A little band was formed of such as professed to seek for all the mind of Christ. They commenced with four; soon their number increased to six, then to eight, and so on. Their object was purely mutual profit. They read the classics on week days and divinity on the Sabbath. They prayed, fasted, visited the sick, the poor, the imprisoned. They were near to administer religious consolation to criminals in the hour of their execution. The names of these remarkable religious reformers were: John and Charles Wesley, Robert Kirkham, William Morgan, George Whitefield, John Clayton, T. Broughton, B. Ingham, J. Harvey, J. Whitelamb, W. Hall, J. Gambold, C. Kinchin, W. Smith, Richard Hutchins, Christopher Atkinson, and Messrs. Salmon, Morgan, Boyce, and others. As might have been expected, they were ridiculed and lampooned by those who differed from them, and who could not comprehend the motive to such a religious life. They were called in derision "Sacramentarians," "Bible Bigots," "Bible Moths," "The Holy Club," "The Godly Club," "Supererogation Men," and finally "Methodists." Their strict, methodical lives in the arrangement of their studies and the improvement of their time, their serious deportment and close attention to religious duties, caused a jovial friend of Charles Wesley to say, "Why, here is a new sect of Methodists springing up!" alluding to an ancient school of physicians, or to a class of Nonconforming ministers of the seventeenth century, or to both, who received this title from some things common to each. The name took, and the young men were known throughout the university as the Methodists. The name thus given in derision was finally accepted, and has been retained in honor to this day by the followers of Wesley. A writer in one of the most respectable journals of the day, in describing these inoffensive men, employed the most unwarrantable language. It was affirmed that they had a near affinity to the Essenes among the Jews, and to the Pietists of Switzerland; they excluded what was absolutely necessary to the support of life; they afflicted their bodies; they let blood once a fortnight to keep down the carnal man; they allowed none to have any religion but those of their own sect, while they themselves were farthest from it. They were hypocrites, and were supposed to use religion only as a veil to vice; and their greatest friends were ashamed to stand in their defense. They were enthusiasts, madmen, fools, and zealots. They pretended to be more pious than their neighbors. These were but the beginning of sorrows, as we shall see later. Wesley says: "Ill men say all manner of evil of me, and good men believe them. There is a way, and there is but one, of making my peace. God forbid I should ever take it."