C41 



WESLEY, JOHN. 



WESLEY, JOHN. 



Gt2 



pointed discourse against it before an audience composed in great parl 

 of courtiers, soldiers, and informers. 



Other facts equally go to strengthen the improbability of his having 

 gone to college only in 1684. It is stated to have been after he 

 returned from sea that he married Susannah, youngest daughter 

 of the Rev. Dr. Samuel Annesley, one of the most eminent of the 

 London nonconformist clergy, and a near relation of the Irish Earl oi 

 Anglesey. This lady, as appears from one of her own letters, which 

 has been printed, had, like her husband, of her own accord left the 

 Dissenters, and that at the early age of not full thirteen, after having, 

 as she intimates, thoroughly examined the controversy between them 

 and the Established Church. Another daughter of Annesley (who 

 had originally held a living in the Church, and was ejected by the Act 

 of Uniformity) was the first wife of the eccentric John Dunton, book- 

 seller, publisher, and author, in whose curious autobiographical per- 

 formance entitled his ' Life arid Errors ' there are several notices of his 

 brother-in-law ; and Dunton published for Wesley the first work that 

 had his name, an octavo volume of verse, entitled ' Maggots, or Poems 

 on several subjects,' which appeared in 1685. Wesley, besides being 

 already married to Miss Annesley, appears to have been at this time 

 an established writer, though only anonymously, for the booksellers. 



When the revolution took place, Wesley, it is said, wrote a book in 

 defence of it ; but neither the date nor even the title is given. As it 

 is said to have been dedicated to the queen who in consequence, we 

 are told, gave the author the living of Epworth, in Lincolnshire, about 

 1693 it may possibly have been not anything concerning the revolu- 

 tion, but an heroic poem, in folio, entitled ' The Life of Christ," which 

 he published that year and dedicated to her majesty, and which was 

 reprinted, with large additions and alterations, in 1697. Another folio 

 volume of verse, under the title of ' Elegies on Queen Mary and 

 Archbishop Tillotson,' followed in 1695 ; ' The History of the New 

 Testament attempted in verse, and adorned with 152 sculptures, done 

 by J. Sturt,' 12mo, in 1701 ; and ' The History of the Old Testament 

 in Verse, with 180 sculptures, by Sturt,' 12mo, in 1704. In 1705 

 'Wesley published a poem on the battle of Blenheim, for which the 

 Duke of Maryborough made him chaplain to one of the regiments 

 then stationed in England, and would, it is said, have procured him a 

 prebend, had it not been for the influence of the Dissenters at court 

 and in parliament, which was powerful enough not only to prevent 

 this promotion, but soon after to procure the removal of Wesley from 

 his chaplaincy. In the next reign however he received and held with 

 Epworth the small living of Wroote in the same county. He died on 

 the 30th of April 1735, and the same year appeared, under the care 

 of his eldest son, his most elaborate work, entitled ' Dissertationes in 

 Librum Jobi,' a Latin commentary on the Book of Job, for the publi- 

 cation of which proposals had been first circulated in 1729. 'A 

 Treatise on the Sacrament ' is mentioned, without date, in a list of 

 Samuel Wesley's publications in Nichols's 'Select Collection of Poems,' 

 ii. 99 ; and he is stated by his son John, in his ' History of England,' to 

 have been the author of the defence delivered by Dr. Sacheverell 

 before the House of Lords. His poetry is occasionally harsh in 

 expression, but is not without feeling and animation ; some passages 

 are elegant and even elevated. By his wife, who was in many respects a 

 very remarkable woman, he had a family of nineteen children, of 

 whom one daughter, Mehetabel, who made an unfortunate marriage 

 with a person of the name of Wright, evinced much literary talent, 

 and was the mother of Mrs. or Miss Mehetabel Wright, who distin- 

 guished herself as a modeller in wax ; and three sons, Samuel, John, 

 and Charles, all attained more or less celebrity. 



TUB REV. SAMUEL WESLEY, the Younger, was the eldest, or at 

 least the eldest surviving, son of the Reverend Samuel Wesley of 

 Epworth. He is stated to have been born there, Whitehead, in his 

 ' Life of Wesley,' says about 1692 ; Coke and Moore, in 1690. Yet the 

 latest of these dates, it will be observed, is earlier than that assigned 

 for his father's induction to the living of Epworth. It is related that 

 he was four years old before he spoke a word ; but from that time he 

 spoke not only without any difficulty, but with an understanding 

 above his years. He was sent to Westminster School in 1704, was 

 admitted a king's scholar in 1707, and in 1711 was elected to Christ's 

 Church, Oxford, where he remained at least till he had taken his 

 degree of M.A. He had acquired much reputation for his proficiency 

 in classical learning both at school and at the university, and he was 

 now appointed one of the ushers of Westminster {School, in which 

 situation he remained for nearly twenty years. He had taken holy 

 orders soon after leaving college ; but he never obtained any prefer- 

 ment in the church, though his religious convictions appear to have 

 been strong, and his epitaph, besides giving him a high character both 

 for benevolence and piety, says that he was an excellent preacher 

 adding that his " best sermon was the constant example of an edifying 

 1! *~ " It is understood that his intimacy with Bishop Atterbury and 



life." 



the other Tory wits of the day, and his warm advocacy or avowal of 

 the principles of that party, stood in the way of his advancement. 

