The Young People's Wesley Part 6

She was a woman of good standing in society, and was supposed to be a suitable person for the position she a.s.sumed. She was agreeable in person and quite faultless in manner, and could easily make herself useful to all cla.s.ses. But appearances are said to be deceptive; at least it proved so in this case. She seems to have possessed a temper which, when aroused, was utterly uncontrollable.

Not four months of married life had pa.s.sed before she began to complain of her husband. Before their marriage she agreed that he should not be expected to travel a mile less, or preach one sermon less, than before their union. But now she began to complain of everything--long journeys, bad roads, and poor fare. She was not willing to remain at home, for then she was without the attention she had a right to receive; and when he was at home he was preaching two or three times a day, visiting the sick, looking after the societies, and carrying on extensive correspondence.

From fancying herself neglected by her husband she became jealous of him--a most absurd and insane idea. But on this her insanity knew no bounds. She is said to have traveled a hundred miles in order to intercept him at some town, and watch from a window to ascertain who might be in the carriage with him. She went so far as to open his private letters and abstract his papers and place them in the hands of those who would use them to his damage. She would add to his letters--usually those from his female correspondents--to make them appear to contain words of questionable character. She used the newspapers to blacken his reputation. She went so far at times as to lay violent hands upon him, tear his hair, and otherwise abuse him. Said Mr.

Hampson (who was not one of Mr. Wesley's warmest friends) to his son one day: "Jack, I was once on the point of committing murder. When I was in the north of Ireland I went into a room, and found Mrs. Wesley flaming with fury. Her husband was on the floor, where she had been trailing him by the hair of his head; she herself was still holding in her hand venerable locks which she had plucked up by the roots. I felt," said the gigantic Hampson, "as though I could have knocked the soul out of her."

Even Southey says: "Fain would she have made him, like Mark Antony, give up all for love; and, being disappointed in that hope, she tormented him in such a manner by her outrageous jealousy and abominable temper that she deserved to be cla.s.sed in a triad with Xantippe and the wife of Job as one of the three bad wives." But finally she gathered up a quant.i.ty of his journals and other papers and left him, never to return. The only record which the good man makes is this: "I did not forsake her; I did not dismiss her; I will not recall her."

Wesley may not have been in all respects in this matter faultless. But no one could ever affirm that he was wanting in genuine affection.

Charles Wesley, who knew the inwardness of all John's domestic troubles, affirms that "nothing could surpa.s.s my brother's patience with his perverse, peevish spouse."

Mrs. Wesley died in 1781, and the church people had it inscribed upon her tombstone that she was "a woman of exemplary piety." "But," says the late Professor Sheppard, "you know a tombstone is like a corporation--it has no body to be burned, and no soul to be d.a.m.ned."

CHAPTER X.

WESLEY'S PERSECUTIONS.

HAD the immense labors of John Wesley noted in a former chapter been performed under public patronage, cheered on by all, they would have seemed less arduous. Men may prosecute a reform when public opinion favors it with comparative ease, but with less ent.i.tlement to honor than he has a right to claim who does it in the face of pa.s.sion and interest.

The labors of John Wesley were prosecuted in the teeth of opposition such as seldom falls to the lot of man to endure. And what made it more dastardly and cruel was the fact that it was instigated and princ.i.p.ally conducted by the officials of that Church of which he was a worthy member and ordained minister to the day of his death.

It is a sad fact, but nevertheless true, that most of the opposition and persecution encountered by reformers and revivalists have come from the churchmen of the times. It has been the Church opposing those who were honestly seeking her own reformation. When the Church subst.i.tutes forms for G.o.dliness, and devotes herself to ecclesiasticism instead of soul-saving, and place-seeking takes the place of piety, she is ready to resist all efforts for her restoration to spirituality as irregular and offensive.

No sooner had Wesley exposed the sins of the Church, especially those of the pulpit, than the pulpit denounced him; and the press, taking its keynote from the pulpit, thundered as though the "abomination of desolation" had actually "taken possession of the holy place." Then the idle rabble rushed to the front, and mob violence and mob law were the order of the hour.

The flaming denunciations of the pulpits of the Establishment against Mr. Wesley and his people have never been surpa.s.sed in the history of the English nation. Wesley says: "We were everywhere represented as mad dogs, and treated accordingly. In sermons, newspapers, and pamphlets of all kinds we were painted as unheard-of monsters. But this moved us not; we went on testifying salvation by faith both to small and great, and not counting our lives dear to ourselves, so we might finish our course with peace."

The Wesleys were represented as "bold movers of sedition and ringleaders of the rabble, to the disgrace of their order." They were denounced by learned divines as "restless deceivers of the people," "babblers,"

"insolent pretenders," "men of spiritual sleight and cunning craftiness." They were guilty of "indecent, false, and unchristian reflections on the clergy." They were "new-fangled teachers," "rash, uncharitable censurers," "intruding into other men's labors," and running "into wild fancies until the pale of the Church is too strait for them." They were "half dissenters _in_ the Church, and more dangerous _to_ the Church than those who were total dissenters from it."

Bishop Gibson declared that they endeavored "to justify their own extraordinary methods of teaching by casting unworthy reflections upon the parochial clergy as deficient in the discharge of their duty, and not instructing the people in the true doctrines of Christianity."

