club.† These things shocked him and though it is certain, that many of the Dissenters disapproved of the King's death, and that the proceedings of a Club ought not to be attributed to a large body of men, who had no connexion with the members of it, and differed greatly in opinion from them; yet they had such an effect upon his mind, that he separated himself from the Dissenting interest while yet a boy,-as appears from the following lines in his son's elegy upon him: : With opening life his early worth began; The BOY misleads not, but foreshows the MAN. He spent some time at a private academy, before he went to the University; but where, it is not said. About the age of sixteen he walked to Oxford, and entered himself of Exeter College. He had now only two pounds sixteen shillings; and no prospect of future supplies, but from his own exertions. By assisting the younger students, and instructing any who chose to employ him, he supported himself till he took his Bachelor's degree, without any preferment, or assistance from his friends, except five shillings. This circumstance does him great honour, and shows him to have been a young man of wonderful diligence and resolution. He then went to London, having increased his little stock to Ten Pounds Fifteen Shillings. He was there ordained Deacon, and obtained a curacy, which he held one year, when he was appointed chaplain on board the fleet. This situation he held one year only, and then returned to London, and served a cure for two years. During this time he married, and his wife brought him a son. In this period he wrote several pieces, which brought him into notice and esteem, and a small living was given him in the country. He was soon after strongly solicited by the friends of King James II to support the measures of the Court in favour of Popery, with promises of preferment if *I shall afterwards insert some fine Verses on the death of this gentleman, by his niece, Mrs. Wright. +Notes of Samuel Wesley to his Elegy on his Father. Mr. Southey disputes this, and brings forward extracts from the Registers of Exeter College to prove, that he must have been "two-and-twenty." But, as the name is spelt Westley, in those entries, and in the person's own signature, it is more reasonable to suppose it was another person, than that his son, who says he was but sixteen, was mistaken |