These were triumphs in the midst of troubles; for, besides the anxiety and pain arising out of the differences with Whitefield and the Moravians, Wesley, in 1741, had to encounter no inconsiderable amount of unprincipled persecution. At Deptford, while he was preaching, “many poor wretches were got together, utterly devoid both of common sense and common decency, who cried aloud, as if just come from ‘among the tombs.’” In London, on Shrove Tuesday, “many men of the baser sort” mixed themselves with the female part of his congregation, and behaved with great indecency. “A constable commanded them to keep the peace, in answer to which they knocked him down.” In Long Lane, while Wesley was preaching, the mob pelted him with stones, one of great size passing close past his head. In Marylebone fields, in the midst of his sermon, out of doors, missiles fell thick and fast on every side. In Charles Square, Hoxton, the rabble brought an ox which they endeavoured to drive through the congregation. A man, who happened to be a Dissenting minister, after hearing him preach at Chelsea, asked, “_Quid est tibi nomen?_” and, on Wesley not answering his impertinence, the pedantic puppy turned in triumph to his friends, and said, “Ah! I told you he did not understand Latin.” Among other slanders concerning him, it was currently reported that he had paid a fine of £20, for selling Geneva gin; that he kept in his house two popish priests; that he had received large remittances from Spain, in order to make a party among the poor; and that, as soon as the Spaniards landed, he was to join them with twenty thousand men. It was also rumoured, that, in Bristol, he had hanged himself, and had been cut down just in time to save his life. The _Scots Magazine_, for August, had a scurrilous article to the following effect. Above thirty Methodists had been in Bedlam, and six were there at present. Wesley had set up, at his Moorfields meeting-house, a number of spinning wheels, where girls who had absconded from their homes, and servants who had been discharged for neglecting their master’s business, were set to work, and were allowed sixpence daily, the overplus of their earnings going into Wesley’s pocket. Boys and girls mixed together, and were taught to call each other brother and sister in the Lord. They had to greet each other with a holy kiss, and to show the utmost affection and fondness, in imitation of the primitive Christians. In the rooms adjoining the spinning wheels were several beds, and when persons, in the Foundery congregation, fell into fits, either pretended or real, they were carried out and laid upon these beds, that Wesley might pray the evil spirits out of them, and the good spirit into them, and thus convert them.