Bishop Gibson declared that they endeavored "to justify their own extraordinary methods of teaching by casting unworthy reflections upon the parochial clergy as deficient in the discharge of their duty, and not instructing the people in the true doctrines of Christianity." Even Dr. Doddridge is not at all "satisfied with the high pretenses they make to the divine influence." Dr. Trapp is bold in pronouncing them "a set of crack-brained enthusiasts and profane hypocrites." The _Weekly Miscellany_ denounces Wesley as the "ringleader, fomenter, and first cause of all divisions and feuds that have happened in Oxford, London, Bristol, and other places where he has been." He manages by "preaching, bookselling, wheedling, and sponging to get, it is believed, an income of £700 a year, some say £1,000. This is priestcraft to perfection." Further on in life he is accused of "making unwarrantable dissensions in the Church," and "prejudicing the people wherever he comes against his brethren the clergy." He is a "sower and ringleader of dissension, endeavoring with unwearied assiduity to set the flock at variance with their ministers and each other," assuming to himself "great wisdom and high attainments in all spiritual knowledge." "You go," says this writer, "from one end of the nation to another lamenting the heresies of your brethren, and instilling into the people's minds that they are led into error by their pastors." "It was Mr. Wesley's fidelity," says Mr. Tyerman, "far more than the novelties of his doctrines and proceedings that brought upon him the persecution he encountered." The former friends of Wesley now turned against him on points merely doctrinal. No one can read the invectives of Sir Richard and Rev. Rowland Hill, Sir Walter Shirley and Rev. Augustus Toplady, without feelings of great astonishment. When Mr. Wesley had passed his threescore years and ten Mr. Toplady, a young man of thirty, attacked him in the most violent manner, employing epithets of the most abusive character. We select the following as samples from the many. Wesley is accused of the "sophistry of the Jesuit and the dictatorial authority of a pope." He is a "lurking, sly assassin," guilty of "audacity and falsehood;" a "knave," guilty of "mean, malicious impotence." He is an "Ishmaelite," a "bigot," a "papist," a "defamer," a "reviler," a "liar," without the "honesty of a heathen;" an "impudent slanderer," with "Satanic guilt only exceeded by Satan himself, if even by him." He is an "echo of Satan." Robert Hall well said, "I would not incur the guilt of that virulent abuse which Toplady cast upon him [Wesley], for points merely speculative and of very little importance, for ten thousand worlds." _Poets_ who should have sung for Jesus prostituted their gifts and burdened their songs with the bitterest invectives against Wesley and his people.