John Wesley & Christian Zeal — Geoffrey Thomas

John Wesley’s Family Background and Spiritual Heritage

I'm going to speak to you this morning on John Wesley and Tristan Veal. Now I came across the biography of Wesley, a number of biographies, and really these biographies fired me, gave me a new appreciation for this man.

And I live in Wales, about 40 miles away from the largest second-hand bookshop in the world. In a little village called Hay-on-Wye, a castle, a cinema, many shops have been taken over by an unusual gentleman named Richard Booth.

And this little town is just filled with millions of second-hand books. And I was going around there one day and he was pulling out a lot of books which he felt were only for pulping because they were in such poor condition.

And there was a set of Wesley's works, the 14 volumes, the third edition of Wesley's works, and I had them all for a dollar. And what is excellent about these works is the 200-page index in the 14th volume.

And I can remember a good Presbyterian friend of mine, Dr. Ivan Evans, coming into my living room one day and I said, look what I've just had. And the whole set of Wesley's works, look at them here, Ken Bob.

And he looked at me and he raised his nose and he said, do you fumigate this room? Well now, that's a good Presbyterian reply to the great Wesleyan. But when you get into Wesley, you find out so much that stimulates and excites and moves you to the heights of admiration, especially for his zeal.

Let me tell you something about Wesley's background. Wesley's great grandfather, Bartholomew Westley, was a Puritan preacher who was ejected in 1662 and became a rector in Dorset and preached to little congregations in the Lyme Regis Valley until his death.

His son, John Westley, Wesley's grandfather, was a protege of John Owen. He was a student at Oxford alongside Charnock and Howe and Philip Henry and Joseph Alain, and he became an itinerant evangelist and had many conversions.

Although he was never episcopally ordained, he married the daughter of John White, who was one of the two assessors at the Westminster Assembly and a bitter opponent of William Lord and Arminianism. In 1661, he was imprisoned for not using the prayer book and was interviewed by the Bishop of Bristol and recorded the whole interview, the repartees, the discussion they had in his diary, and a century later, John Westley, who had that diary, reprinted it as a justification for his own practice of itinerant preaching.

He was four times imprisoned and died when he was only 34. He died, in fact, before his father, Bartholomew Westley. On his mother's side, John Westley's grandfather was Dr. Samuel Annesley, who many considered to be the leading Puritan preacher.

At the age of six, he began to read 20 chapters of the Bible a day and continued to do so all his life. He was the minister of St. Giles' Triplegate, where Cromwell was married and where John Milton and John Fox were buried.

He wrote the morning exercises at Triplegate, a series of sermons on the conscience, very influential, and many of them reprinted by Westley. He, too, was ejected in 1662 and began to pastor the chief non-conformist congregation in London for 30 years.

At the communion season, he himself would take the cup around every one of his members with a verse of scripture suitable for the needs of everyone, which practice and which verse would live in the memory of his congregation for a long time subsequently.

He married another daughter of a Puritan lawyer who had been one of the lay assessors at the Westminster Assembly. So, two of Westley's great-grandfathers were present at the Westminster Assembly. Westley's father, Samuel, was born in 1662, that notable year.

He was intended for the non-conformist ministry, went to one of their colleges at Stoke Newington, and was set a project by one of his lecturers there that he was to read the Anglican system of ecclesiology, and he was to refute it.

Well, he read it and was persuaded by it, and so left then the ranks of the non-conformists and joined the Anglican, the Episcopalian church, still retaining many of his Puritan convictions, the emphasis on repentance and conversion.

He was a very strong Protestant. He had a great love for biblical exegesis. He wrote a commentary on the book of Job, and Westley kindly said of his father, he preached the same gospel that I preach, but it is doubtful really whether Samuel Westley grasped the doctrine of justification by faith.

Westley's mother was the remarkable Susanna, brought up in a splendid Puritan household, a father, Dr Samuel Annesley. She was his 25th child. It was a home of learning, of disciplined devotions, of moral teaching, full of theological discussion, and when she was 13 years of age, she reviewed the whole dispute between the dissenters and the Episcopalian church, and she concluded that the views of her father and this father at that were wrong, and she at 13 then became an Anglican.

She was attractive and highly intelligent, modest, earnest, a devout Christian. I believe she was one of the most capable women in England of her day. She married Westley's father when she was 19, and she bore him 19 children in 21 years.

It was a home of great poverty when the twin sons were... When twin sons were born, Samuel wrote to his bishop, last night my wife brought me a few children. There are but two yet, a boy and a girl. I think they're all present.

We've had four in two years and a day, three of which are living. Wednesday evening my wife and joined stocks which came to six shillings to send for coal. He spent some time in debtor's prison, during which time she ran the home.

