Page:The Works of the Reverend George Whitefield, M.A., late of Pembroke-College, Oxford, and Chaplain to the Rt. Hon. the Countess of Huntingdon (1771 Volume 2).djvu/62

 court, "That Mr. Whitefield had been travelling from common to common, making the people cry, and then picking their pockets under pretence of collecting money for the colony of Georgia; and knowing that Gloucestershire was a populous county, he at last came there; that he had now several curates, of which Mr. Adams was one, who in his preaching had found fault with the proceedings of the clergy, and had said, that if the people went to hear them, they would be damned." He added, that "there had lately been such mobbing in Staffordshire, that a regiment of soldiers was sent down to suppress them; insinuating, that the Methodists were the authors; that we had now another cause of a like nature depending in Wiltshire, and that we were not of that mild pacific spirit, as we pretended to be." This, and much more to the same purpose, though foreign to the matter in hand, pleased many of the auditors, who expressed their satisfaction, in hearing the Methodists in general, and me in particular, thus lashed, by frequent laughing. But our not only kept me quite easy, but enabled me to rejoice in being thus honoured for his great Name's sake. To prove what the defendants council had insinuated, they called up a young man, who was a brother to one of the defendants, and one of the mob. He swore point blank, "That Mr. Adams said, if people went to church, they would be damned, but if they would come to him, he would carry them to ." He swore also, "that the brook into which Mr. A was thrown, was no deeper than half up his legs." He said first, that there were but about ten of them that came to the house of Mr. A; and then he swore, that there were about threescore. He said, there was a bell, and that one of the defendants did ask Mr. A to come off the stairs, but that none of them went up to him: upon which Mr. A willingly obeyed, went with them briskly along the street, and as he would have represented it, put himself into the skin-pit and brook, and so came out again. He said also some other things; but through the whole, his evidence appeared so flagrantly false, that one of the council said, "It was enough to make his hair stand an end." The judge himself wished, "That the man had so much religion as to fear an oath." So he went down in disgrace. Their second evidence was an aged woman, mother of one of the de