So far, so good. Having mended the bad manners of the Norwich congregation, his next effort was to mend the society. He found, that there were about five hundred members; but a hundred and fifty of those did not even pretend to meet in class at all; and the rest were very far from being what they ought to be. “I told them,” says he, “in plain terms, that they were the most ignorant, self conceited, self willed, fickle, untractable, disorderly, disjointed society, that I knew in the three kingdoms. And God applied it to their hearts; so that many were profited; but I do not find that one was offended.” Such was Wesley’s method of mending or ending James Wheatley’s “lambs” at Norwich. Having spent eleven days at Norwich, Wesley returned to London, preaching at Colchester on his way, where, for the first time, since he was six years old, he had a sleepless night. “But,” he writes, “it is all one: God is able to give strength, either with sleep or without it. I rose at my usual time, and preached at five, without any faintness or drowsiness.” At the commencement of his ministry, Wesley and his Oxford friends seemed ostracised. All the clergy shunned them, and not a few railed against, and censured them. Now it began to be otherwise: Venn, Romaine, Madan, Jones, Walker, Milner, Grimshaw, Berridge, Hicks, and others were zealously and successfully preaching their grand old doctrine of justification by faith _only_; and every year added to the number of their clerical adherents. During his northern journey, in 1759, Wesley formed a friendship with two who deserve a notice. One of them was the Rev. Thomas Goodday, of Sunderland, in whose church, at Monkwearmouth, Wesley preached more than once in after years. The following extract from one of Mr. Goodday’s letters to Wesley will afford a glimpse of his religious character.[361] “MONKWEARMOUTH, _July 13, 1759_.