The age was light-hearted, frivolous, and wicked; and yet there flourished in it some of the greatest men that England has ever had. Abraham Cowley, replete with learning, was embellishing his poetic pages with all the ornaments that books could furnish him. Samuel Butler, marvellously acquainted with human life, was furnishing, in the grossly familiar versification of his “Hudibras,” sententious distiches and proverbial axioms for the use of future generations. Edmund Waller was honoured as the most elegant and harmonious versifier of his time. Dryden’s prolific, but extremely licentious pen, displayed a versatility of talent almost without parallel. Otway wrote some of the most pathetic tragedies in the English language, and terminated a miserable life at the early age of thirty-four. Ralph Cudworth was employing his extensive learning and profound philosophy in the production of his “True Intellectual System of the Universe.” Henry More was weeping over the miseries of his country, and studying how to check the Atheism of Thomas Hobbes. Isaac Barrow was labouring for words to express the amplitude and energy of his thoughts, often preaching sermons three hours long, and immoderately using tobacco as his “panpharmacon” to compose and regulate his mind. John Bunyan was preaching his wondrous sermons when out of prison; and, when in it, making tagged laces for a livelihood, and writing his “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Peter Lely was commanding admiration and acquiring a fortune by his portrait-painting; and Christopher Wren, a great philosopher, and one of the most eminent of architects, was drawing plans for rebuilding London and St Paul’s Cathedral. It was amid such events, in the midst of such profligacy, and surrounded by such men, that Samuel Wesley spent his school-days’ life. Young Wesley remained at the Free School, Dorchester, until he was fifteen years of age. For some time past, his father had been dead. His mother was a widow, and was poor. The boy, as he himself tells us, “was almost fit for the university,” but the difficulty was to find means to send him there. Like his father, and his two grandfathers, he was evidently intended for the Christian ministry; but, considering the treatment which all the three had experienced at the hands of the Episcopal party, it is scarcely probable that their youthful descendant would, at this early period of, his history, feel a wish to enter the ministry of the Established Church. His father and his grandfathers, though they had all been the occupants of Church livings, were, so far as Episcopacy and the use of the Liturgy are concerned, Dissenters; and there can be no question, that, as a boy fifteen years of age, his sympathies were with them.