What had Wesley done to merit all this? Nothing, absolutely nothing. He was an old man whose life had been spent in one great act of Christian beneficence. These wretched poems, issued in the best style of the art of printing, by J. Bew, of Paternoster Row, were the foul sputterings of a muse, not naturally ignoble, but envious of Wesley’s majestic goodness, and animated with a feeling almost as malignant as the heart of Apollyon. So far from answering them, Wesley never even condescended to mention them, in any journal or letter yet made public. Before we trace Wesley’s wanderings in 1778, there are two or three other facts which must be noticed. On Tuesday, August 11, 1778, in the thirty-eighth year of his age, occurred the death of the Rev. Augustus Toplady. In more respects than one, this was a memorable event to Wesley and his friends. In the death of Toplady, Wesley lost one of his bitterest opponents; and Calvinism lost its ablest champion. Soon after, the report was circulated, that Wesley had stated, to some of his friends, that Toplady died in despair and uttering blasphemy. Sir Richard Hill rushed into print, by sending an anonymous letter to the _General Advertiser_, requesting Wesley either to deny the accusation, or to produce his authority, otherwise his character would suffer, “for having vented a most gross, malicious falsehood.” Not content with this, he published a pamphlet, in the form of a “Letter to the Rev. Mr. John Wesley,” in which, as usual, he made use of the most intemperate language, telling Wesley that, unless he cleared himself from the charge alleged against him, he would be branded “as the raiser and fabricator of a most nefarious report,” and would be guilty of a sin little less “than the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost.” The whole of this mare’s nest was simply this: Mr. Gawkrodger, of Bridlington, _told_ Sir Richard Hill, that Mr. Thomas Robinson _told_ him, that Wesley _told_ him, that Toplady “died in black despair and blasphemy.” If Sir Richard Hill had _courteously_ asked for an explanation, Wesley, like a gentleman and a Christian, would have given one; but, having demanded it in the most offensive terms, telling him that he had been “vilifying the ashes and traducing the memory” of Toplady; and that “his grand design in all his publications, whether sermons, journals, appeals, preservatives, or Arminian magazines, was that of trumpeting forth his own praises”; and that he was “a man of cunning and subtlety, and artifices, and foul aspersions, and quibbles, and evasions,”[305]--we say, that Sir Richard Hill having used such terms as these, in the very letters in which he requested the explanation, deserved, not an answer, but, the silent contempt with which Wesley wisely treated him. In 1778, England was in great excitement. Panic was general; and the country was thought to be on the brink of ruin. It was this state of things which led Wesley to publish the two political pamphlets following: