“Wickedness is grown to such a head in the world,—immorality and profaneness are become so epidemical among us, that, it is much to be feared, nothing but discipline and wholesome rigour can prove a cure for it. The infection of vice is extended so far and wide, and the contagion of sin spreads so prodigiously fast, that it seems necessary to use severe methods towards the corrupted parts, if we hope either to recover them, or to save those that are as yet untouched with the disease. God knows, the flagrant impiety of our days, the excessive corruption of these dregs of time,—this rust of the iron age, into which we are fallen,—is such as every good man must complain of, and for which charity itself can find no sufficient excuse or extenuation” (p. 7). Advocates of political expediency may object to these high-toned sentiments; but there are still a few who have old-fashioned hardihood enough to exclaim with the Psalmist, “Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?” (Psalm xciv. 16). The friendship between Clayton and the Wesley brothers was unbroken until the latter departed from Church usages, and became out-door evangelists. In 1735, when urged by Oglethorpe and others to go to Georgia, Wesley, not only sought advice from his brother Samuel and William Law, but went to Manchester to consult with Clayton and others whose judgment he respected; and, six weeks after his return from the Georgian colony, we find him spending several days with his old Oxford friend. He writes:— “1738. March 15. I set out” (from Oxford) “for Manchester, with Mr. Kinchin, Fellow of Corpus Christi, and Mr. Fox, late a prisoner in the city prison. _Friday_, the 17th, we spent entirely with Mr. Clayton, by whom, and the rest of our friends here, we were much refreshed and strengthened. Mr. Hoole, the Rector of St. Ann’s church, being taken ill the next day, on Sunday, 19th, Mr. Kinchin and I officiated at Salford chapel in the morning, by which means Mr. Clayton was at liberty to perform the service of St. Ann’s; and, in the afternoon, I preached there on those words of St Paul, ‘If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.’”[38] Two months after the date of this extract from his journal, Wesley, ceasing to rely on the merit of his own good works, and trusting solely for salvation in the infinitely meritorious sacrifice of Christ, experienced an amazing change. His own words must be quoted. After relating that, for “above ten years,” he had “dragged on heavily,” “trusting to his own works and his own righteousness,” “in a refined way, zealously inculcated by the mystic writers,”[39] he remarks:—