Even Dr. Doddridge is not at all "satisfied with the high pretenses they make to the divine influence." Dr. Trapp is bold in p.r.o.nouncing them "a set of crack-brained enthusiasts and profane hypocrites."

The _Weekly Miscellany_ denounces Wesley as the "ringleader, fomenter, and first cause of all divisions and feuds that have happened in Oxford, London, Bristol, and other places where he has been." He manages by "preaching, bookselling, wheedling, and sponging to get, it is believed, an income of 700 a year, some say 1,000. This is priestcraft to perfection."

Further on in life he is accused of "making unwarrantable dissensions in the Church," and "prejudicing the people wherever he comes against his brethren the clergy." He is a "sower and ringleader of dissension, endeavoring with unwearied a.s.siduity to set the flock at variance with their ministers and each other," a.s.suming to himself "great wisdom and high attainments in all spiritual knowledge." "You go," says this writer, "from one end of the nation to another lamenting the heresies of your brethren, and instilling into the people's minds that they are led into error by their pastors."

"It was Mr. Wesley's fidelity," says Mr. Tyerman, "far more than the novelties of his doctrines and proceedings that brought upon him the persecution he encountered."

The former friends of Wesley now turned against him on points merely doctrinal. No one can read the invectives of Sir Richard and Rev.

Rowland Hill, Sir Walter Shirley and Rev. Augustus Toplady, without feelings of great astonishment. When Mr. Wesley had pa.s.sed his threescore years and ten Mr. Toplady, a young man of thirty, attacked him in the most violent manner, employing epithets of the most abusive character. We select the following as samples from the many. Wesley is accused of the "sophistry of the Jesuit and the dictatorial authority of a pope." He is a "lurking, sly a.s.sa.s.sin," guilty of "audacity and falsehood;" a "knave," guilty of "mean, malicious impotence." He is an "Ishmaelite," a "bigot," a "papist," a "defamer," a "reviler," a "liar,"

without the "honesty of a heathen;" an "impudent slanderer," with "Satanic guilt only exceeded by Satan himself, if even by him." He is an "echo of Satan."

Robert Hall well said, "I would not incur the guilt of that virulent abuse which Toplady cast upon him [Wesley], for points merely speculative and of very little importance, for ten thousand worlds."

_Poets_ who should have sung for Jesus prost.i.tuted their gifts and burdened their songs with the bitterest invectives against Wesley and his people.

One ent.i.tles his poem "Perfection: a practical epistle, calmly addressed to the greatest hypocrite in England--that person being John Wesley."

Another poem was ent.i.tled "Methodism Displayed: a satire, ill.u.s.trated and verified from John Wesley's fanatical Journals."

Another, ent.i.tled "The Mechanic Inspired: or, The Methodists' Welcome to Rome." As a specimen of this delectable production we give the following stanza:

Ye dupes of sly, Romish, itinerant liars, The sp.a.w.n of French prophets and mendicant friars; Ye pious enthusiasts! who riot and rob With holy grimace and sanctified sob.

Another, "The Methodist and Mimic."

Still another, "The Methodist, a poem." In this production Mr. Wesley is described as being nursed on "demoniac milk," and as one who

Had Moorfield trusted to his care, For Satan keeps an office there.

Another, ent.i.tled "The Troublers of Israel; in which the principles of those who turn the world upside down are displayed."

Another, in which the writer exhorts Wesley to

Haste hence to Rome, thy proper place, Why should we share in thy disgrace?

We need no greater proof to see Thy blasphemies with his agree.

And yet another, ent.i.tled "Wesley's Apostasy," etc., in which occurs this verse, among others equally bad:

In vain for worse may Wesley search the globe, A viper hatched beneath the harlot's robe; Rome in her glory has no greater boast, Than Wesley aims--to all conviction lost.

This may answer for the poets, though their number is nearly legion.

_Artists_ employed their G.o.d-given powers in traducing Wesley and his people.

William Hogarth published a painting and engraving ent.i.tled "Credulity, Superst.i.tion, and Fanaticism, being a satire on Methodism."

_Comedians_, who are generally ready to lend themselves to any vile work, employed the stage to blacken the character of Wesley.

Samuel Foote, an actor, wrote a play ent.i.tled "The Minor, a Comedy," in which the Methodists were ridiculed and slandered.

Samuel Pottenger wrote a play ent.i.tled "The Methodist, a Comedy."

Another was soon after produced--"The Hypocrite, a Comedy, as it was performed in the Theater Royal, Drury Lane."

Thus _pulpit_, _press_, _pencil_, and _stage_ united to crush Wesley and his people. No means were left untried. Though they followed him through all his active ministerial life, yet the gates of h.e.l.l did not and could not prevail against him and his work.

MOB VIOLENCE.

WHEN pulpit, press, and stage combine to crush vital Christianity they soon arouse an ally in the ignorant, restless, unholy ma.s.ses, ever ready to aid in forwarding the work of the Prince of Darkness.

When pulpits in London, Bristol, Bath, and, in fact, everywhere were closed against Wesley one of two ways was open before him--he must either abandon the work to which he was sure G.o.d had called him, or he must break over ecclesiastical rules and go outside the churches. He was not long choosing.

A good-sized volume could be filled with accounts of mob violence which came upon Wesley and his people, but we have s.p.a.ce for a few cases only, which must be taken as samples of the many.