its endemic malady; and perhaps it was fortunate for him, after two years, to be summoned to his college, upon a regulation that the junior fellows, who might be chosen moderators, should attend in person the duties of their office. It was while he held this curacy, that he obtained priest's orders from the same prelate who had ordained him deacon three years before.

In consequence of this summons, he once more. took up his abode at Lincoln College, became a tutor there, and presided as moderator at the disputations which were held six times a week in the hall; an office which exercised and sharpened his habits of logical discrimination. Some time before his return to the University, he had travelled many miles to see what is called "a serious man." This person said to him, "Sir, you wish to serve God and go to heaven. Remember, you cannot serve him alone; you must either find companions or make them; the Bible knows nothing of solitary religion." Wesley never forgot these words; and it happened that while he was residing upon his curacy, such a society was prepared for him at Oxford as he and his serious adviser would have wished.

While Charles Wesley was at Westminster under his brother, a gentleman of large fortune in Ireland, and of the same family name, wrote to the father, and inquired of him if he had a son named Charles; for if so, he would make him his heir. Accordingly his school bills, during several years, were discharged by his unseen namesake. At length a gentleman, who is supposed to have been this Mr. Wesley, called upon him, and after much conversation, asked if he was willing to accompany him to Ireland: the youth desired to write to his father before he could make answer; the father left it to his own decision, and he, who was satisfied with the fair prospects which Christ Church opened to him, chose to stay in England. John Wesley, in his account of his brother, calls this a fair escape; the fact was more remarkable than he was aware of; for the person who inherited the pro

perty intended for Charles Wesley, and who took the name of Wesley, or Wellesley, in consequence, was the first Earl of Mornington, grandfather of Marquis Wellesley and the Duke of Wellington. Had Charles made a different choice, there might have been no Methodists, the British Empire in India might still have been menaced from Seringa patam, and the undisputed tyrant of Europe might at this time have insulted and endangered us on our own shores.

Charles, then pursuing contentedly his scholastic course, had been elected from Westminster to Christ Church, just after his brother John obtained his fellowship. He was diligent in study, and regular in his conduct; but when John sought to press upon him the importance of austerer habits, and a more active devotion, he protested against becoming a saint all at once, and turned a deaf ear to his admonitions. While John, however, resided at Wroote, the process which he had vainly sought to accelerate in his brother, was going on. His disposition, his early education, the example of his parents, and of both his brethren, were in unison; not knowing how or when he woke out of his lethargy, he imputed the change to the efficacy of another's prayers,-most likely, he said, his mother's; and meeting with two or three undergraduates, whose inclinations and principles resembled his own, they associated together for the purpose of religious improvement, lived by rule and received the sacrament weekly. Such conduct would at any time have attracted observation in an English university; it was peculiarly noticeable at that time, when a laxity of opinions as well as morals obtained, and infidelity, a plague which had lately found its way into the country, was becoming so prevalent, that the vice-chancellor had, in a programma, exhorted the tutors to discharge their duty by double diligence, and had forbidden the undergraduates to read such books as might tend to the weakening of their faith. The greatest prudence would not have sufficed to save men from ridicule, who at such an age, and in such a scene, professed to

make religion the great business of their lives; and prudence is rarely united with enthusiasm. They were called in derision the Sacramentarians, Biblebigots, Bible-moths, the Holy or the Godly Club. One person, with less irreverence and more learning, observed, in reference to their methodical manner of life, that a new sect of Methodists was sprung up, alluding to the ancient school of physicians known by that name. Appellations, even of opprobrious origin, have often been adopted by the parties to which they were applied, as well as by the public, convenience legitimating the inventions of malice. In this instance there was neither maliciousness nor wit, but there was some fitness in the name; it obtained* vogue; and though long, and even still sometimes, indiscriminately applied to all enthusiasts, and even to all who observe the forms of religion more strictly than their neighbours, it has become the appropriate designation of the sect of which Wesley is the founder.

