to tell me that I was laying up treasures on earth, taking my ease, and minding only my eating and
John Wesley Journal of John Wesley
The danger was to regard extraordinary circumstances too much, such as outcries, convulsions, visions, trances; as if these were essential to the inward work, so that it could not go on without them. Perhaps the danger is, to regard them too little; to condemn them altogether; to imagine they had nothing of God in them, and were a hindrance to his work. Whereas the truth is 1) God suddenly and strongly convinced many that they were lost sinners; the natural consequence whereof were sudden outcries and strong bodily convulsions; 2) to strengthen and encourage them that believed, and to make His work more apparent, He favored several of them with divine dreams, others with trances and visions; 3) in some of these instances, after a time, nature mixed with grace; 4) Satan likewise mimicked this work of God in order to discredit the whole work; and yet it is not wise to give up this part any more than to give up the whole. At first, it was, doubtless, wholly from God. It is partly so at this day; and He will enable us to discern how far, in every case, the work is pure and where it mixes or degenerates.
Wednesday, 28.--I returned to London; on Thursday, 29, the day appointed for the general thanksgiving, I preached again in the chapel near the Seven Dials, both morning and afternoon. I believed the oldest man in England has not seen a thanksgiving day so observed before. It had the solemnity of the general fast. All the shops were shut up; the people in the streets appeared, one and all, with an air of seriousness; the prayers, lessons, and whole public service were admirably suited to the occasion. The prayer for our enemies, in particular, was extremely striking; perhaps it is the first instance of the kind in Europe. There was no noise, hurry, bonfires, fireworks in the evening, and no public diversions. This is indeed a Christian holiday, a "rejoicing unto the Lord." The next day came the news that Sir Edward Hawke had dispersed the French fleet.
Sunday, December 9.--I had, for the first time, a love-feast for the whole society. Wednesday, 12. I began reading over the Greek Testament and the notes, with my brother and several others; carefully comparing the translation with the original and correcting or enlarging the notes as we saw occasion.
The same day I spent part of the afternoon in the British Museum. There is a large library, a great number of curious manuscripts, many uncommon monuments of antiquity, and the whole collection of shells, butterflies, beetles, grasshoppers, and so forth, which the indefatigable Sir Hans Sloane, with such vast expense and labor, procured in a life of fourscore years.
Chapter 12. Wesley's Letter to an Editor; Impositions and Declarations; the
Speaking Statue; Wesley's Pentecost
Wesley and the Irish Question
1760. Wednesday, January 16.--One came to me, as she said, with a message from the Lord, to tell me that I was laying up treasures on earth, taking my ease, and minding only my eating and drinking. I told her God knew me better; and if He had sent her, He would have sent her with a more proper message.
Monday, April 21.--In riding to Rosmead I read Sir John Davis's Historical Relations concerning Ireland. None who reads these can wonder that, fruitful as it is, it was always so thinly inhabited;
John Wesley Journal of John Wesley
for he makes it plain 1) that murder was never capital among the native Irish; the murderer paid
only a small fine to the chief of his sept; style="#_ftn29" name="_ftnref29">[1] 2) when the English settled here, still the Irish had no benefit of the English laws. They could not so much as sue an Englishman. So the English beat, plundered, yea, murdered them, at pleasure. Hence 3) arose continual wars between them, for three hundred and fifty years together; and hereby both the English and Irish natives were kept few, as well as poor.
4) When they were multiplied during a peace of forty years, from 1600 to 1641, the general massacre, with the ensuing war, again thinned their numbers; not so few as a million of men, women, and children, being destroyed in four years' time. 5) Great numbers have ever since, year by year, left the land merely for want of employment. 6) The gentry are continually driving away hundreds, yea, thousands, of them that remain, by throwing such quantities of arable land into pasture, which leaves them neither business nor food. This it is that now dispeoples many parts of Ireland, of Connaught in particular, which, it is supposed, has scarcely half the inhabitants at this day which it had fourscore years ago.
