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public still, as honest madmen at least, by a strange concurrence of providences, overturning all our preceding resolutions, we were hurried away to America. However, at our return from thence, we were resolved to retire out of the world at once; being sated with noise, hurry, and fatigue, and seeking nothing but to be at rest. Indeed for a long season, the greatest pleasure I had desired, on this side eternity was

Tacitum Sylvas inter reptare salubres, Quærentem quicquid dignum sapiente bonoque. And we had attained our desire. We wanted nothing. We looked for nothing more in this world, when we were dragged out again, by earnest importunity, to preach at one place and another, and another, and so carried on, we knew not how, without any design, but the general one, of saving souls, into a situation, which had it been named to us at first, would have appeared far worse than death.

19. What a surprising apparatus of Providence was here And what stronger demonstrations could have been given, of men's acting from a zeal for God, whether it were according to knowledge or not? What persons could, in the nature of things, have been (antecedently) less liable to exception, with regard to their moral character, at least, than those the All-wise God had employed? Indeed I cannot devise what manner of men could have been more unexceptionable on all accounts. Had God endued us with greater natural or acquired abilities, that very thing might have been turned into an objection. Had we been remarkably defective, it would have been matter of objection on the other hand. Had we been Dissenters of any kind, or even Low-Church men, (so called,) it would have been a great stumbling-block in the way of those who are zealous for the Church. And yet had we continued in the impetuosity of our High-Church zeal, neither should we have been willing to converse with Dissenters, nor they to receive any good at our hands. Some objections were kept out of the way, by our known contempt of money and preferment: and others, by that rigorous strictness of life, which we exacted, not of others, but ourselves only. Insomuch, that twelve or fourteen years ago, the censure of one who had harrowly observed us, (me, in particular,) went no farther than this:

"Does JOHN beyond his strength persist to go,
To his frail carcase literally foe?
Careless of health, as if in haste to die,
And lavish time to insure eternity !'

So that upon the whole, I see not what God could have done more in this respect which he hath not done. Or what Instruments he could have employed in such a work, who would have been less liable to exception.

20. Neither can I conceive how it was possible to do that work, the doing of which, we are still under the strongest conviction, is bound upon us at the peril of our own souls, in a less exceptionable manner. We have, by the grace of God, behaved not only with meekness, but with all tenderness towards all men; with all the tenderness which we conceived it was possible to use without betraying their souls. And from the very first, it has been our special care, to deal tenderly with our brethren of the Clergy. We have not willingly provoked them at any time; neither any single Clergyman. We have not sought occasion to publish their faults; we have not used a thousand occasions that offered. When we were constrained to speak something, we spake as little as we believed we could, without offending God: and that little, though in plain and strong words, yet as mildly and lovingly as we were able. And in the same course we have steadily persevered (as well as in earnestly advising others to tread in our steps) even though we saw that with regard to them, by all this we profited nothing; though we knew we were still continually represented as implacable enemies to the Clergy, as railers against them, as slanderers of them, as seeking all opportunities to blacken and asperse them. When a Clergyman himself has vehemently accused me of doing this, I bless God, he could not provoke me to do it. I still kept my VOL. XII.

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mouth as it were with a bridle, and committed my cause to a higher Hand.

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21. The truth is, you impute that hatred to us, which is in your own breasts. (I speak not this of all the Clergy; God forbid! But let it fall on whom it concerns.) You, it is certain, have shewn the utmost hatred to us, and in every possible way: unless you were actually to beat us (of which also we are not without precedent) or to shoot us through the head. And if you could prevail upon others to do this, I suppose you would think you did God service. I do not speak without ground. I have heard with my own ears such sermons (in Staffordshire particularly) that I should not have wondered if as soon as we came out of the Church, the people had stoned me with stones. And it was a natural consequence of what that poor Minister had lately heard, at the Bishop's Visitation; as it was one great cause of the miserable riots and outrages which soon followed.

