On the 17th of June, 1703, was born in the obscure parish at Epworth, of Samuel and Susannah Wesley, John Wesley, the subject of this sketch. He was one of nineteen children. The names of fifteen have been recorded; the others, no doubt, died in infancy. Of these fifteen, John was the twelfth. He was born in the third year of the eighteenth century. His long life of eighty-eight years covered eleven of the twelve years of Queen Anne's reign, thirteen of that of George I, thirty-three of George II, and more than thirty of George III. This remarkable child was to more than revive the dead embers of the Reformation; he was chosen of God to inaugurate a spiritual movement which was to fill the world with the spirit of holy being and doing, and bring to the people ransomed by Jesus, in every clime and of every race, "freedom to worship God." CHAPTER II. THE WESLEY FAMILY. SAMUEL WESLEY, father of John, was for forty years rector of Epworth Parish. He was an honest, conscientious, stern old Englishman; a firmer never clung to the mane of the British lion. He was the son of John Wesley, a Dissenting minister, who enjoyed, for a time, all the rights of churchmen. But, after the death of Cromwell, Charles II, whom the Dissenters had aided in restoring to the throne, and who had promised them toleration and liberty of conscience, on his return, finding the Church party in the ascendency, violated his pledge and approved of the most cruel and oppressive laws passed by Parliament against Dissenters. By one of these inhuman acts more than two thousand ministers, and among them many of the most pious, useful, learned, and conscientious in the land, were deprived of their places in the Church, of their homes and support, and were compelled to wander homeless and friendless, without being allowed to remain anywhere, until they found rest in the grave. "Stopping the mouths of these faithful men," says Dr. Adam Clarke, "was a general curse to the nation. A torrent of iniquity, deep, rapid, and strong, deluged the whole land, and swept away godliness and vital religion from the kingdom. The king had no religion, either in power or in form, though a papist at heart. He was the most worthless that ever sat on a British throne, and profligate beyond all measure, without a single good quality to redeem his numerous bad ones; and Church and State joined hand in hand in persecution and intolerance. Since those barbarous and iniquitous times, what hath God wrought!"[B]