The life and times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., founder of the Methodists. Vol. 2 (of 3)Tyerman, L. (Luke)
History
The life and times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., founder of the Methodists. Vol. 2 (of 3)
Tyerman, L. (Luke)
Methodism; Wesley, John, 1703-1791
To add to his anxieties, Kingswood school was now in trouble. Three
years before, it had been begun with twenty-eight scholars, six
masters, and six servants. Wesley had written grammars of the English,
French, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin languages, and had printed many other
books for the use of the pupils. Soon, however, the maid servants began
to quarrel. The masters, also, failed to answer Wesley’s expectations.
One of them was rough and disobliging; another was honest and diligent,
but his person and his manner made him contemptible; a third was grave
and weighty in his behaviour, but the children were set against him;
and a fourth, instead of restraining the boys from play, played with
them. Four or five of the larger boys grew wicked, and the others
became “wilder and wilder, till all their religious impressions were
worn off.” The result of the whole was,—the establishment on Kingswood
Hill was now, at the end of three years, reduced to two masters, two
servants, and eleven children; but Wesley writes: “I believe all in the
house are, at length, of one mind; and trust God will bless us in the
latter end, more than in the beginning.”
Another trouble, awaiting Wesley, on his return from the north of
England, was the scandal occasioned by the sin of James Wheatley.
This unhappy man had been a Methodist itinerant preacher since the
year 1742. At the beginning of his public labours, he was diligent
and useful; but, while in Ireland, he unfortunately became acquainted
with certain Moravians of the antinomian creed, and practically, at
least, embraced their principles. Wesley says, that Wheatley was
never “_clear_ in the faith, and perhaps not sound. According to his
understanding was his preaching,—an unconnected rhapsody of unmeaning
words, like Sir John Suckling’s
‘Verses, smooth and soft as cream,
In which was neither depth nor stream.’”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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