Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/312

Wesley sion of the Moravian authorities, which was that he should ‘proceed no further’ (, i. 312). The date was probably 4 March 1736–7 (, i. 148). On 8 March Sophia became engaged to William Williamson, and married him on 12 March. She showed Wesley's letters to her husband, who ‘forbade his wife attending either his chapel or his house in future’ (Gent. Mag. 1792, i. 24). She was present at the communion service on 3 July, after which Wesley, as they walked home in the street, specified some things ‘reprovable in her behaviour;’ she was naturally indignant. Wesley wrote (5 July) to Causton implying, as he distinctly explained next day, that it might be his duty to repel one of his family from the communion. Causton angrily replied that unless it were himself or his wife he should not interfere. On 7 Aug. Wesley repelled Mrs. Williamson from the communion. Williamson obtained the recorder's warrant (8 Aug.) for Wesley's arrest for defamation, laying damages at 1,000l. On 22 Aug. the grand jury by a majority of thirty-two to twelve found a true bill on ten articles of indictment, including all the points of ecclesiastical usage objected against Wesley. Wesley was right in saying that nine of these articles, being purely ecclesiastical, were not within the cognisance of a civil court. He repeatedly asked to be tried on the first article, alleging communications with Mrs. Williamson contrary to her husband's order. No trial took place. Oglethorpe was in England. On 2 Dec. the magistrates issued an order forbidding him to leave the province. He departed the same evening, leaving Delamotte behind, embarked for England from Charlestown on 22 Dec. 1737, and landed at Deal on 1 Feb. 1737–8. Whitefield was just starting for Georgia; Wesley wrote to dissuade him, but (having drawn a lot) avoided meeting him. On 4 Feb. he visited Oglethorpe in London, and during the next fortnight had interviews with the Georgia trustees, giving reasons for resigning his commission.

On 7 Feb. 1737–8 he met Peter Böhler (1712–1775), just landed from Germany, took him to Oxford, and to Stanton Harcourt on a visit to John Gambold [q. v.], and frequented his company till he left England (4 May). He corresponded with Böhler as late as 1775. Fetter Lane chapel, where Böhler founded (1 May) a ‘religious society’ which Wesley joined, was the scene of the ministry (1707–1728) of Thomas Bradbury [q. v.], and is now the oldest nonconforming place of worship in London. From Böhler the Wesleys imbibed their doctrine of ‘saving faith;’ hence Wesley broke with William Law. He was constantly preaching in parish churches with no variation on established usage, but at society meetings from 1 April he used extempore prayer. He dates his ‘conversion,’ following that of Charles, on 24 May (at a society meeting in Aldersgate Street), yet there is clear evidence, in his journal and his letters to his brother Samuel (, Original Letters, 1791, pp. 83–6), that his new experience was but a step on the way. His debt to the Moravians impelled him to visit Herrnhut. Starting on 13 June with Ingham and John Töltschig (1703–1764), he travelled through Holland and North Germany; at Marienborn visited Zinzendorf, who set him to dig in his garden (, i. 218); reached Herrnhut on 1 Aug., stayed there a fortnight, and got back to London on 16 Sept. On 21 Oct. he waited with Charles on Edmund Gibson, bishop of London, and asked whether ‘religious societies’ were ‘conventicles.’ Gibson thought not, adding, ‘I determine nothing.’ After spending a month at Oxford he drew up rules (end of 1738) for the Moravian band societies. He was soon to strike out a path for himself.

The example of Whitefield's open-air preaching was repulsive at first to his sense of ‘decency and order;’ but after expounding at Bristol the Sermon on the Mount, a ‘pretty remarkable precedent of field-preaching, though I suppose there were churches at that time also,’ he next afternoon (Monday, 2 April 1739) preached ‘from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city, to about three thousand people’ (Journal). On 12 May he laid the foundation-stone in the Horse Fair, Bristol, of ‘a room’ which, when opened, was called the ‘New Room,’ and was in fact the first Methodist chapel. His encounter at Bath (5 June) with Richard Nash (Beau Nash) [q. v.] exhibits his remarkable power of conclusive repartee. Of more moment is his interview, in August (related by himself, Works, xiii. 470), with Joseph Butler [q. v.] of the ‘Analogy,’ then bishop of Bristol. The Bristol societies had become marked by convulsive phenomena, to which John Wesley was more inclined to attach religious importance than Charles, till he found his societies invaded by the ‘French prophets’ [see, fl. 1737]. Butler had ‘once thought’ Wesley and Whitefield to be ‘well-meaning men;’ his altered opinion was due to ‘the pretending to extraordinary revelations and gifts of the Holy Ghost,’ which he characterised as ‘a horrid thing, a very horrid thing.’ Wesley declined responsibility for Whitefield's