NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

NOTE I. Page 36.

Bartholomew Wesley supports himself by the practice of physic. THIS should seem to have been the old resource of ejected ministers. "At the beginning of the happy raigne of our late good Queen Elizabeth, divers commissioners of great place, being authorized to enquire of and to displace all such of the clergie as would not conforme to the reformed church, one amongst others was convented before them, who being asked whether he would subscribe or no, he denied it, and so consequently was adjudged to lose his benefice, and be deprived of his function; whereupon, in his impatience, he said, That if they, meaning the commissioners, held this course, it would cost many a man's life. For which the commissioners called him back againe, and charged him that he had spoke treasonable and seditious words, tending to the raysing of a rebellion or some tumult in the land, for which he should receive the reward of a traitor. And being asked whether he spake those words or no, he acknowledged it, and took upon him the justification thereof; "for, said he, ye have taken from me my living and profession of the ministrie. Scholarship is all my portion; and I have no other meanes now left for my maintenance but to turn physitian, and before I shall be absolute master of that mystery, God he knowes how many men's lives it will cost. For few physitians use to try experiments upon their own bodies.

"With us it is a profession can maintaine but a few; and divers of those more indebted to opinion than learning, and (for the most part) better qualified in discoursing of their travailes than in discerning their patients maladies. For it is growne to be a very huswives trade, where fortune prevailes more than skill. Their best benefactor, the Neapolitan. their grand signieur; the Sorpego, their gonfollinire; the Sciatica, their great marshall, that calles the muster-rolle of them all together at every spring and fall, are all as familiar to her as the cuckow at Cankwood in May. And the cure of them is the skill of every good old ladies cast gentlewoman; when she gives over painting she falls to plastering, and .shall have as good practice as the best of them for those kinde of diseases."-Art of Thriving, by Thomas Powel. Scott's Somers' Tracts, 7.200.

By the ancient laws of Spain, no monk was permitted to study physic or law; because when under pretence of studying for the advantage of their brethren they had acquired either of these professions, the devil used to tempt them to quit their monasteries, and go wandering about the world.-Partida 1. Tit. 7. Ley, 28.

Baxter, after he was fixed at Kidderminster, assisted the people for some time with his advice in physic, and was very successful; but finding it took up so much time as to be burdensome, he at length fixed among them a diligent skilful physician, and bound himself to him by promise, that he would practise no more in common cases.

The excellent George Herbert also writes thus, in the chapter which he entitles,

"The Parson's Completeness."

"The country parson desires to be all to his parish, and not onely a pastour, but a lawyer also, and a physitian. Therefore hee endures not that any of his flock should go to law; but in any controversy that they should resort to him as their judge. To this end, he hath gotten to himself some insight in things ordinarily incident and controverted, by experience; and by reading some initiatory treatises in the law, with Dalton's Justice of Peace, and the Abridgements of the Statutes, as also by discourses with men of that profession, whom he hath ever some cases to ask, when he meets with them; holding that rule, that to put men to discourse of that wherein they are most eminent, is the most gainfull way of conversation. Yet whenever any controversie is brought to him, he never decides it alone, but sends for three or four of the ablest of the parish to hear the cause with him, whom he makes to deliver their opinion first out of which he gathers, if he be ignorant himself, what to hold, and so the thing passeth with more authority and lesse envy. In judging, he followes that which is altogether right; so that if the poorest man of the parish detain but a pin unjustly from the richest, he absolutely restores it as a judge; but when he hath so done, then he assumes the parson, and exhorts to charity. Neverthelesse, there may happen sometimes some cases wherein he chooseth to permit his parishioners rather to make use of the law than himself: as in cases of an obscure and dark nature, not easily determinable by lawyers themselves; or in cases of high consequence, as establishing of inheritances; or lastly, when the persons in difference are of a contentious disposition, and cannot be gained, but that they still fall from all compromises that have been made. But then he shews them how to go to law, even as brethren, and not as enemies, neither avoiding therefore one another's company, much lesse defaming one another.

Now as the parson is in law, so is he in sickness also: if there be any of his flock sick, hee is their physician, or at least his wife, of whom, instead of the qualities of the world, he asks no other but to have the skill of healing a wound, or helping the sick. But if neither himselfe nor his wife have the skill, and his means serve, hee keeps some young practitioner in his house for the benefit of his parish, whom yet he ever exhorts not to exceed his bounds, but in tickle cases to call in help. If all fail, then he keeps good correspondence with some neighbour physician, and entertaines him for the cure of his parish.

