We now bid adieu to Oxford. We have seen Methodism at its fountain-head; we must hereafter trace it, in its streams of blessing, all the wide world over. The principles and practices of Oxford Methodism may easily be gathered from the present chapter. Nothing has been omitted, nothing exaggerated, and nothing altered. The system was cradled in a storm, and more than once, even at Oxford, was in danger of perishing. At least twice, during Wesley’s absence, it was all but wrecked; and, from names casually mentioned, we incline to think its permanently established converts were much less numerous than its timid, time serving backsliders. At all events, but for the ministry of the two Wesleys, of Whitefield, Ingham, Hervey, and Gambold, the memory of Oxford Methodism might, without public loss, have been buried in oblivion. As it is, no English historian can ignore it. In its results it is one of the greatest facts in church annals. At Oxford, it was far from perfect. It was misty, austere, gloomy, and forbidding; but it was intensely sincere, earnest, and self denying. Its principles and its aims may substantially be summed up in the words of Wesley himself, written forty years afterwards:— “Two young men, without a name, without friends, without either power or fortune, set out from college with principles totally different from those of the common people, to oppose all the world, learned and unlearned; and to combat popular prejudices of every kind. Their first principle directly attacked all the wickedness; their second, all the bigotry in the world. Thus they attempted a reformation, not of opinions (feathers, trifles not worth naming), but of men’s tempers and lives; of vice in every kind; of everything contrary to justice, mercy, or truth. And for this it was, that they carried their lives in their hands; and that both the great vulgar and the small looked upon them as mad dogs, and treated them as such.”[137] Let us follow them. CHAPTER IV. _MISSION TO GEORGIA. 1735‒””””1737._ [Sidenote: 1735 Age 32] WESLEY’S father died on the 25th of April, 1735. Immediately after that event, the chief of the Oxford Methodists were widely scattered: Gambold was a clergyman at Stanton-Harcourt; Ingham became a curate in Essex; Whitefield, though not ordained, went on an evangelistic tour to Gloucester, Bristol, and other places;[138] Broughton was chaplain at the Tower; and the two Wesleys repaired to the metropolis, where they were the guests of James Hutton, or rather of James Hutton’s father, in Westminster.