The principal propagator of the report, that the Methodists were a fallen people, was John Hilton, who, for thirteen years, had been an itinerant preacher. Dr. Stevens calls him “an honest but weak headed man.” This is scarcely correct. Leaving his honesty an open question, John Hilton, judged by his publications, was far from being “weak headed.” Wesley says: “He told us he must withdraw from our connexion. Some would have reasoned with him, but it was lost labour; so we let him go in peace.” Hilton was no sooner gone, than he turned author, and, in 1778, besides an octavo pamphlet of 32 pages, entitled, “The Deplorable State of Man,” he issued “Reasons for Quitting the Methodist Society; being a Defence of Barclay’s Apology;” 8vo, 66 pages. Dated, “Melksham, 3rd month, 28th day, 1778.” He tells his readers, that, “a year ago, Barclay’s Apology converted him to the principles of the quakers;” and a broadbrimmed quaker John Hilton henceforwards was. Both his pamphlets are written in a plain, good, nervous style, and show, that, in point of education and mental power, he was much superior to the mass of Wesley’s itinerants.[290] Hilton was not without talent; but like most who think themselves more religious than their neighbours, he was sour and censorious. “What I have lamented in him, for some years,” wrote Wesley, in a letter, dated October 22, 1777, “is an aptness to condemn and despise his brethren. There is no failing more infectious than this; and it is much if you did not catch a little of it from him; otherwise you would hardly say, ‘the body of Methodists are degenerated.’ You cannot possibly judge whether they are or not. Perhaps you converse with one or two hundred of them. Now allowing two thirds of these to be degenerated, can you infer the same concerning thirty or forty thousand? Yet this I will allow, two thirds of those who are grown rich are greatly degenerated. They do not, will not, save all they can, in order to give all they can; and, without doing this, they _cannot grow in grace_, nay, they constantly grieve the Holy Spirit of God.”[291] Thomas Taylor was at the conference of 1777, and tells us that, on the conference Sunday, the morning service, in the Broadmead chapel, lasted from half-past nine till nearly one o’clock; that, at five in the afternoon, Wesley preached to a large and serious crowd out of doors, and afterwards, in a full society meeting, “expatiated upon the rules, and said many useful things.” He preached again in the evening of the first day of conference, but not longer than twenty minutes. On August 7, Taylor writes: “that great and good man Mr. Fletcher came into conference. My eyes flowed with tears at the sight of him. He spoke to us in a very respectful manner, and took a solemn farewell. Dear, good man! I never saw so many tears shed in all my life.”[292]