“They design separation. They are already forbidden all the pulpits in London; and to preach in that diocese is actual schism. In all likelihood, it will come to the same all over England, if the bishops have courage enough. They leave off the liturgy in the fields; and though Mr. Whitefield expresses his value for it, he never once read it to his tatterdemalions on a common. Their societies are sufficient to dissolve all other societies but their own. Will any man of common sense, or spirit, suffer any domestic to be in a band, engaged to relate to five or to ten people everything, without reserve, that concerns the person’s conscience, howmuchsoever it may concern the family? Ought any married persons to be there, unless husband and wife be there together? This is literally putting asunder whom God hath joined together. “As I told Jack, I am not afraid the Church should excommunicate him (discipline is at too low an ebb), but, that he should excommunicate the Church. It is pretty near it. Holiness and good works are not so much as _conditions_ of our acceptance with God. Lovefeasts are introduced, and extemporary prayers, and expositions of Scripture, which last are enough to bring in all confusion; nor is it likely they will want any miracles to support them. He only who ruleth the madness of the people can stop them from being a formed sect. Ecclesiastical censures have lost their terrors; thank fanaticism on the one hand, and atheism on the other. To talk of persecution from thence is mere insult. It is— “To call the bishop, Grey-beard Goff, And make his power as mere a scoff As Dagon, when his hands were off.”[338] Sixteen nights after writing the above, Samuel Wesley went to bed as well as usual. At three next morning, he was seized with illness, and, four hours afterwards, expired. John Wesley, at the time, was in London, and Charles in Bristol; but, as soon as possible, they hastened to Tiverton, where they rejoiced to hear that, several days before he went hence, God had given to their brother a calm and full assurance of his interest in Christ. In reviewing the events of the year 1739, it only remains to notice Wesley’s publications. These were the following:— 1. “An Abstract of the Life and Death of Mr. Thomas Halyburton. With recommendatory Epistle by George Whitefield, and Preface by John Wesley.” Oswald: London. 1739. Halyburton was a Scotchman, and was born in 1674. At the age of twenty-six, he became a Presbyterian minister. Ten years afterwards, he was appointed Professor of Divinity in the college of St. Andrews; but almost immediately was seized with pleurisy, and died in the thirty-seventh year of his age.