2. Two separate letters to the Rev. Dr. Free,[348] an everlasting pamphleteer, of the most scurrilous genus. Free was a native of Oxford, and was now forty-seven years of age, and vicar of East Coker, in the county of Somerset; also Thursday lecturer of St. Mary-Hill, London, and lecturer at Newington, Surrey. He lived long enough to be senior doctor of the Oxford university, and died in distress and poverty in 1791.[349] His publications against the Methodists were: 1. “A Display of the Bad Principles of the Methodists,” 1758. 2. “Rules for the Discovery of False Prophets; or, the dangerous impositions of the people called Methodists, detected at the bar of Scripture and reason. A sermon preached before the university at St. Mary’s, in Oxford, on Whit Sunday, 1758.” 3. His “Edition of the Rev. Mr. Wesley’s Penny Letter.” 4. His “Edition of Mr. Wesley’s Second Letter.” 5. His “Speech to the London Clergy, at Sion College.” All these were published during the years 1758 and 1759. The following are spicy specimens of the style adopted by this clerical reviler. There is, says he, “in Mr. Wesley’s second letter, such a strange mixture of sanctity and prevarication, such praying, sneering, canting, and recanting, expunging and forging, that I no longer feel bound to give him a civil answer.” Again: “Wesley raves, and rants, and domineers, and scolds.” He is, in the estimation of this Oxford doctor, a perfect “weathercock.” He has “the itch of fame and popularity; and the romantic project of being the founder of a sect has prompted him to go a _madding_ himself wherever he could find people likeminded.” For their benefit, he has “extracted near fourteen volumes, all quintessences, from the fanaticism of the Germans, the English, and other nations.” He “prints and distributes gratis his lying, and blasphemous, and delusive pamphlets, to the remotest corners of the land.” Free informs his readers, that the name of Methodists was first given to Wesley and his friends, at Oxford, because they affected to be so “uncommonly methodical, as to keep a diary of the most trivial actions of their lives,—such as, how many dishes of tea they drank, and how many slices of bread and butter they eat, how many country dances they called for at their dancing club, and how many pounds of a leg of mutton they might devour after practising a fast.” No wonder that we find the following entries in Wesley’s Journal for 1758. “May 2.—I wrote a short answer to Dr. Free’s weak, bitter, scurrilous invective against the people called Methodists. But I doubt whether I shall meddle with him any more: he is too dirty a writer for me to touch.” Again: “August 24.—I wrote a second letter to Dr. Free, the warmest opponent I have had for many years. I leave him now to laugh, and scold, and witticise, and call names, just as he pleases; for I have done.” 1759. [Sidenote: 1759 Age 56]