The family was raised to learn the scriptures and sing hymns and zealously keep the Lord's day. She spent time alone every week talking independently to each child. It was John's turn on Thursdays to be instructed in the Bible by his mother, and Wesley passionately loved his mother.

She was his counselor and his friend for many years. It's something like the relationship between Dr. Machen and his mother. She read the Puritan classics. She rejected the doctrine of predestination.

She kept a journal. She examined herself. Every day the whole household was silent while she spent an hour in prayer and meditation reading the word. Every Sunday evening she held a little service. It started as a little service in her kitchen for the servants and the laborers in the local small holdings.

Twenty-five to thirty people gathered there at first, but it ended up with two to three hundred people packing into her kitchen and listening outside the windows as she exhorted them in the scriptures.

Well that was the scene of Wesley's upbringing, his background. While so much of dissent, of non-conformity, of Presbyterianism went into Unitarianism, Wesley was raised then in an evangelical Episcopalian home.

Wesley’s Deliverance from the Burning House

Now let me say something about the famous fire. The fire took place in 1709 when John was six. It was midnight on an August day and the flames somehow gripped the house and the neighbors came running up across the Fenlands seeing the vicarage in flames.

And Samuel was a very unpopular vicar and the farmers argued with him that he'd set it on fire himself and there was complete confusion there and they thought all the children were out until they heard a little cry, help! up in an upstairs window.

The father saw John's face, head outlined against the flames. He tried to run back into the vicarage but the house was like a furnace and so he called on his children to to pray with him to commit John to God and they were kneeling in a circle outside the house and while they were praying, two of the laborers seeing the boy's plight, went up to the wall.

One stood against the wall, another on his shoulders, stretched out into the darkness and told the boy to jump and the boy jumped out and was caught in midair and the roof caved in behind him and when they got up from their knees the laborers handed John over to Samuel, his father.

I could not believe it till I had kissed him two or three times. He said, come neighbors let us kneel down, let us give thanks to God. He has given me all my eight children, let the house go, I am rich enough.

That scene made a tremendous impression upon the young boy. Every year he kept the anniversary of his deliverance from the flames. It was a sign of God's hand upon him. He saw himself as a brand plucked from the burning.

He even wrote his epitaph at one stage with those words upon it, a brand plucked from the burning. His brother saw that and amended it, a brand not once only plucked out of the fire. He'd been saved from the eternal burning.

Wesley’s Early Ministry and Search for Assurance

Well Wesley went to charter house school and then to Oxford when he was 17. When he graduated he felt he should go into the ministry and he prepared with his usual diligence. He could read the original languages, Hebrew and Greek.

The Greek New Testament was in his hands all his life. He preached in the villages of Oxfordshire until he was appointed a fellow of Lincoln College Oxford in 1726. There had been a growing seriousness at this time.

He rose at four every morning and read such books as Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Holy Dying and Thomas Akempis' Imitation of Christ and William Law's Serious Call with a whole stress upon the inward life with its confusion of imparted and imputed righteousness.

He kept diaries and the diaries contained no notes of joy and hope, no singing and after two years he became his father's curate at Epworth until he returned then to Oxford as a fellow for another six years.

Six years of disciplined living again, an ascetic. He tried to keep the fast days of the ancient church. He tried to keep the old Sabbath, the Saturday, as a holy day. He visited prisons and the sick he gave away his spare money.

He was only getting 30 pounds a year and he had no peace with God. He wrote in his journal at this stage, I think one can never be too much afraid of dying before one has learned to live. And to the question in the scriptures, who will deliver us from the body of this death?

Wesley answered, death will deliver us. Death shall destroy at once the whole body of sin. And so there is this Gnosticism which is influencing him. Then in 1735 there came a break in his life but the death of his father.

He went to visit his father on his deathbed and Samuel put his hands on his head and prayed for him and his last words to him were, the inward witness son, the inward witness, that is the strongest proof of Christianity.

And John wrote, I didn't at that time understand those words. Well five months after his father's death, Wesley went to America, to Georgia. His motives were, he says, my chief motive is the hope of saving my own soul.

He came seeking salvation. There was a work religion. On board the ship he met evangelical Christians for the first time. He met Moravian missionaries. There was a violent storm in the middle of the Atlantic and the main sail was split and the seas crashed in, poured through the holes below deck.

There was complete panic by most people except these evangelicals. They were singing psalms in the middle of the storm. And afterwards Wesley staggered across to their pastor and said, weren't you afraid?

I thank God no, he said. But weren't you, your women and children, weren't they afraid? Oh no, our women and children aren't afraid to die. Well as soon as he arrived in Georgia, he went to meet the leader of this evangelical community, Spangenberg, the second in command to count Zinzendorf and later, of course, his successor.

