Wesley’s incessant labours were not the only thing likely to perturb a human spirit. As usual, he was still the subject of acrimonious persecution. In his sermon at the laying of the foundation stone of the chapel in City Road, he gave a history of the rise and progress of Methodism, in which he stated, that Whitefield, by conversing with Dissenters, contracted strong prejudices against the Church, and that this led him to separate himself from Wesley and his brother. He also noticed the secession of Ingham from the Church; and the setting up of the college at Trevecca, which was really a school for training Dissenting ministers. His object, in all this, was to show that, though large numbers of reputed Methodists had left the Church, he and his societies still remained faithful, and were not deserving of the taunt of having formed a distinct party. “We do not,” says he, “we will not, form any separate sect, but, from principle, remain, what we always have been, true members of the Church of England.” Whether Wesley was strictly correct in this will admit of doubt; but, unquestionably, he believed it to be the truth; and, as might be expected, it aroused the anger of his quondam friends. Rowland Hill worked himself into a rage, and published, in 1777, an octavo pamphlet of 40 pages, with the title, “Imposture Detected, and the Dead Vindicated; in a Letter to a Friend: containing some gentle Strictures on the false and libellous Harangue, lately delivered by Mr. John Wesley, upon his laying the first stone of his new Dissenting meeting-house, near the City Road.” Wesley’s sermon is designated “a wretched harangue, from which the blessed name of Jesus is almost totally excluded.” Mr. Hill remarks: “by only erasing about half-a-dozen lines from the whole, I might defy the shrewdest of his readers to discover whether the _lying apostle_ of the Foundery be a Jew, a papist, a pagan, or a Turk.” He speaks of “the late ever memorable Mr. Whitefield being scratched out of his grave, by the claws of a designing wolf,” meaning, of course, Wesley. He brands Wesley as “a libeller,” “a dealer in stolen wares,” and “as being as unprincipled as a rook, and as silly as a jackdaw, first pilfering his neighbour’s plumage, and then going proudly forth, displaying his borrowed tail to the eyes of a laughing world.” Hill continues: “persons that are toad eaters to Mr. John Wesley stand in need of very wide throats, and that which he wishes them to swallow is enough to choke an elephant.” “He is for ever going about, raising Dissenting congregations, and building Dissenting meeting-houses the kingdom over.” “Venom distils from his graceless pen.” “Mr. Whitefield is blackened by the venomous quill of this grey headed enemy to all righteousness.” “Wesley is a crafty slanderer, an unfeeling reviler, a liar of the most gigantic magnitude, a Solomon in a cassock, a wretch, a disappointed Orlando Furioso, a miscreant apostate, whose perfection consists in his perfect