Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/529

Rh W E S W E S 503 ccssful attempt at Stralsund. Wesel is occasionally spoken of as Unterwesel, to distinguish it from Oberwcsel, a small town also on the Rhine (18 miles south-south-east of Coblentz), and also at one time a free imperial town. WESEL, JOHN KUCHRATH, of Oberwesel (see above), was born in the early years of the 15th century, and died under sentence of imprisonment for life on a charge of heresy in the Augustinian convent in Mainz in 1481. He appears to have been one of the leaders of the humanist movement in Germany, and to have had some intercourse and sympathy with the leaders of the Hussites in Bohemia. Erfurt was then the headquarters of a humanism which was at the same time devout and opposed to the realist metaphysic and the Thomist theology which prevailed in the Rhenish universities at Cologne and at Heidelberg, Wesel was one of the professors at Erfurt between 1445 and 1456, and was vice-rector in 1458. In 1460 he was called to be a preacher either at Worms or at Mainz, and in 1479, when an old and worn-out man (he was led into the room by two Franciscans, and was obliged to support himself on a staff), he was brought before the Dominican inquisitor Gerhard Elten of Cologne. The charges brought against him were chiefly based on a treatise, De Indulyentiis, which he had composed while at Erfurt twenty-five years before. It is somewhat difficult to determine the exact theo logical position of Wesel. Ullmann claims him as a &quot; reformer before the Reformation,&quot; but it is more than doubtful that he had that experimental view of the doctrines of grace which lay at the basis of Reformation theology. He held that Christ is our righteousness in so far as we are guided by the Holy Ghost and the love towards God is shed abroad in our hearts, which clearly shows that he held the mediaeval idea that justification is an habitual grace implanted in men by the gracious act of God. He seems, however, to have protested against certain mediaeval ecclesiastical ideas which lie held to be excrescences erroneously grafted on Christian faith and practice. He objected to the whole system of indulgences; he denied the infallibility of the church, on the ground that the church contains within it sinners as well as saints; he insisted that papal authority could be upheld only when the pope remained true to the evangel ; and he held that a sharp distinction ought to be drawn between ecclesiastical sentences and punishments and the judgments of God. The best account of Wesel is to be found in Ullmann s Reformers Icfore the Reformation. His tract on Indulgences has been pub lished in Walch s Monumenta Mcdii ^vi, vol. i., while a report of his trial is given in Ortuin Gratius s Fasciculus Itcrum Expcten- darum ct Fugiendarum (ed. by Browne, London, 1690). WESER (O. Germ. VisiiracJwt, Wisura ; Lat. Visurgis), one of the chief rivers of Germany, formed by the union of the Werra and the Fulda at Miinden, in the Prussian province of Hanover, flows to the north and north-north west, and enters the North Sea below Bremerhafen, to the east of the Jade Bay. The mouth is 170 miles from Miinden, but the winding course of the river is 279 miles long ; if the measurement be made from the source of the Werra, in Thuringia, the total length of the stream is 439 miles. At Miinden the river surface is 380 feet above sea-level ; the most rapid fall in its course is between Carlshafen and Minden in Westphalia, where it descends 70 feet in 20 miles. Nearly the entire course of the Weser lies in Prussia, but it also touches part of Brunswick and Lippe, and after flowing through Bremen expands into an estuary separating the duchy of Oldenburg from the Prussian province of Hanover. Between Miinden and Minden its course lies through a series of picturesque valleys flanked by the irregular and disjointed mountain system known as the Weser Hills; but after it emerges from these mountains by the narrow pass called the &quot;Porta Westphalica,&quot; to the north of Minden, its banks become flat and uninteresting. The breadth of the river varies from 110 yards at Miinden to 220 yards at Minden, 250 yards at Bremen, miles at Elsfleth, and 7i- miles at its entrance into the sea, The Weser on the whole is shallow; and navigation on the upper Weser, i.e., above Bremen, is sometimes interrupted for months by drought. Sea-going ships may ascend to Elsfleth, though Bremer hafen is the chief port for large vessels; smaller craft may reach Vegesack, and barges of 200 tons make their way to Miinden. The stream discharges itself into the sea amid sandbanks, which leave only a single narrow fairway, 19-22 feet deep at high water and 12 feet at low water; on the upper Weser the navigation of the only available narrow channel, which is interrupted by occasional rapids, is assisted by locks and weirs. The Weser drains a basin estimated at 18,360 square miles. Its principal tributaries on the right are the Aller, Wiimme, Drepte, Lune, and Geeste, and on the left the Diemel, Nethe, Emmer, Werre, Aue, and Hunte. The Werra and Fulda are both navi gable when they unite to form the Weser; the Aller, Wiimme, Geeste, and Hunte are also navigable. Beyond the junction of the Hunte the Weser, hitherto a single stream, is divided into several channels by islands. The navigation of the Weser was long hampered by the various and vexatious claims and rights of the different states through whose territories it ran. Before 1866 the joint stream, including the Werra and the Fulda, changed its ruler no less than thirty -five times on its way to the sea. In 1823, however, a treaty was made establishing a fixed toll and a uniform system of management; this was further improved in 1856 and 1865; and when Prussia took possession of Hanover and Hesse-Nassau in 18C6 the chief diffi culties in the way of organizing the river-trade disappeared. The principal town on the Weser is Bremen (population in 1885, 118,043). Other towns past which it flows betwixt Miinden and the sea are Carlshafen, Hb xtcr, Hol/minden, Bodenwerdcr, Hameln, Rinteln, Vlotho, Minden, Nienburg, Vegesack, Elsfleth, Braake, Blexen, Geestemiinde, and Bremerhafen. The Weser gave name to a department in the short-lived kingdom of Westphalia; the chief town was Osnabriick. A canal between the Wiimme and the Oste, and another between the Geeste and the mouth of the Elbe, connect the Weser system with that of the Elbe. A canal is also being constructed from the Hunte to a tributary of the Ems. WESLEY, an English family of special ecclesiastical distinction, claims descent from the ancient De Wellesleys, one of whom, Guy, was made a thane by Athelstan about 938, the family seat being at Welswe, near Wells, in Somerset. Two brothers, John and Bartholomew, were among the ministers ejected for nonconformity in 1662. SAMUEL (1662-1735), son of the above John, was born 17th December 1662. He was educated at an academy at Stepney, London, and in August 1683 entered Exeter College, Oxford, as a x &amp;gt;au P r scholaris, shortly after which he joined the Church of England, a step which so deeply offended his family that they left him henceforth to his own resources. While still an undergraduate he pub lished Mac/t/ots, or Poems on Several Subjects never before Handled, 1685. He graduated B.A. 1688, was ordained priest 24th February 1689, and the following year was presented to the living of South Ormsby, Lincolnshire. In 1697 he removed to Epworth, Lincolnshire, where he died 25th April 1735. Among other works he was the author of Life of Christ (1693), Elegies on. Queen Mary and Archbishop Titlotson (1695), History of the Old and New Testaments in Verse (1704), Pious Communicant Rightly Prepared (1700), and Latin Commentary on the Book of Job (1733). After the battle of Blenheim he published (1705) a long poem on Marlborough, or the Fate of Europe, for which Marlborough made him chap lain of a regiment. He had nineteen children, of whom three sons, Samuel, John, and Charles, acquired eminence. SAMUEL (1690-1739) was born in London 10th February 1690, and educated at Westminster school, where he was