These were times of terrible upheaving, and, surrounded by such commotions, young Wesley quietly pursued his scholastic studies, first in the Charterhouse, London, and afterwards in Christ Church College, Oxford. In the year in which Wesley went to Oxford, the South Sea bubble burst, and, by its gambling, knavish madness, the nation was involved in the most disgraceful kind of bankruptcy. About the same period, Parliament were discussing bills to authorize bishops and county magistrates to summon Dissenting ministers to quarter sessions to subscribe to a declaration of the Christian faith; and, upon their refusal, to deprive them of the benefit of the Act of Toleration; while, oddly enough, at the same time, Walpole, the prime minister, was endeavouring to satisfy the squeamish demand to omit from the “affirmation” of the Quakers the words,—“In the presence of Almighty God”—a demand which Atterbury resisted to the uttermost, insisting that such an indulgence was not due to “a set of people who were hardly Christians.” Wesley was ordained a deacon by Bishop Potter, the son of a Yorkshire linen-draper; a man of great talent, and immense learning,—somewhat haughty and morose, and yet highly esteemed by a great portion of his contemporaries,—a high churchman, who maintained that episcopacy was of Divine institution, and yet one who cherished a friendly feeling towards the first Methodists, saying concerning them, “These gentlemen are irregular; but they have done good; and I pray God to bless them.” To the day of his death, Wesley held Potter in high esteem, calling him “a great and good man”; and, in a sermon written as late as the year 1787, mentioning an advice which the bishop had given him half a century before, and for which he had often thanked Almighty God, namely, “That if he wished to be extensively useful, he must not spend his time in contending for or against things of a disputable nature, but in testifying against notorious vice, and in promoting real, essential holiness.”[40]