“As these Methodists have occasioned no small stir in Oxford, so there has not been wanting a variety of conjectures about them. Some are apt to ascribe their gloomy and disconsolate way of life to want of money; thus being denied the enjoyment of those pleasures they chiefly desire, they are weighed down by an habitual sorrow; and it is certain that their founder took formerly no small liberty in indulging his appetites. Others tax their characters with hypocrisy, and suppose them to use religion only as a veil to vice; and, indeed, if we should give credit to the several tales related of them, their greatest friends would be ashamed to stand in their defence. Others judge that their way of life is owing to enthusiasm, madness, and superstitious scruples. Among their own party, they pass for religious persons, and men of extraordinary parts; but they have the misfortune to be taken by all, who have ever been in their company, for madmen and fools.” Such are some of the scandalous charges contained in this precious epistolary morsel,—we believe the first attack ever made upon the Methodists in the public prints. The entire letter is before us; but only a part of it is quoted,—first because there is a great amount of empty and ungrammatical verbiage unworthy of being admitted into what was, at that period, perhaps the most literary and respectable paper published—_Fogg’s Weekly Journal_; and secondly because there is one paragraph, which, despite its verbosity, is so loathsomely impure, that it would be a sin against both God and man to reproduce it. The letter was published in _Fogg’s Journal_, on December 9th, 1732; and, within two months after, it was answered in an octavo pamphlet of thirty pages, entitled, “The Oxford Methodists: Being some account of a society of young gentlemen in that city, so denominated; setting forth their rise, views, and designs; in a letter from a gent, near Oxford, to his friend in London. Printed for J. Roberts, price 6_d._” The second edition of this first defence of Methodism, published in 1738 “with very great alterations and improvements,” is that from which the following extracts are taken. The writer says that he knew nothing of the Methodists till his friend requested him to make inquiry concerning them. On doing this, he was first of all told that they were “miserable enthusiasts and zealots;” and he found that almost every one, with whom he conversed, had a prejudice against them; and yet, notwithstanding this, he was unable to learn that the least slur had been cast upon their moral behaviour, except that “they pretended to be more pious than their neighbours,” and that “they put a gloomy and melancholy face upon religion, and affected greater austerities and exemplariness than the doctrines of the gospel demanded.”