“J. CLAYTON.” “I hope you will not forget to pay my due compliments to Sir John Philips, Mr. Wogan, and all my other good friends. “To the Rev. Mr. John Wesley. To be left with Mr. Rivington, bookseller, in St Paul’s Churchyard, London.” This long epistle, besides unfolding Clayton’s character, helps us to a better understanding of the position and practices of the Oxford Methodists. The debtors in Bocardo, the prisoners in the Castle, and paupers in the streets were objects of their beneficent compassion. They had their schools for the children of the poor; and, in their mission of mercy, were about to visit the workhouse of St. Thomas’s. Early rising was a habit, and prayer for each other a daily practice. Constant communion was enforced; though the dogma of the _real presence_ of the body and blood of Christ was, as yet at least, no article of their faith. Wesley being absent, there was a lull in the storm of Methodist persecution; but this was of short duration. Within a month after the date of Clayton’s letter, poor William Morgan died; an event which furnished an occasion for a violent attack upon the Oxford brotherhood, in what was then one of the most literary and respectable papers published,—_Fogg’s Weekly Journal_. They were accused of mopishness, hypocrisy, censoriousness, enthusiasm, madness, and superstitious scruples. “Among their own party,” says the writer, “they pass for religious persons and men of extraordinary parts; but they have the misfortune to be taken by all who have ever been in their company, for madmen and fools.” Hardly any evil is without a good. The virulence of _Fogg’s Weekly Journal_ excited the curiosity of a gentleman who had no acquaintance with the Methodists, but who now sought an interview with them, and shortly after published an octavo pamphlet of thirty pages, entitled,—“The Oxford Methodists: Being some account of a Society of young Gentlemen, in that City, so denominated: setting forth their Rise, Views, and Designs.” In this first defence of Methodism ever published, the slanderous accusations cast upon Wesley and his friends were refuted; and the Methodists were described as follows:— “There are three points to which these gentlemen think themselves obliged to adhere:—1. That of visiting and relieving the prisoners and the sick, and giving away Bibles, Common Prayer Books, and the ‘Whole Duty of Man’; and of explaining the Catechism to the children of poor families, and of dropping a shilling or so to such families where they deem it needful. 2. That of weekly communion. 3. That of observing strictly the fasts of the Church, which has caused some to call them ‘Supererogation Men.’”