It is this, my brethren, it is your own preaching, and not ours, which sets the people against you. The very same persons, who are diverted with those sermons, cannot but despise you for them in their hearts: even those who on your authority believe most of the assertions which you advance. What then must they think of you, who know the greatest part of what you assert to be utterly false? They may pity and pray for you; but they can esteem you no other, than false witnesses against God and your brethren.

22. "But what need is there (say even some of a milder spirit) of this preaching in fields and streets? Are there not Churches enough to preach in?" No, my friend, there are not; not for us to preach in. You forget: we are not suffered to preach there; else we should prefer them to any places whatever. "Well, there are Ministers enough without you." Ministers enough, and Churches enough: for what? To reclaim all the sinners within the four seas? If there were, they would all be reclaimed. But they are not reclaimed. Therefore it is evident, there are not Churches enough. And one plain reason why, notwithstanding all these Churches, they are no nearer being reclaimed is this: they never come into a Church; perhaps not once in a twelve-month, perhaps not for many years together. Will you say (as I have known some tenderhearted Christians) "then it is their own fault; let them die and be damned." I grant it is their own fault. And so it was my fault and yours, when we went astray, like sheep that were lost. Yet the Shepherd of Souls sought after us, and went after us into the wilderness. And "oughtest not thou to have compassion on thy fellow servants, as he had pity on thee?" Ought not we also to seek, as far as in us lies, and to save that which is lost ?

Behold the amazing love of God to the outcasts of men! His tender condescension to their folly! They would regard nothing done in the usual way. All this was lost upon them. The ordinary preaching of the word of God, they would not even deign to hear. So the devil made sure of these careless ones. For who should pluck them out of his hand? Then God was moved to jealousy, and went out of the usual way to save the souls which he had made. Then over and above what was ordinarily spoken in his Name, in all the houses of God in the land, he commanded a voice to cry in the wilderness, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent ye, and believe the gospel."/

23. Consider coolly, if it was not highly expedient, that something of this kind should be? How expedient, were it only on the account of those poor sinners against their own souls, who (to all human appearance) were utterly inaccessible every other way! And what numbers of these are still to be found, even in or near our most populous cities! What multitudes of them were some years since, both in Kingswood, and the Fells about Newcastle! Who, week after week, spent the Lord's day, either in the ale-houses, or in idle diversions, and never troubled themselves about going to Church, or to any public worship at all! Now would you really have desired that these poor wretches should have sinned on, till they dropped into hell? Surely you would not. But by what other means was it possible they should have been plucked out of the fire? Had the Minister of the parish preached like an angel, it had profited them nothing; for they heard him not. But when one came and said, "Yonder is a man preaching on the top of the mountain," they ran in droves to hear what he would say. And God spoke to their hearts. It is hard to conceive any thing else which could have reached them. Had it not been for Field-preaching, the uncommonness of which was the very circumstance that recommended it, they must have run on in the error of their way, and perished in their blood.

24. But suppose Field-preaching to be, in a case of this kind, ever so expedient, or even necessary, yet who will contest with us for this province ?-May we not enjoy this quiet and unmolested? Unmolested, I mean by any competitors.-For who is there among you, brethren, that is willing (examine your own hearts) even to save souls from death at this price? Would not you let a thousand souls perish, rather than you would be the instrument of rescuing them thus? I do not speak now with regard to conscience, but to the inconveniences that must accompany it. Can you sustain them, if you would? Can you bear the summer sun to beat upon your naked head? Can you suffer the wintry rain or wind, from whatever quarter it blows? Are you able to stand in the open air, without any covering or defence, when God casteth abroad his snow like wool, or scattereth his hoar-frost like ashes? And yet these are some of the smallest inconveniences which accompany Field-preaching. For beyond all these, are the contradiction of sinners, the scoffs both of the great vulgar and the small; contempt and reproach of every kind; often more than verbal affronts, stupid, brutal violence, sometimes to the hazard of health, or limbs, or life. Brethren, do you envy us this honour? What I pray, would buy you to be a Field-Preacher? Or what, think you, could induce any man of common sense, to continue therein one year,

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