It was to Charles Wesley and his few associates that the name was first given. When John returned to Oxford, they gladly placed themselves under his direction; their meetings acquired more form and regularity, and obtained an accession of numbers. His standing and character in the university gave him a degree of credit; and his erudition, his keen logic, and ready speech, commanded respect wherever he was known. But no talents, and, it may be added, no virtues, can protect the possessor from the ridicule of fools and profligates. "I hear," says Mr. Wesley," my son John has the honour of being styled the Father of the Holy Club; if it be so, I am sure I must be the grand father of it; and I need not say, that I had rather any of my sons should be so dignified and distinguished, than to have the title of His Holiness."

*The Rev. J. Chapman says, in a letter to Wesley, "The name of Methodist is not a new name, never before given to any religious people. Dr. Calamy, in one of his volumes of the Ejected Ministers, observes, they called those who stood up for God, Methodists."

One of the earliest members of this little society, Mr. Morgan, seems to have been morbidly constituted both in body and mind; and by the practice of rigorous fasting, he injured a constitution which required a very different treatment. But if his religion, in this point erroneous, led him to impose improper privations upon himself, it made him indefatigable in acts of real charity toward others; his heart and his purse were open to the poor and needy; he instructed little children, he visited the sick, and he prayed with the prisoners. In these things he led the way ; and the Wesleys who were not backward in following, have commemorated his virtues as they deserve. Morgan died young, after a long illness, in which the misery of a gloomy and mistaken religion aggravated the sufferings of disease. Wesley was accused of having been the cause of his death, by leading him into those austerities which undoubtedly had accelerated it; but in these practices Wesley had been the imitator, not the example; and the father, who had at first expressed great indignation at the extravagances of his son's associates, was so well convinced of this at last, that he placed one of his children under his care. Two others of the party were men who afterwards acquired celebrity. James Hervey was one, author of the Meditations, a book which has been translated into most of the European languages, and for the shallowness of its matter, its superficial sentimentality, and its tinsel style, as much as for its devotional spirit, has become singularly popular. Whitefield was the other, a man so eminently connected with the rise and progress of Methodism, that his history cannot be separated from that of Wesley.

George Whitefield was born at the Bell Inn, in the city of Gloucester, at the close of the year 1714. He describes himself as froward from his mother's womb; so brutish as to hate instruction; stealing from his mother's pocket, and frequently appropriating to his own use the money that he took in the house. "If I trace myself," he says, "from my cradle to my manhood, I can see nothing in me but a

fitness to be damned; and if the Almighty had not prevented me by his grace, I had now either been sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death, or condemned, as the due reward of my crimes, to be for ever lifting up my eyes in torments." Yet Whitefield could recollect early movings of the heart, which satisfied him in after life, that "God loved him with an everlasting love, and had separated him even from his mother's womb, for the work to which he afterwards was pleased to call him." He had a devout disposition, and a tender heart. When he was about ten years old, his mother made a second marriage: it proved an unhappy one. During the affliction to which this led, his brother used to read aloud Bishop Ken's Manual for Winchester Scholars. This book affected George Whitefield greatly; and when the corporation, at their annual visitation of St. Mary de Crypt's school, where he was educated, gave him, according to custom, money for the speeches which he was chosen to deliver, he purchased the book, and found it, he says, of great benefit to his soul.

Whitefield's talents for elocution, which made him afterwards so great a performer in the pulpit, were at this time in some danger of receiving a theatrical direction. The boys at the grammar-school were fond of acting plays: the master "seeing how their vein ran," encouraged it, and composed a dramatic piece himself, which they represented before the corporation, and in which Whitefield enacted a woman's part, and appeared in girl's clothes. The remembrance of this, he says, had often covered him with confusion of face, and he hoped it would do so even to the end of his life! Before he was fifteen. he persuaded his mother to take him from school, saying, that she could not place him at the university, and more learning would only spoil him for a tradesman. Her own circumstances, indeed, were by this time so much on the decline, that his menial services were required: he began occasionally to assist her in the public house, till at length he "put