some leading men of that party, he was arrested and sent to Lincoln castle*, according to a promise which they made him before the election. The debt was thirty pounds. During his confinement, his cows were stabbed by some of his enemies at Epworth, the genuine descendants of the ancient Gervii, who, as they did when they burnt Reading's house a few years before, endeavoured to cast the blame on other causes. First, they spread a report that his boar had been the author of the mischief, then that the cattle had run against a scythe. We have no account of his liberation from Lincoln castle, except that he was at home with his family about Christmas.

Although the small living of Wroot had been added to his preferment, he still continued to feel the pressure of the "res angusta domi." Mrs. Wesley says, in a letter to her son John, written in the year 1731, that his uncle Matthew, having been over to see them at Epworth, "was strangely scandalized at the poverty of our furniture, and much more at the meanness of the children's habit. He wondered what his brother had done with his income, for it was visible he had not spent it in furnishing his house, or clothing his family." And immediately after this visit, Mr. Matthew Wesley wrote his brother a very severe letter, accusing him of bad economy, and of not making provision for his large family.

This letter the Rector of Epworth answers in a sort of serio-jocose style, and endeavours to vindicate his conduct as follows.

John O. Styles' apology against the imputation of his ill husbandry.

The sum of the libel, meaning his brother's letter, may be reduced to the following assertions.

First, John O. Styles is worse than an infidel, and therefore can never go to heaven. Second, he aims at proving this, because he provides not for his own house; as notorious instances of which he adds, in the third place, that he had a numerous offspring; and has had a long time a plentiful estate, and great and numerous benefactors, but yet has made no provisions

for

*At the suit of Mr. Pindar.

for those of his own house; which he thinks, in the last place, is a black account, let the cause be folly or vanity.

Answer. If God has blessed him with a numerous offspring, he has no reason to be ashamed of them, nor they of him, unless perhaps one of them; and if he had had but that single one, it might have proved no honour or support to his name and family. Neither does his conscience accuse him that "he has made no provision for those of his own home." But has he none; nay not above one, two, or three to whom he has, and some of them at very considerable expences, given the best education which England could afford; by God's blessing on which they live honourably and comfortably in the world. Some of them have already been a considerable help to others, as well as to himself; and he has no reason to doubt the same of the rest, as soon as God shall enable them to do it; and there are many gentlemen's families in England who by the same methods provide for their younger children. Neither is he ashamed of claiming some merit in his having been so happy in breeding them up in his own principles and practices: not only the priests of his family, but all the rest, to a steady opposition and confederacy against all such as are avowed and declared enemies to God and his clergy, or who deny and disbelieve any articles of natural or revealed religion; as well as to such as are open or secret friends to the great rebellion, or any such principles as do but squint towards the same practices; so that he hopes they are all sound and staunch churchmen. And for inviolable passive obedience, from which if any of them should be so wicked as to degenerate, he cannot tell whether he could prevail upon himself to give them his blessing; though at the same time he almost equally abhors all servile submission to the greatest and most over-grown tool of state, whose avowed design is to aggrandise his Prince at the expence and liberties of his free-born subjects. Thus much for John O. Styles' ecclesiastical and political creed; and, as he hopes, for those of his family. And as his adversary adds, that "at his exit they could have nothing in view but distress; and that it is a black account, let the cause be folly or vanity." John O. Styles answered, he has not the least doubt of God's provision for his family after his decease, if they continue to live

in the way of righteousness, as well as for himself while he has been living. As for his folly, he owns he can hardly demur to the charge; for he fairly acknowledges he never was and never will be like the children of this world, who are accounted wise in their generations,-in doting upon this world, courting this world, and regarding nothing else; not that but all his life he has laboured truly, both with his hands, head, and heart, to provide things honest in the sight of all men, to get his own living, and that of those who have been dependents on him.

As for his vanity, he challenges an instance to be given of any extravagance in any single branch of his expences, through the whole course of his life, either in dress, diet, horses, or recreation, or diversion either in himself or family.

Now if these, which are the main objections are wiped off, what becomes of the black account, or of the worse than infidelity which this Severus frater et avunculus puerorum has, in the plentitude of his power (as he takes upon himself to have the full power of the keys), to exclude those who for want of equal illumination, or equal estates, think or act differently from himself, out of the kingdom of heaven.