Yet is it easy for any scholar to attain to such a measure of phisick as may be of much use to him, both for himself and others. This is done by seeing one anatomy, reading one book of phisick, having one herball by him. And let Fernelius be the phisick author, for he writes briefly, neatly, and judiciously; especially let his Method of Phisick be diligently perused, as being the practicall part, and of most use. Now both the reading of him, and the knowing of herbs, may be done at such times as they may be an help and a recreation to more divine studies, Nature serving Grace both in comfort of diversion, and the benefit of application when need requires; as also by way of illustration, even as our Saviour made plants and seeds to teach the people; for he was the true householder, who bringeth out of his treasure things new and old; the old things of Philosophy, and the new of Grace, and maketh the one serve the other. And, I conceive, our Saviour did this for three reasons: first, that by familiar things hee might make his doctrines slip the more easily into the hearts even of the meanest. Secondly, that labouring people, whom he chiefly considered might have every where

monuments of his doctrine, remembering in gardens his mustard seed and lillyes; in the field, his seed-corn and tares; and so not be drowned altogether in the works of their vocation, but sometimes lift up their minds to better things, even in the midst of their pains. Thirdly, that he might set a copy for Parsons. In the knowledge of simples, wherein the manifold wisdome of God is wonderfully to be seen, one thing would be carefully observed, which is to know what herbes may be used instead of drugs of the same nature, and to make the garden the shop; for home-bred medicines are both more easie for the Parson's purse, and more familiar for all men's bodies. So where the Apothecary useth either for loosing, rhubarb; or for binding, bolearmena; the Parson useth damask or white roses for the one, and plaintain, shepherd's purse, knot-grasse for the other, and that with better successe. As for spices, he doth not only prefer home-bred things before them, but condemns them for vanities, and so shuts them out of his family, esteeming that there is no spice comparable for herbs, to rosemary, time, savoury, mints; and for seeds, to fennell and carroway seeds. Accordingly, for salves his wife seeks not the city, but prefers her gardens and fields before all outlandish gums. And surely hyssope, valerian, mercury, adder's tongue, yerrow, melilot, and Saint John wort, made into a salve; and elder, camomile, mallowes, comphrey, and smallage, made into a poultice, have done great and rare cures. In curing of any, the Parson and his family use to premise prayers, for this is to cure like a Parson, and this raiseth the action from the shop to the church. But though the Parson sets forward all charitable deeds, yet he looks not in this point of curing beyond his own parish, except the person bee so poor that he is not able to reward the physician, for as hee is charitable, so hee is just also. Now it is a justice and debt to the commonwealth he lives in, not to incroach on others professions, but to live on his own. And justice is the ground of charity."

NOTE II. Page 36.

John Owen.

COTTON MATHER has preserved a choice specimen of invective against Dr. Owen, by one of the primitive Quakers, whose name was Fisher. It was, indeed, a species of rhetoric in which they indulged freely, and exceeded all other sectarians. Fisher addressed him thus: "Thou fiery fighter and green-headed trumpeter; thou hedgehog and grinning dog; thou bastard, that tumbled out of the mouth of the Babylonish bawd; thou mole; thou tinker; thou lizard; thou bell of no metal, but the tone of a kettle; thou wheelbarrow; thou whirlpool; thou whirligig: O thou firebrand; thou adder and scorpion; thou louse; thou cow-dung; thou moon-calf; thou ragged tatterdemallion; thou Judas: thou livest in philosophy and logic, which are of the Devil."

NOTE III. Page 40.

Manner in which the children were taught to read.

MRS. WESLEY thus describes her peculiar method in a letter to her son John: "None of them were taught to read till five years old, except Kezzy, in whose case I was overruled; and she was more years in learning than any of the rest had been months. The way of teaching was this: the day before a child began to learn, the house was set in order, every one's work appointed them, and a charge given, that none should come into the room from nine till twelve, or from two till five, which were our school hours. One day was allowed the child, wherein to learn its letters, and each of them did in that time know all its letters,

great and small, except Molly and Nancy, who were a day and a half before they knew them perfectly, for which I then thought them very dull; but the reason why I thought them so, was because the rest learned them so readily, and your brother Samuel, who was the first child I ever taught, learnt the alphabet in a few hours. He was five years old the tenth of February; the next day he began to learn, and as soon as he knew the letters, began at the first chapter of Genesis. He was taught to spell the first verse; then to read it over and over till he could read it off hand without any hesitation; so on to the second, &c. till he took ten verses for a lesson, which he quickly did. Easter fell low that year, and by Whitsuntide he could read a chapter very well; for he read continually, and had such a prodigious memory, that I cannot remember ever to have told him the same word twice. What was yet stranger, any word he had learnt in his lesson, he knew wherever he saw it, either in his Bible, or any other book; by which means he learnt very soon to read an English author well.

