“DEAR TOMMY,--In yours of May the 30th, you give me an agreeable account of your little conference in Philadelphia. I think G. Shadford and you desire no novelties, but love good old Methodist discipline and doctrine. I have been lately thinking a good deal on one point, wherein, perhaps, we have all been wanting. We have not made it a rule, as soon as ever persons were justified, to remind them of going on to perfection. Whereas, this is the very time preferable to all others. They have then the simplicity of little children; and they are fervent in spirit, ready to cut off the right hand, or to pluck out the right eye. But, if we once suffer this fervour to subside, we shall find it hard enough to bring them again to this point. “I am, etc., “JOHN WESLEY.”[217] Before passing from America, it is worth recording, that it was in the year 1774 that Methodism was introduced into another part of Newfoundland. In the month of March in that year, John Hoskins, a London Methodist, and his son, a lad of about sixteen years of age, embarked at Poole in Dorsetshire, and landed in Newfoundland five weeks afterwards. The intention of Hoskins was to work there till he had obtained money enough to take him to New England, where he wished to begin a school. He landed at Trinity penniless, and utterly unknown, and found himself in a “rocky, desolate country,” and surrounded by a “few, low, mean huts, built of wood.” He entered one to make inquiries as to how he might obtain subsistence; the good woman of the hut gave him some seal and bread to eat; and the minister of the place advised him to open a school at Old Perlican, where about fifty families resided. Away he went, a distance of one-and-twenty miles; the people received him gladly; and his school was opened. Here there was literally no religious worship whatever; but the schoolmaster began to read the Church prayers, and Wesley’s sermons; the people standing at a distance and looking at him as if he had been a monster. He then proceeded to give extempore exhortations; a few began to be serious; some helped him to sing; sixteen became penitent, and were formed into a class; and two or three soon found peace with God. Just at this juncture, Mr. Arthur Thomy, an Irish merchant, visited the place on business, and preached twice or thrice, confirming what Hoskins had said, and the society increased to forty members, and the _believers_ to eight.