He wanted to discuss his vocation of being a preacher and Spangenberg hadn't got on, hadn't spoken to him very long before he discovered that this man had little understanding of the Christian faith. Do you know yourself?

Have you the witness within yourself? Does the Spirit of God bear witness with you, a spirit, that you are a child of God? Well Wesley had never been asked those questions before and was confused. How to answer?

Spangenberg followed up, do you know Jesus Christ? I know he's the savior of the world. True, do you know he has saved you? I hope he has died to save me. Do you know yourself? Now I do, he said, and he wrote in his journal alongside the report of that conversation, they were vain words.

Well the whole time in Georgia was a disaster. The Indians weren't the simple expectant people that he expected them to be and his preaching of the law and mortification and self-denial to them didn't help them in any way.

It was like ironing dirty linen. He returned after two years, he recorded in his diary as the ship came to land's end off the English coast. I went to America to convert the Indians, but oh who shall convert me?

Who, what is he that will deliver me from this evil heart of unbelief? I have a fair summer religion. It is now two years and almost four months since I left my country and what have I learned myself?

Why what I least expected that I who went to America to convert others was never myself converted to God. Within a week of arriving he was at London and again looked for the evangelicals, the Moravian community, their leader Peter Burla, 10 years younger than Wesley, sent by Zinzendorf to be a missionary to England and America.

They had long conversations together and one phrase of Burla stuck in Wesley's mind, my brother, my brother, that philosophy of yours must be purged away. Within a month he came under conviction of his sin and of his unbelief.

He could see by faith alone we are saved. What should he do he asked Burla, should he stop preaching? Burla said preach faith till you have it and then because you have it you will preach faith. At this time he began to pray extemporaneously in public meetings and to preach personal faith in Christ, but there was still a hang-up.

I couldn't comprehend what Burla spoke of an instantaneous work of conversion. I couldn't understand how this faith should be given in a moment, how a man could at once be thus turned from darkness to light, from sin and misery to righteousness and joy in the Holy Ghost.

I searched the scriptures again touching this very thing, particularly the Acts of the Apostles, but to my utter astonishment found scarce any instances there of any other than instantaneous conversion.

Scarce any so slow as that of Paul who was three days in the pangs of a new birth. I had but one retreat to Burla, namely thus I grant God wrought in the first ages of Christianity, but the times have changed.

What reason have I to believe he works in the same manner now? Well on Sunday the 23rd of April Burla promised to bring in some living witnesses, so he brought in some converted people, four Christians and he sat them there in front of Wesley and one by one they testified to him of the work of grace in their own hearts and what God had done for them.

They sang a hymn together at the end and Wesley couldn't sing it for weeping and Burla prayed with him. Burla said I called upon the blood-covered name of the Savior for mercy on this sinner. The next week they met together and Burla kept talking to him.

Within a fortnight he left for Carolina. I beseech you believe in your Jesus Christ he wrote to him. This is a time of seeking on the part of Wesley. On May the 24th he woke up and he opened his New Testament and he read there that are given unto us succeeding great and precious promises that we should be made partakers of the divine nature.

He went to St. Paul's Cathedral and the choir sang there out of the depths of I cry to thee O Lord hear my voice may thy ear be attentive to the voice of my supplication. There was an earnest given to him in that scripture and in that psalm of God's intention to be merciful to him.

In the evening well let me read these familiar words to you. I went very unwillingly to the society in Alder Gate Street where one was reading Luther's preface to the epistle to the Romans. About a quarter to nine while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ I felt my heart strangely warmed.

I felt I did trust in Christ. Christ alone for salvation and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sin even mine and saved me from the law of sin and death. His younger brother Charles who'd been converted the previous week and was sick was visited immediately.

An hour later they trooped in to his bedroom with his friends. I believe he said we sang a hymn with great joy and parted with prayer. Now that is one of the most famous conversions in the history of the church and it seems to me one of the most significant features of it is the age of Wesley.

He was 35 years old. He was at an age when many another's life's work was over. Brainerd and McShane and Henry Martin were the best years of many preachers like Bertrand were arguably behind them. Here Wesley's life work was beginning and that is so encouraging to all of us isn't it when we think when we're over 35 well the best years of our lives are behind us.

Who knows what great new things God will have for us. Today in the postman's park near the post office headquarters in London all those gate streets in the house are flattened long since but there's a plaque on a wall at the place where it stood and the London City Mission has opened air meetings just by that plaque in that park all through the summer months.

Wesley’s Sermon on Salvation by Grace Through Faith

Well five days later on a Sunday in a large fashionable company in London Wesley sat for a meal and of course turned the conversation around testifying to them of his faith in Christ that he'd been converted and they all must be converted.

