Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/314

 suggestion of Captain Fry, and primarily as a means of raising funds (‘a penny a week’) to discharge a chapel debt. Wesley at once perceived the germ of an organisation for moral and spiritual inspection; the class system was extended to London on 25 March. The ‘society tickets’ (renewable quarterly) were now first issued. Constant care was taken to remove unworthy members; the process acted as a check on the rapid growth of the societies; ‘number,’ said Wesley, ‘is an inconsiderable circumstance’ (Journal, 25 June 1744). Two remarkable sermons belong to this period. The first, his ‘almost Christian’ sermon, at St. Mary's, Oxford (25 July 1741), illustrates Wesley's discretion; he had prepared in Latin and English a discourse of much more severity, with a galling text (, i. 362); he made inquiry at this date about the exercises for B.D., but did not proceed with the matter; his last university sermon was on 24 Aug. 1744. The other, at Epworth, on the evening of 6 June 1742, was preached (as John Romley, the curate, excluded him from the church) standing on his father's tombstone, and was the first of four addresses delivered in the same circumstances (for the tradition which sees Wesley's footprints in ‘sections of two ferruginous concretions in the slab,’ see communications in Notes and Queries, 1866 and 1872).

In 1743 Wesley opened two additional chapels in London: one (29 May) in West Street, Charing Cross Road, formerly French protestant; this was the headquarters of methodist work at the west end till 1798; the other (8 Aug.) in Snow's Fields, Bermondsey, formerly Arian [see ]. In all his chapels men and women sat apart; they were noted for ‘swift singing,’ without organ accompaniment. The first methodist conference or ‘conversation’ (25–30 June 1744) was held at the Foundery by the Wesleys, four other clergymen (three of them beneficed), and four lay preachers, of whom but one, John Downes (d. 1774), remained constant to methodism. By the institution of this conference Wesley consolidated his movement and provided a safety-valve for divergences of opinion; the choice of those invited to consultation rested with him, and he retained an uncontrolled power of direction. The method of conducting business by answers to queries had been anticipated in the quaker organism, of which apparently Wesley knew nothing; quaker doctrine, as taught in Barclay's ‘Apology,’ repelled him (1748) by its lack of sacraments and its silent meetings; yet he had reprinted (1741) extracts from Barclay on predestination. This first conference began the division of the country into methodist ‘circuits.’ While the first conference affirmed the duty of canonical obedience to the bishops ‘so far as we can with a safe conscience,’ and declared against separation from the church, pressure of circumstances was rapidly altering Wesley's views of ecclesiastical order. At the second conference (Bristol, 1–3 Aug. 1745) it is clearly affirmed that Wesley ‘may be called the bishop or overseer’ of all congregations gathered by him as ‘a preacher of the Gospel’ (Minutes, 1862, i. 26–7). On the road to Bristol he read (20 Jan. 1745–6) the ‘Enquiry into the Constitution … of the Primitive Church,’ published anonymously in 1691 (enlarged 1713) by, first lord King [q. v.] It seems to have taught him nothing (though he refers to it as late as 1784), for his two deduction from it, ‘that bishops and presbyters are (essentially) of one order, and that originally every Christian congregation was a church independent on all others,’ are anticipated in the conference minutes of 1745. In his noteworthy correspondence (May 1745 to February 1748) with ‘John Smith,’ i.e. [q. v.] (whose attitude is in curious contrast to that of [q. v.] a little later) he treats all ecclesiastical order as subordinate to spiritual needs (Works, xii. 75; the whole correspondence is in, vol. ii. App.). His own reiterated account refers his change of view to the influence of the ‘Irenicum’ (1660–1) by [q. v.] (Works, xii. 137, xiii. 200, 223).

Wesley had published in 1743 his ‘Thoughts on Marriage and Celibacy,’ giving a preference to the latter. His opinion was modified by a discussion at the conference of June 1748. Taken ill in the following August at Newcastle-on-Tyne, he was nursed for four days by Grace Murray, then in charge of his orphan house there. Grace (b. 18 Jan. 1715–16, d 23 Feb. 1803), daughter of poor parents, Robert (d. 1740) and Grace Norman, had married (13 May 1736) Alexander Murray, a sailor, drowned in 1742. Wesley proposed marriage to her, and she did not refuse. He took her with him on his missionary errands through Yorkshire and Derbyshire, and left her in Cheshire with one of his preachers, John Bennet (d. 24 May 1759, aged 44), to whom in a day or two she engaged herself. Having convinced her that this engagement was not binding, Wesley in April 1749 took her to Ireland, employed her there in religious work, and before leaving Dublin in July became contracted to her there. She resumed correspondence with Bennet in a