[290] Mr. Moore says: “this good man was possessed of eminent ministerial gifts, but he fell into the mystic delusion. He then became high minded and censorious; and Mr. Charles Wesley, in his hours of depression, used too much to listen to him. The quakers were jealous of him, and kept him silent a long time, to his great mortification. But it was the very thing he needed, it was good medicine to heal his sickness. In one of his last conversations with me, he said: ‘I would not have thy people to think of changing; they may be disappointed,’ He was then in a sweet and humble spirit, very different from that in which he left us.” (Moore’s Life of Wesley, vol. ii., pp. 273, 274.) [291] _Methodist Magazine_, 1807, p. 328. [292] Taylor’s manuscript diary. [293] Treffry’s Life of Benson. [294] “Anecdotes of the Wesleys,” p. 272. [295] Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 398. [296] Asbury’s Journal, vol. i., p. 177. [297] Smith’s History of Methodism, vol. i., p. 440. [298] Minutes of Methodist Conferences in America, 1795. [299] Jackson’s “Centenary of Methodism,” p. 201. [300] See _Methodist Magazine_, 1845, p. 661. [301] _Methodist Magazine_, 1799, p. 564. [302] _Gospel Magazine_, 1777, p. 182. [303] Ibid. p. 337. 1778. Age 75 Never in his life was Wesley the subject of a more infamous press persecution than in 1778. First of all, there was a pamphlet published, in which Thomas Maxfield was pitiably preeminent. This mendacious publication asserted that, when Whitefield went to America, in 1741, he handed over to the two Wesleys thirty thousand people, whose hearts the Wesleys so turned against him, that, when he returned to England, not three hundred would come to hear him. It further alleged, that “vile contentions” followed, in which the Wesleys “raked the filthiest ashes, to find some black story against their fellow preachers;” and that what had been published, on both sides, by the friends of Whitefield and Wesley, within the last six years, was a disgrace to all concerned.