"The same method was observed with them all. As soon as they knew the letters they were first put to spell and read one line; then a verse; never leaving till perfect in their lesson, were it shorter or longer. So one or other continued reading at school-time, without any intermission; and before we left school, each child read what he had learned that morning; and ere we parted in the afternoon, what he had learned that day."

NOTE IV. Page 42.

John Wesley,-born at Epworth.

"I HAVE heard him say," says Mr. Crowther, in his Portraiture of Methodism, (p. 20.) "that he was baptized by the name of John Benjamin; that his mother had buried two sons, one called John, and the other Benjamin, and that she united their names in him. But he never made use of the second name."

Mr. Crowther also says, that, in 1719, Wesley went from the Charter-house to Westminster school," where he made a more rapid progress in Hebrew and Greek.” I have so much admiration of Wesley, and so much Westminster feeling, that I should be glad to believe this. But Dr. Coke and Mr. Moore have distinctly stated that he went from the Charter-house to Oxford; and Mr. Crowther has probably been misled by what Samuel says in a letter to his father: Jack is with me, and a brave boy, learning Hebrew as fast as he can." He was probably in his brother's house, during the interval between his leaving school and going to college. But, that he was never at Westminster is certain: a list of all entrances there has been kept from a time earlier than his boyhood; and my friend, Mr. Knox, has ascertained for me, that the name of John Wesley is not in that list.

NOTE V. Page 44.

I am rich enough.

THE day after the fire, as Mr. Wesley was walking in the garden, and surveying the ruins of the house, he picked up part of a leaf of his Polyglot Bible, on which (says his son John), just these words were legible: Vade, vende omnia quæ habes, et attolle crucem, et sequere me.— Go, sell all that thou hast, and take up thy cross, and follow me.

How Mr. Wesley surmounted this loss, with his large family and limited means, does not appear. Mr. Bowyer's house and printingoffice were burnt about the same time, and he obtained, by means of a brief, the clear sum of 1514]. 13s. 44d. Fires were in those days far

less frequent than they are now, notwithstanding so much more timber was used in the construction of houses. The increase is more attributable to increased roguery, than to decreased care; though something, no doubt, to the latter cause. But it is only since insurance offices have been established that houses have been set on fire for purposes of fraud: and that in many or most cases in the metropolis this is the fact, is proved by the proportion of fires being so much greater there than in any other city. Where one fire takes place in Manchester or Bristol, there are at least fifty in London.

NOTE VI. Page 48.

Sacheverel's Defence.

BURNET says of it, "It had a great effect on the weaker sort; while it possessed those who knew the man and his ordinary discourses with horror, when they heard him affirm so many falsehoods, with such solemn appeals to God. It was very plain the speech was made for him by others; for the style was correct, and far different from his own."

NOTE VII. Page 53.

LETTERS concerning some Supernatural Disturbances, at my Father's House, at Epworth, in Lincolnshire.*

LETTER I.-To Mr. Samuel Wesley, from his Mother.

Dear Sam, January 12, 1716-7. THIS evening we were agreeably surprised with your pacquet, which brought the welcome news of your being alive, after we had been in the greatest panic imaginable, almost a month, thinking either you was dead, or one of your brothers by some misfortune been killed.

The reason of our fears is as follows. On the first of December, our maid heard, at the door of the dining-room, several disinal groans, like a person in extremes, at the point of death. We gave little heed to her relation, and endeavoured to laugh her out of her fears. Some nights (two or three) after, several of the family heard a strange knocking in divers places, usually three or four knocks at a time, and then stayed a little. This continued every night for a fortnight; sometimes it was in the garret, but most commonly in the nursery, or green chamber. We all heard it but your father, and I was not willing he should be informed of it, lest he should fancy it was against his own death, which, indeed, we all apprehended. But when it began to be so troublesome, both day and night, that few or none of the family durst be alone, I resolved to tell him of it, being minded he should speak to it. At first he would not believe but somebody did it to alarm us; but the night after, as soon as he was ir oed, it knocked loudly nine times, just by his bedside. He rose, and went to see if he could find out what it was, but could see nothing. Afterwards he heard it as the rest.

One night it made such a noise in the room over our heads, as if several people were walking, then run up and down stairs, and was so outrageous that we thought the children would be frighted, so your father and I rose, and went down in the dark to light a candle. Just as we came to the bottom of the broad stairs, having hold of each other, on my side there seemed as if somebody had emptied a bag of money at my feet; and on his, as if all the bottles under the stairs (which were many) had been dashed in a thousand pieces. We passed through the

*The MS is in the handwriting of Mr. S. Wesley. The editor has only added the titles of the letters, denoting the writers, and the persons to whom they were written.