Attack on Wesley's Hat
Tuesday, June 10.--I rode to Drumersnave, a village delightfully situated. At noon William Ley, Jaynes Glasbrook, and I rode to Carrick-upon-Shannon. In less than an hour, an esquire and justice of the peace came down with a drum and what mob he could gather. I went into the garden with the congregation, while he was making a speech to his followers in the street. He then attacked William Ley (who stood at the door), being armed with a halbert and long sword, and ran at him with the halbert; but missing his thrust, he then struck at him and broke it short upon his wrist. Having made his way through the house to the other door, he was at a full stop. James Glasbrook held it fast on the other side.
While he was endeavoring to force it open, one told him I was preaching in the garden. On this he quitted the door in haste, ran round the house, and with part of his retinue, climbed over the wall into the garden; with a whole volley of oaths and curses declared, "You shall not preach here today." I told him, "Sir, I do not intend it, for I have preached already." This made him ready to tear the ground. Finding he was not to be reasoned with, I went into the house. Soon after he revenged himself on James Glasbrook (by breaking the truncheon of his halbert on his arm), and on my hat, which he beat and kicked most valiantly; but a gentleman rescued it out of his hands, and we rode quietly out of the town.
Wednesday, September 10.--When I came to St. Ives, I was determined to preach abroad; but the wind was so high, I could not stand where I had intended. But we found a little enclosure near it, one end of which was native rock, rising ten or twelve feet perpendicular, from which the ground fell with an easy descent. A jetting out of the rock, about four feet from the ground, gave me a very convenient pulpit. Here well nigh the whole town, high and low, rich and poor, assembled together. Nor was there a word to be heard, or a smile seen, from one end of the congregation to the other. It was just the same the three following evenings. Indeed I was afraid on Saturday that the roaring
John Wesley Journal of John Wesley
of the sea, raised by the north wind, would have prevented their hearing. But God gave me so clear and strong a voice that I believe scarcely one word was lost.
Sunday, 14.--At eight I chose a large ground, the sloping side of a meadow, where the congregation stood, row above row, so that all might see as well as hear. It was a beautiful sight. Everyone seemed to take to himself what was spoken. I believe every back-slider in the town was there. And surely God was there, to "heal their backslidings."
I began at Zennor, as soon as the church service ended; I suppose scarcely six persons went away.
At five I went once more into the ground at St. Ives and found such a congregation as I think was never seen in a place before (Gwennap excepted) in this county. Some of the chief of the town were now not in the skirts, but in the thickest of the people. The clear sky, the setting sun, the smooth, still water, all agreed with the state of the audience.
"A Kind of Waterspout"
Wednesday, 17.--The room at St. Just was quite full at five, and God gave us a parting blessing. At noon I preached on the cliff near Penzance, where no one now gives an uncivil word. Here I procured an account, from an eyewitness, of what happened the twenty-seventh of last month. A round pillar, narrowest at bottom, of a whitish color, rose out of the sea near Mousehole and reached the clouds. One who was riding over the strand from Marazion to Penzance saw it stand for a short space and then move swiftly toward her, till the skirt of it touching her, the horse threw her and ran away. It had a strong sulphurous smell. It dragged with it abundance of sand and pebbles from the shore; and then went over the land, carrying with it corn, furze, or whatever it found in its way. It was doubtless a kind of waterspout; but a waterspout on land, I believe, is seldom seen.
Friday, 19.--I rode to Illogan. We had heavy rain before I began, but scarcely any while I was preaching. I learned several other particulars here concerning the waterspout. It was seen near Mousehole an hour before sunset. About sunset it began traveling over the land, tearing up all the furze and shrubs it met. Nearly an hour after sunset it passed (at the rate of four or five miles an hour) across Mr. Harris's fields, in Camborne, sweeping the ground as it went, about twenty yards in diameter at bottom, and broader and broader up to the clouds. It made a noise like thunder, took up eighteen stacks of corn, with a large haystack and the stones whereon it stood, scattered them abroad (but it was quite dry), and then passed over the cliff into the sea.
Saturday, 20.--In the evening I took my old stand in the main street in Redruth. A multitude of people, rich and poor, calmly attended. So is the roughest become one of the quietest towns in England.
A Tinner's Story
Sunday, 21.--I preached in the same place at eight. Mr. C--p of St. Cubert, preached at the church both morning and afternoon and strongly confirmed what I had spoken. At one, the day