At this time (about 1742) Wesley and his disciples attained that degree of importance, which qualified them to become objects of persecution. It was among the lower classes that they had thrown the torch of fanaticism, and it was from the same that the outrages which now assailed them proceeded. On two or three occasions the person of the master himself was in some danger from popular fury; and it may perhaps have been preserved by his singular presence of mind, and the awe which he knew how to inspire into his fellow creatures. But these violent eruptions of indignation, as they were founded on no semblance of reason, and opposed by the civil authorities, were partial and of short duration; and as the rumours of them were much exaggerated at the time, their influence, as far as they had any, was probably favorable to the progress of methodism. Some calumnies that were raised against Wesley from more respectable quarters, touching his tendency to papacy and his disaffection to the reigning dynasty, arising from entire misunderstanding or pure malevolence, were immediately repelled, and speedily silenced and forgotten. In the year 1744 Wesley invited his brother Charles, four other clergymen who co-operated with him, and four of his lay-preachers to a _Conference_: this was the origin of the assembly or council, which was afterwards held annually, and became the governing body, for the regulation of the general affairs of the society. Four years subsequently, a school was opened at Kingswood, for the education chiefly of the sons of the preachers. In the extreme severity of some of the rules which he imposed on this establishment, Wesley seems to have been guided by an ambitious design to set apart his own people from the rest of the community, rather than by the common principles of education, or the common feelings of nature. And so jealous was he of any other influence being exerted on his children, that they were not allowed to be absent from the school, not even for a day, from their first admission till their final removal from it. Notwithstanding however the peculiarity and, as he thought, the purity of his system, he met with many difficulties and reverses, in his first attempts to place it on a permanent foundation. We may pass over the circumstances of his unfortunate marriage, which ended, after a few months of discord and vexation, in a hasty but final separation. His wife, after proving herself his foulest slanderer and bitterest enemy, presently deserted him. “Non eam reliqui (says Wesley)—non dimisi—non revocabo.” “I have not left her—I have not put her away—I will not recall her.” The same calmness of temper and perfect self-possession, which so remarkably distinguished him in his public proceedings, seem not to have abandoned him even in the more pressing severity of his domestic trials.