 Both he and his younger brothers, John and Charles, as it has been 

 observed, seem to have imbibed their political opinions from their 

 mother, who, although she concealed her sentiments during all the 

 reign of King William, differed from her husband in his approval of 

 the Revolution a fact which the latter only discovered by perceiving 

 that in the king's last illness she did not say "Amen " to the prayers 

 Bioa. DIV. VOL. vr. 



for his recovery. But Samuel carried both bia political toryism and 

 his high-church notions much further than his brothers, whose " new 

 faith," as he termed ifc, and canonical irregularities, he viewed with 

 great concern and disapprobation. But he scarcely lived to see more 

 than the beginning of Methodism. In 1732 he was appointed head 

 master of Tiverton School, in Devonshire ; and there he resided till 

 his death, 6th of November, 1739. He is the author of a collection of 

 poems, first published in 4to, in 1736, and a second time in 8vo, in 

 1743. Some of them, especially those of a humorous cast, have much 

 merit. The collection of ' Original Letters by the Reverend John 

 Wesley and his Friends,' published by Dr. Priestley in an 8vo volume, 

 at Birmingham, in 1791, consists for the most part of the corres- 

 pondence between Samuel Wesley and his brothers, obtained from 

 Samuel's daughter and grand-daughter. 



THE REV. JOHN WESLEY, the most eminent person of his name 

 and family, was the second, or the second who grew up to manhood, 

 of the sons of the Reverend Samuel Wesley, of Epworth, and was born 

 there, 17th of June (o. s.), 1703. He was still very young when he 

 was sent to the Charter-House, whence, at the age of seventeen, he 

 proceeded to Christchurch, Oxford. The account of his official bio- 

 graphers, Coke and Moore, is, that having taken the degree of B.A., 

 he was elected Fellow of Lincoln College in 1724, was ordained by 

 Potter then bishop of Oxford, afterwards archishop of Canterbury, in 

 1725, and graduated as M.A. in 1726 (pp. 42 and 47). Southey's 

 account, which is probably correct, is that he was not elected to his 

 Fellowship till March 1726. In the end of the same year he was 

 appointed Greek lecturer and moderator of the classes. 



From his earliest years Wesley had been of a serious temper, and 

 more especially from the commencement of his residence at college 

 religious impressions had taken a strong hold on him. It is related 

 that two books in particular, which he read in the course of his pre- 

 parations for ordination, produced a powerful effect on him ; the 

 treatise 'De Imitatione Christi,' attributed to Thomas-a-Kempis, and 

 Jeremy Taylor's ' Rules of Holy Living and Dying.' From about the 

 time when he was ordwined he began to keep a diary, a practice which 

 he continued to the end of his life. A large portion of this record, 

 under the title of his ' Journal,' was published by himself, in 21 parts, 

 and has been several times reprinted. 



Soon after he was ordained, he went to officiate as curate to his 

 father at Wroote, and here he resided for about two years ; during 

 which time, in 1728, he received priest's orders from the same prelate 

 by whom he had been ordained deacon. It appears to have been in 

 the end of this year that he was summoned back to college, in con- 

 sequence of a regulation that such of the junior fellows as might be 

 chosen moderator, should perform the duties of their office in person. 

 Here he found his younger brother Charles, then an undergraduate of 

 Christchurch, one of a small association of students already dis- 

 tinguished in the university by the derisive appellations of the Holy 

 Club, the Godly Club, the Bible Moths, the Bible Bigots, the Sacra- 

 mentarians, and the Methodists. At first, we are told, their religious 

 enthusiasm only carried them the length of devoting Sunday evenings 

 to the reading of divinity, the other nights being given to secular 

 studies; but very soon religion became the sole business of their 

 meetings ; they communicated once and fasted twice a week, employed 

 much of their time in visiting the prisons and the sick, gave away 

 whatever they could spare in charity, observed among themselves a 

 regular system of prayer, meditation, and self-examination; in short, 

 exhibited in all things a zeal and abstraction from the world such as 

 has scarcely been surpassed by the most rigid order of monkish 

 devotees. John Wesley appears to have immediately joined this 

 society, which now consisted of about fifteen individuals, of whom the 

 most remarkable, besides the two brothers, were Mr. Morgan, whose 

 mortifications are supposed to have shortened his life, James Hervey, 

 the well-known author of the ' Meditations,' and George Whitefield, 

 who shares with Wesley the fame of having been one of the two chief 

 founders of Methodism. 



It was very soon after this that Wesley became acquainted with 

 William Law, the author of the ' Serious Call ' and other similar 

 works ; the two brothers used to travel from Oxford on foot two or 

 three times a year to visit Law at his house in the neighbourhood of 

 London, and his conversations and writings, harmonising in the main 

 with their own previous notions and feelings, exerted a powerful 

 influence over them. Meanwhile however the less ardent or resolute 

 of their Oxford associates dropped off one by one ; and the number, 

 which had at one time been seven and twenty, declined at last to five. 

 Most of this had happened during the absence of the two Wesleys on 

 a short visit to their parents, in 1732. In these circumstances, when, 

 ;he next year, it was proposed that he should apply for the next pre- 

 sentation to his father's living of Epworth, John Wesley came to the 

 conclusion that it was his duty rather to remain at the university, as 

 ;he field where his exertions were most needed, and where also they 

 were likely to find the greatest stimulus. Nevertheless a few months 

 after his father's death he was induced to go out with General Ogle- 

 ;horpe to Georgia, in North America, to preach to the settlers and 

 Indians in the colony which the general was founding there. He and 

 his brother Charles, who now took holy orders, sailed from Gravesend 

 on the 14th of October 1735, in the same vessel with a party of six 

 and twenty Moravians. They anchored in the Savannah River on the 



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