Having hurled a lance in his own defence, he then proceeds to defend Wesley, telling Mr. Hill, that the man he had maligned was one who had published a hundred volumes, who travelled yearly about five thousand miles, preached yearly about a thousand sermons, visited as many sick beds as he preached sermons, and wrote twice as many letters; and who, though now between seventy and eighty years of age, “absolutely refused to abate, in the smallest degree, these mighty labours; but might be seen, at this very time, with his silver locks about his ears, and with a meagre, worn out, skeleton body, _smiling_ at storms and tempests, at such labours and fatigues, at such difficulties and dangers, as, I believe,” says Olivers, “would be absolutely intolerable to _you_, sir, in conjunction with any four of _your most flaming_ ministers.” Wesley’s own publications, in 1774, were not many. First of all, there was the fifteenth number of his Journal, already mentioned: 12mo, 112 pages. Then there was “An Extract from Dr. Cadogan’s Dissertations on the Gout, and all Chronic Diseases,” already referred to on page 111. 12mo, 49 pages. This was a bold stroke. Dr. Cadogan’s work had not been more than ten years published; it had been extremely popular, and had run through several editions; the doctor himself was now at the zenith of his fame, and did not die for three-and-twenty years afterwards; and, yet, Wesley takes upon himself, not to publish the work itself, but an extract from it, and to write a preface to it, in which he objects to the doctor’s wholesale condemnation of “smoked and salted meats, of pickles, of wine, and of flesh, thoroughly roasted or boiled.” Wesley says: “I recommend the book as the most masterly piece upon the subject, which has yet appeared in the English language.” Another of Wesley’s publications was “Thoughts upon Necessity,” 12mo, 33 pages. This was one of his most thoughtful and able tracts. Its purport may be gathered from a sentence in his preface,--“I cannot believe the noblest creature in the visible world to be only a fine piece of clockwork.”