“Some severe invectives being written against the Dissenters, Mr S. Wesley, being a young man of considerable talents, was pitched upon to answer them. This set him on a course of reading, which soon produced an effect different from what had been intended. Instead of writing the wished-for answer, he himself conceived he saw reason to change his opinions; and actually formed a resolution to renounce the Dissenters, and attach himself to the Established Church. He lived at that time with his mother and an old aunt, both of whom were too strongly attached to the Dissenting doctrines to have borne, with any patience, the disclosure of his design. He therefore got up one morning, at a very early hour, and, without acquainting any one with his purpose, set out on foot to Oxford, and entered himself of Exeter College.” Samuel Wesley’s own account is, in substance, the following:—While he was a student in the Dissenting academies in London, Dr Owen wished him and some others to graduate at the universities, on the ground that the Dissenters were expecting the times to change, and that in a little while their party would be looked upon with greater favour, and their pupils be allowed to take university degrees. Owen, however, insisted that on no account whatever ought they to take the oaths and subscriptions. While Wesley was still in doubt whether to adopt Dr Owen’s advice, he began to study for himself the usual arguments for separating from the Church. He writes—“I earnestly implored the divine direction in a business of so weighty a concern, and on which so much of my whole life depended. I examined things over and over, as calmly and impassionately as possible; and the farther I looked, still the more the mist cleared up, and things appeared in another sort of light than I had seen them in all my life before. So far were the sufferings of the Dissenters at that time from influencing my resolution to leave them, that, I profess, it was a thing which retarded me most of any. The ungenerosity of quitting them in their meaner fortunes, when I had been a sharer in their better, I knew not how to get over. Still, I began to have some inclinations to the University, if I knew how to get thither, or to live there when I came; but then I was not acquainted with one soul of the Church of England, or, at least, with none to whom I might address myself for assistance or advice. “I was now offered employment among the Dissenters, (having been with them nearly four years,) either in a gentleman’s house, or as chaplain to an East Indian ship; but my inclinations were more for Oxford, where, I thought, I might have opportunities more fully to study the point which I was now almost resolved upon.