Then it was reported that I had applied for a place in the ministry among the Calvinists, though I had up to that time professed views at variance with Calvinism, and had even objected to be a hired minister. When I called for the names of the parties to whom I had made the offer, and engaged to give a large reward if my slanderers would produce them, they found it was another Joseph that had applied for the place, and not Joseph Barker. But the death of one slander seemed to be the birth of two or three fresh ones. And sometimes opposite slanders sprang up together. "If he had been a good man," said one, "he would have stopped in the Connexion quietly, and waited for reform!" "If he had been an honest man," said another, "he would have left the Connexion long ago, and not remained in a community that he thought in error." I had been "too hasty" for one, and "too slow" for another. One wrote to assure me that I should die a violent death in less than eighteen months. Another said he foresaw me lying on my death-bed, with Satan sitting on my breast, ready to carry away my soul to eternal torments. One sent me a number of my pamphlets blotted and torn, packed up with a piece of wood, for the carriage of which I was charged from four to five shillings. Another sent me a number of my publications defaced in another way, with offensive enclosures that do not admit of description. At one time it was reported that I had died suddenly at Leeds. "After lecturing there one night," the story said, "a certain person got upon the platform to oppose me, and I was so frightened, that I first turned pale, then fainted, and in two hours breathed my last." I was preaching at Penrith, in Cumberland, some seventy or eighty miles away, at the time I was said to have died at Leeds. Some weeks later it was rumored that I had destroyed myself at Otley. The maker of the tale in this case had been very particular, and given his story the appearance of great truthfulness. He said I had gone to lecture at Otley, and on my arrival there, was found to be more than usually thoughtful and depressed. I lectured with my usual freedom and power, but seemed oppressed with some mysterious sorrow. After the lecture, instead of going along with my host, I unaccountably disappeared, and though my friends sought for me and inquired for me all about the town, I was nowhere to be found. In the morning, as the son of my host was seeking for some cows in a wood on the side of the Chevin, he found me dead and cold, with my throat cut, and the razor in my hand with which I had done the deadly deed. The news soon spread, and my body was taken back to Otley, where an inquest was held. The verdict was that I had died by my own hand, in a fit of temporary insanity.