As for the plentiful estate, and great and generous benefactors which he likewise mentions,-as to the latter of them, the person accused answered that he could never acknowledge as he ought the goodness of God, and of his generous benefactors on that occasion; but, hopes he may add, that he had never tasted so much of their kindness if they had not believed him to be an honest man.

Thus much John O. Styles says in general, but adds, as to particular instances, he should only add a black balance; and leaves it to any after his death, if they should think it worth while, to cast it up somewhat according to common equity, and then they would be more proper judges whether he deserved those imputations which are now thrown upon him.

Imprimis. When he first walked to Oxford, he had in cash £2. 5s.

He lived there until he took his bachelor's degree, without any preferment or assistance, except one crown, 5s.

By

By God's blessing on his own industry, he brought to London £10. 15s. When he came to London, he got deacon's orders, and a cure, for which he had £28 for one year. In which year, for his board, ordination, and habit, he was indebted £30, which he afterwards paid.

Then he went to sea, where he had, for one year, £70, not paid until two years after his return.

He then got a curacy of £30 per annum, for two years, and by his own industry made it £60 per annum,—£120.

He married and had a son, and he and his wife and child boarded for some years in or near London, without running into debt.

He had then a living given him in the country, worth £50 per annum, where he had five children more; in which time, and while he lived in London, he wrote a book, which he dedicated to Queen Mary, who for that reason gave him a living in the country, valued at £200 per annum; where he remained for nearly forty years, and wherein his numerous offspring amounted with the former to eighteen or nineteen children.

Half of his parsonage house was first burnt, which he rebuilt.-Sometime after the whole was burnt to the ground, which he rebuilt from the foundations; and it cost him above £400, besides the furniture, none of which was saved, and he was forced to renew it.

About ten years since he got a little living adjoining to his former, the profits of which very little more than defrayed the expences of serving it, and sometimes hardly so much, his whole tithe having been in a manner swept away by inundations for which the parishioners had a brief, though he thought it not decent for himself to be joined with them in it.

For the greater part of the last ten years he has been closely employed in composing a large book, whereby he hoped he might have done some benefit to the world, and in some measure amended his own fortunes. By sticking so close to this, he has broke a pretty strong constitution, and fallen into the palsy and gout. Besides this, he has had sickness in his family for most of the years since he has married.

His greater living seldom cleared above five score pounds per anuum, out

of

of which he allowed £20 per annum to a person who married one of his daughters. Could we on the whole fix the balance, it would easily appear whether he had been an ill husband, or careless and idle, and taken no care of his family.

He can struggle with the world, but not with Providence: nor can he resist sickness, fires, and inundations.

He died on the 25th of April, 1735. On the day of his funeral, a Mrs. Knight, of Low Melwood, seized all his cattle for rent of a piece of land. The amount of the debt was £15, which conduct, Dr. Adam Clarke, in his Memoirs of the Wesley Family, justly designates as most unfeeling, abominable, and inhuman*. Mr. Wesley was buried in Epworth churchyard, under a plain grit tombstone, supported by brick work. The following character is given of him by the author to whom I have just alluded.

"He was earnest, conscientious, and indefatigable in his search after truth. He thought deeply on every subject which was either to form an article in his creed or a principle for his conduct; and having formed these, he boldly maintained them, conscious of his own integrity, and zealous for what he conceived to be the orthodox faith. His orthodoxy was pure and solid,—his religious conduct strictly correct in all respects, his piety towards God ardent, his loyalty to his king unsullied,—and his love to his fellow creatures strong and unconfined. Though of High Church principles and High Church politics, yet he would separate the man from the opinions he held, and the party he had espoused; and, when he found him in distress, knew him only as a man and a brother. He was a rigid disciplinarian both in his church and in his family. He knew all his parishioners; he visited them from house to house; he sifted their creed; and permitted none to be corrupt in their opinions or their practices, without instruction or reproof.

"These

"I record," says he "this action, that I may hand down the name of this Mrs. Knight with deserved infamy, while my page shall last.

"And time her blacker name shall blur with blackest ink."

Mr. Wesley's Family, p. 221.

Dr. Clarke might have saved himself the trouble. Time had already done exactly as he wished; for this Mrs. Knight has always been distinguished by the soubriquet of the black b―t.