“We cannot walk the streets without being annoyed with such filth as is a public nuisance; as well as seeing such objects as provoke resentment and aversion. We are grown infamous for a general want of good manners in our populace; and no wonder, because they are bred up in such habits of nastiness, as, in a manner, break through the ties of natural modesty, and set them beyond all sense of shame. The streets are no better than a common dunghill; and more sacred places are most shamefully polluted. Our very church-yards are profaned with such filth as was once intended to create a detestation and abhorrence even of idol temples;—I mean they are rendered no better than errant draught-houses. Common decency will not allow me to be more particular upon so loathsome a subject; and, if enough is said to be understood, it is to be hoped it will effect a reformation.” Clayton, besides being an able instructor of the young, and an indefatigable parish priest, wished to be a social reformer; and, certainly, his services, in this respect, were greatly needed. His picture of Manchester, a little more than a hundred years ago, is far from savoury; but there can be little doubt of its being true. Clayton’s plain speaking would hardly be tolerated at the present day; but, notwithstanding that, perhaps, it might be useful. At all events, one cannot but admire the stern fidelity of this really kind and exemplary visitor of the poor and friendless, in dealing so faithfully with his fellow-townsmen, who, by their idleness and extravagance, systematically reduced themselves to rags and ruin; and, if the above extracts answer no other purpose, they will not be useless in helping to illustrate the character and principles of this Oxford Methodist.[50] Clayton’s life was not mis-spent; but it might have been much more useful if his friendship with the Wesleys had not been broken. John Wesley, between the years 1738 and 1773, visited Manchester more than twenty times; and some of these visits were so memorable, that, Clayton must have heard of them; and, yet, there is not the slightest evidence of any renewal of that fraternal intercourse which was interrupted when Wesley began to preach salvation by faith only, and, in consequence, was excluded from the pulpits of the Established Church. This was heresy too great for a high churchman to overlook. To be saved by faith in Christ, instead of by sacraments, fasts, penances, ritualism, and good works was an unpardonable novelty, deserving of Clayton’s life-long censure; and hence, after 1738, the two old Oxford friends seem to have been separated till they met in heaven. It is rather remarkable, that, Wesley’s first visit to Manchester, subsequent to his conversion, was at the very time when the Jacobite controversy, already mentioned, was at its height; and that Wesley preached at Salford Cross, immediately adjoining Clayton’s residence. He writes:—