The Methodist movement, however, was begun not by Wesley, but by his brother Charles. When the latter was elected to Christ Church, in 1726, he was a sprightly, rollicking young fellow, with more genius than grace; John spoke to him about religion, but Charles answered, “What, would you have me to be a saint all at once!” This was an unfavourable beginning; but, while John was serving as his father’s curate at Epworth and at Wroote, Charles began to attend the weekly sacrament, and induced two or three other students to attend with him. On John’s return from Lincolnshire, he heartily united with his brother and his friends. The regularity of their behaviour led a young collegian to call them Methodists; and “as the name,” says Wesley, “was new and quaint, it clave to them immediately, and, from that time, all that had any connection with them were thus distinguished.”[70] The name was not new. Wesley says “it was given in allusion to an ancient sect of physicians, of the time of the Emperor Nero, who taught that almost all diseases might be cured by a specific _method_ of diet and exercise.”[71] This might be so, and yet it is a curious fact that the name was in use in England long before it was applied to Wesley and his friends. In 1693 a pamphlet was published with the title, “A War among the Angels of the Churches: wherein is shewed the Principles of the New Methodists in the great point of Justification. By a Country Professor of Jesus Christ.” And even as early as 1639, in a sermon preached at Lambeth the following perfumed eloquence occurs:—“Where are now our Anabaptists, and plain pack-staff Methodists, who esteem all flowers of rhetoric in sermons no better than stinking weeds, and all elegance of speech no better than profane spells?” The two young gentlemen who, with Wesley and his brother Charles, were first called Methodists, were Robert Kirkham, already mentioned on a previous page, and William Morgan.[72] To these were subsequently added, George Whitefield, John Clayton, J. Broughton, Benjamin Ingham, James Hervey, John Whitelamb, Westley Hall, John Gambold, Charles Kinchin, William Smith, and Messrs. Salmon, Wogan, Boyce, Atkinson, and others.[73] What shall we say of these Oxford Methodists? William Morgan’s career was brief and painful; he was the first Methodist who passed the pearly gates of the celestial city. Charles Kinchin, a lovely character, soon followed him. Charles Wesley, in his incomparable hymns, left behind him one of the noblest legacies that an uninspired man ever bequeathed to the Christian church. George Whitefield was the prince of preachers—a glorious emblem of the apocalyptic angel flying through the midst of heaven with the good tidings of great joy unto all people. And James Hervey will be loved and honoured as long as there are men to appreciate the highest order of Christian piety and the most mellifluent compositions in the English language.