And here we must pause, for the purpose of spoiling a very interesting story respecting Samuel Wesley. The Rev. Henry Moore relates that Samuel Wesley was strongly solicited by the friends of King James II. to support the measures of the court in favour of Popery, with a promise of preferment, if he would comply with the king’s desire. But when the time came for reading the king’s declaration, he most firmly refused; and though surrounded by courtiers, soldiers, and informers, he preached a bold and pointed discourse against it from Daniel iii. 17, 18: “If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.” Unfortunately this heroic story is untrue. As we shall see shortly, Samuel Wesley was not ordained a deacon until two months after the declaration was commanded to be read, and therefore, at the time, was not authorised to preach, either from such a text, or from any text at all; nor was he in a position either to read or to refuse to read the king’s declaration. The story has been repeated by Southey, by Macaulay, by Dr Smith, by Dr Stevens, and by many other of the leading historians of the age; but, as just shown, it is utterly without foundation. Henry Moore’s mistake was a simple and easy one. He attributes to Samuel Wesley a fact which belongs to the Rev. John Berry, A.M., vicar of Watton, in Norfolk, the father-in-law of Samuel Wesley, jun. The latter, in a “poem upon a clergyman lately deceased,” published in 1731, delineates the character of Mr Berry; and the poem, in substance, contains the story, which has so long and so often been improperly applied to Samuel Wesley, sen.:—