Compared with former years, this was a period of peace. It is true, that persecution still dogged the steps of the poor Methodists; but it was not so violent as in days gone past. In Ireland, Whitefield was all but murdered by a mob of Irish papists. At Norwood, near London, a gang of godless rioters surrounded the house of Samuel Cole, and, because the Methodists held their meetings in it, threatened to burn it to the ground; for which threat Edward Frost, the leader of the rioters, was sent to Newgate prison.[319] Pamphleteers, also, were not idle; but almost all were ashamed to affix their names to their paltry publications. One of these anonymous attacks was entitled, “An Expostulatory Letter to the Rev. Mr. Wesley.” Another was “A Short Examen of Mr. John Wesley’s System.” A third, the most enigmatical, was: “Methodism Displayed and Enthusiasm Detected; intended as an antidote against, and a preservative from, the delusive principles and unscriptural doctrines of a modern _sett_ of seducing preachers, and as a defence of our regular and orthodox clergy, from their unjust reflections.” 8vo, 36 pages. The reader is told, that the poor have become a prey to “ignorant, enthusiastic preachers”; and, that it is because of this, that “novel doctrines, extravagant follies, and destructive errors” are now so prevalent. Virtue was reclining her fainting head; morality, except in name, was almost banished; and vice, like a torrent, was deluging the land. While the infidel, on the one hand, was proud, presumptuous, and God-resisting; the enthusiast, on the other, was credulous, unscriptural, and unmeaning, deceiving himself and others by his mere pretences to inspiration, and all for the sake of making gain by his godliness. Methodist preachers sing “sweet syren songs”; they are “new doctors and modern teachers tickling the ears, pleasing the pride, and flattering the vanity of the human mind”; they are “quacks in divinity,” using “unedifying jargon, unscriptural harangues, and false encomiums on the virtue and dignity of man”; they are “flatterers of human nature, sleek divines, downy doctors, velvet mouthed preachers, miserable daubers, and soul deceivers.” It is a strange fact, that the author of this pamphlet avows his firm belief in nearly all the doctrines that specially characterized Wesley’s ministry; and yet, these are some of the spicy appellatives applied to Methodist preachers. It is difficult to divine the writer’s object. At the beginning, he seems to belabour the poor Methodists; at the end, he defends and praises them.