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WES hearers in a genuine manner, the preaching of Wesley gave rise to those bodily excitements which so long continued to throw perplexity and discredit upon Methodism, such as it was under his guidance. Whitefield found a way into the human heart more direct than that which Wesley could open. Men, the most depraved and brutal, wept like children as they listened to the one; too often, in those early years, convulsions and epileptic seizures interrupted the discourses of the other; nevertheless, in the end, the better element prevailed; excesses gradually ceased, and Wesleyan methodism became a great religious institution. The two phases of this evangelic renovation, the calvinistic and the anti-calvinistic, have together and apart given Christianity anew to the Anglo-Saxon people in England and in America. Upon those christian principles which, to the human apprehension must ever wear two aspects, and which must demand two modes of expression, and which no logic has ever availed to weld into one, it was inevitable that minds of Wesley's order and of Whitefield's should fall into dissonance. The one was an astute and confident reasoner, the other was warm and instinct with spiritual life; but neither of them was in any sense a philosopher, nor had either of them been thoroughly trained or informed as a theologian. They differed, they wrangled, they parted, and each pursued his course thenceforward, unencumbered by an association which could never have been cordial or serviceable. Methodism, as ordered and ruled by Wesley alone, may take its date from the formal separation of its two originators in 1741. At this time chapels had been built in many of the large towns of England, and in these places of worship, which were all legally vested in John Wesley, religious meetings were constantly held; at first in other than canonical hours, but under the guidance either of episcopally ordained ministers or of gifted unordained men, whom Wesley had accepted as his "helps." The leaders of classes and the lay preachers carried out everywhere strictly the will and intentions of their revered chief, whose superior intelligence, as well as his acquirements and his status as a clergyman, gave him a position which his tact, his good sense, and his talent in effecting order, secured for him to the end of his course. His disinterestedness, and his abundant labours and evangelical zeal, carried him clear of imputations which the malignant attempted again and again to cast upon him. Wesley's ruling impulse was not ambition in any ordinary sense of the word. His aim was of the very highest order; but in pursuit of it he followed a course, and he adopted means, which could not fail to be misunderstood, and which might easily be misrepresented by those who themselves had no consciousness of motives that were above the level of their own sordid understandings. Such there then were among the occupants of high places in the church; it was no wonder, therefore, that a dissolute rabble often spent its brutality upon the preachers, especially when mob doings were connived at by clergymen and magistrates. These violences were continued in some districts through several years onward from the date above mentioned. Wesley himself sometimes barely escaped with his life; and very often the zealous men of inferior class who served with him in the gospel met, and they bore with christian courage, the most brutal assaults. But these outrages had no other lasting effect than that of confirming the faith of Wesley and his colleagues in their persuasion, that while he and his preachers were blessed in their endeavours to "turn multitudes from the error of their ways," he and they were doing right in the sight of God; and who now shall dare to doubt it? At the first these preachers, or most of them, abandoned their worldly means of existence without any distinct prospect of finding daily bread for themselves and their families in their new vocation. They went forth as the apostolic men had gone forth, strong in faith—a faith often put to the proof in the endurance of the severest privations, even to absolute destitution. How cold and frivolous, as well as wrong in the use of language, is Southey's designation of these evangelists as "the enthusiasts who offered themselves to the work." Why not say the same of the "sons of Zebedee?" But Wesley himself, when he accepted the offered services of these zealous men, did not misunderstand his own responsibility toward them. It was not long after the inauguration of the methodistic itinerant system, that he made the best provision in his power for the men and for their families; the itinerating preachers were sustained in one manner, the local preachers in another. Allowances, scanty indeed, were made for the support of the families of preachers, and a public school was founded at Kingswood, near Bristol, for the education of their sons. The system of universal taxation, set on foot from the first by Wesley, was found to be sufficient, taking the breadth of Methodism as its field, for defraying these and other ordinary charges. Donations and bequests from wealthy converts came in to meet charges which the stated revenues could not have provided for. The control of these funds, and the management of so many secular interests, compelled Wesley to call to his aid the more experienced of his colleagues; and in the year 1744 the two brothers, John and Charles, met four clergymen and four lay preachers to hold "a conference," and this annual assemblage has, from that time to this, continued to govern the society in a legislative and in an administrative sense. Matters of doctrine also were debated in this synod, matters of discipline were carried through to an issue, and matters of adjustment and adaptation also were definitely arranged. Methodism, in both its forms, was rapidly advancing throughout England. In Wales, Whitefield and Calvinism prevailed. In Scotland both these leaders were listened to, but neither of them succeeded in establishing there their innovations—unacceptable both as to doctrine and as to discipline to the people and their ministers. In Ireland, notwithstanding the violence of mobs and the mistakes of magistrates, it made its way, and has maintained its ground there. Thomas Walsh, a man of extraordinary zeal and unusual acquirements, was a principal agent in effecting these successes. In the vivacity of the Irish people, and their social warmth and generosity too, Methodism found an element with which it readily coalesced. If the limits of our space permitted, it would be well to do something more than merely mention the names of several remarkable men, who, either as Wesley's equals in social position or as his lay coadjutors, carried forward under his guidance the methodistic movement. Some of these men defended Wesley and Methodism with great ability by their pens. Of these writers John W. Fletcher, vicar of Madely, Shropshire, deserves the foremost place on account of his piety, as well as his intelligence; with great vivacity and spirit he assailed what he deemed the antinomianism of Calvinistic methodism. William Grimshaw, a Yorkshire clergyman, should also be named for his extraordinary zeal and fervent piety. Dr. Thomas Coke, an Oxford man, and an ordained clergyman, effected more than any other of Wesley's colleagues in carrying this religious movement far and wide in the West Indies, and in the North American colonies. This gentleman devoted his private fortune, as well as his entire energies, to the promotion of Wesley's plans, and in the view of the world occupied a place scarcely second to that of his chief It was co-ordinately with Dr. Coke that Wesley took reluctantly the course which the consolidation of the society demanded, of conferring ordination upon some of the preachers. Impelled by the inevitable course of events, he also at length sanctioned the administration of the sacraments in his chapels, and in fact constituted the body of preachers as a clergy, and the members of the society as a church. It was with extreme reluctance on his part that his people became avowedly separatists from the established church; and for a length of time he withstood the impatience of ministers and people, who clamoured for the recognition of what in fact they possessed—liberty to preach, liberty to worship and to act, otherwise than in subordination to the authorities of the established church. It was in 1784, about forty years after its rise, that Wesleyan methodism thus reached its maturity as a religious community, thoroughly organized, widely extended, and fitted for perpetuity by the legal constitution of the "conference" as a responsible body, and the proprietor of the chapels and other tangible goods of the society. Late in mid-life Wesley married a widow named Viselle, whose absurd behaviour towards him, after inflicting upon him some years of vexation, ended in conjugal separation; nor did he altogether escape obloquy in this and some other instances, in which the weakness of the man came to be painfully contrasted with the wisdom, and the genuine and exalted virtues of the religious chief The vigour of his constitution, the elasticity of his mind, the tranquillity of his temper, his unfailing hopefulness, together with his temperate habits, combined to exempt him from the usual infirmities of age, even to so late a period as his eighty-fourth year. Charles Wesley had died in 1788; John, the elder brother, scarcely remitting his wonted public labours, held on three years longer, and died—"fell asleep"— March 2, 1791, in the eighty-eighth year of his age, and the sixty-fifth year of his ministry.