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 use of his pupils. On 11 June 1734 he preached what his brother Charles calls ‘his Jacobite sermon,’ before the university, having taken the precaution to submit it to the vice-chancellor for approval before preaching.

Between August 1730 and July 1734 he corresponded as ‘Cyrus’ with ‘Aspasia,’ i.e. Mary Pendarves (formerly Granville, and better known as Mary Delany [q. v.]); she was a friend of his ‘Varanese.’ The correspondence shows warmth of interest on both sides (, i. 75). In November 1734 his father was anxious to see him appointed as his successor at Epworth. His brother Samuel, who had himself declined the post, wrote strongly, almost angrily, to urge compliance upon John. But Wesley was moved neither by his father's entreaty nor by his brother's arguments. He thought there was more good to be done at Oxford, and that he could do it. The correspondence extended to February 1734–5 (, Original Letters, 1791, pp. 17–50). Yet it appears from a letter of 15 April (when his father was dying) that he had then applied for the succession to Epworth; Edmund Gibson [q. v.], bishop of London, was ‘the obstacle’ to his promotion (, i. 102). Ten days later he attended his father's deathbed. What altered his view of the Oxford situation is not known; but his judgment as to the right field for his powers must have undergone a revolution, since by 18 Sept. he was ready to undertake the Georgia mission, promoted by John Burton [q. v.], one of the Georgia trustees, most of whom, however, were dissenters. Wesley, with his brother Charles, was on a visit to James Hutton (1715–1795) [q. v.] at Westminster, when he met Burton, who introduced him to James Edward Oglethorpe [q. v.] His first extemporary sermon was preached at this time in Allhallows, Lombard Street, on the failure of John Heylyn [q. v.]

The Wesleys, with Ingham and Charles Delamotte (1714–1790), son of a Middlesex magistrate (he went as John Wesley's famulus), embarked for Georgia in the Simmonds at Gravesend on 14 Oct. 1735, though the vessel did not actually begin her voyage from Cowes till 10 Dec. On board were twenty-six German Moravians, with David Nitschmann (1696–1772), their new-made (13 March 1734–5) bishop. Wesley at once (17 Oct.) began to learn German (he was already master of French, ‘the poorest, meanest language in Europe;’ he learned Spanish in 1737 to converse with Jews in Georgia). Savannah was reached on 6 Feb. 1735–6. Next day Oglethorpe introduced Wesley to August Gottlieb Spangenberg (1704–1792), afterwards (1744) Moravian bishop, whose interrogations gave Wesley a new view of the importance of evangelical doctrine. For a month he lodged with Spangenberg and his friends. The ordination of Anton Seiffart as Moravian bishop for Georgia, on 28 Feb., greatly impressed him by its ‘simplicity, as well as solemnity.’ His first letter to Zinzendorf was on 15 March 1736–7.

Wesley's Georgia mission lasted less than two years, the latter part broken by squabbles. Savannah was his headquarters, but after his brother's departure he spent much time at Frederica and other places. The whole of Georgia he considered his parish; he was accused of calling himself (10 Aug. 1737) ‘ordinary of Savannah’ (, i. 157). Ingham left for England on 26 Feb. 1736–7, with the object of bringing over further help, without which there was no prospect of evangelising the Indians. On this side the aims of the mission were not fulfilled, though Wesley made some attempt in this direction; in other respects it was unsuccessful in detail. Wesley's preaching was regarded as too personal, and his pastoral visitation as censorious. His punctilious insistence on points of primitive usage (e.g. immersion of infants at baptism and use of the mixed chalice), his taking the ‘morning service’ at five, and ‘the communion office (with the sermon) at eleven,’ his introduction of unauthorised hymns, his strictness in the matter of communicants, excluding dissenters as unbaptised, his holding a private religious ‘society,’ provoked the retort ‘We are protestants’ (Journal, 22 June 1736). With Oglethorpe himself Wesley had no quarrel, and it must be admitted that, as a whole, Wesley's Georgia mission, brief and troubled as it was, impressed men's minds with a new sense of the reality of religion. His first hymn-book was published at Charlestown in 1737.

On his arrival in Georgia Wesley had made the acquaintance (12 March 1735–6) of Sophia Christiana Hopkey, an intelligent girl, niece of the wife of Thomas Causton, chief magistrate of Savannah. Wesley taught her French; she dressed in white to please him, and tended him through a feverish attack. Delamotte asked if he meant to marry her. It is certain that he had proposed to her (, i. 149), and offered to alter his ‘way of life’ to gain her acceptance, which she apparently withheld. Wesley, acting in the spirit of a Moravian, referred the case to Nitschmann, and agreed, ‘after some hesitation,’ to abide by the deci-