Well it was sheer bad taste and so after the supper his hostess Mrs John Sutton wrote a letter to his brother Samuel Wesley who was a high Anglican preacher whom now Wesley was going to visit and she said convert John while he's with you for after his behavior on Sunday when you hear it you'll think him a not quite right man.

If a stop isn't put to this the mischief he'll do wherever he goes among the ignorant but well-meaning Christians will be very great. Two weeks after his conversion Wesley was invited to preach the official university sermon at Oxford by the vice-chancellor at St Mary's Oxford and the whole university was assembled the doctors the masters the graduates the scholars he'd been converted 18 days he entered the pulpit and he announced his text Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 8 by grace are ye saved through faith.

And then he opens up the the text what faith is through which we are saved. Not historical not the faith of demons not the faith of apostles but one faith in Christ a whole ascent to the gospel a full reliance on the blood of Christ a trust in the merits of his life and death and resurrection a resting upon him as our atonement and life as given for us as living in us a closing with him a cleaving to him as our wisdom righteousness sanctification and redemption in one word our salvation.

You are saved from sin through faith all past sin all guilt all fear all the power of sin that is outlined. And then he begins. Ah some will say this is an uncomfortable doctrine. Nay it is very full of comfort to all sinners that whosoever believeth in him shall not be ashamed that the same lord over all is rich in mercy unto all who call upon him.

Sure is comfort highest heaven strong as death. What mercy for all. For Zacchaeus the public robber for Mary Magdalene of common harlot. I can hear someone say then I even I may hope for mercy. I'm sure you may.

You who are afflicted whom none has comforted. God will not reject your prayer. No. Perhaps he will say the next hour be of good cheer. Thy sins are forgiven me so forgiven that they shall reign over thee.

No more. Yea. And that holy spirit shall bear witness with thy spirit that thou art a child of God. Oh glad tidings tidings of great joy which are sent unto all people. For everyone that thirsteth coming to the waters coming and by without money without price whatsoever.

Your sins are though red like crimson though more than the hairs of your head return to the lord. He will have mercy upon you and to our God. For he will abundantly pardon. This must be the foundation of all our preaching.

It must be preached first and not to all. To whom then are we not to preach it. Whom shall we leave out. The poor. Oh they have a peculiar right to have the gospel preached to them the unlearned the young the sinners.

Least of all he came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. Why then if any we are to leave out the rich and the learned and the reputable and the moral men. Truly they accept themselves often from hearing.

Yet we must speak the words of our lord. For here is the tenor of our commission. Go and preach the gospel to every creature. It goes on like that gracefully powerful. It is the first sermon um in the book of sermons the volumes of wesley's works.

And he preaches again and again at oxford to the students and the university. There are five um sermons there on the almost christian and awake vow that sleepers their most powerful sermons. And here he is then 18 days after his conversion and the fire of god is upon him.

Open-Air Preaching and the Spread of Wesley’s Ministry

He goes from oxford to the continent for three months and visits the moravian christians. And when he returns he begins preaching in earnest in the london churches one by one. The doors are closed against him.

He is not allowed to return. Indeed the pulpit of great saint helens was closed to him for 52 years preached there in the morning. They wouldn't allow him to preach there again. 52 years later they allowed him to preach there again.

And he wrote in his diary on the second occasion. What has god wrought. Since that time he went to bristol and oxford. The same things happened even in his father's old church at atworth. The vicar didn't allow him to preach there.

People began crowding to hear him. He was preaching four or five times a day when churches are open there then in rooms and private houses two three hundred people packing into parlors to hear him preach with great conviction.

It is well known how he began to preach in the open air which field had had the same problems being refused permission to preach in consecrated buildings until the bishop agreed which field was going to newgate prison and then to kingswood the mining area near bristol.

There was an awful need there because of the poverty and the squalor. And so on the 17th of february 1739 he had preached in the open air a little hill a natural pulpit for 200 miners. And by the end of march there were 20 000 people gathering there to hear Whitfield's preach.

The fire was kindled in the country. He invited Wesley come quickly he said and see what's happening here in bristol. Wesley was reluctant and Charles his brother was positively against it. And so Wesley with one of his weaknesses took a lot and a lot said go.

So he went. He arrived in bristol on the 31st of march and on april 1st he followed Whitfield around watching and looking with amazement seeing what Whitfield was doing seeing the great crowds hanging onto the word the power of Whitfield's ministry.

The next day he took the plunge at four o 'clock he preached to 3 000 people announcing his text Isaiah 61 1 and 2. The spirit of the lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.

He has sent me to heal the broken-hearted to preach deliverance to the captive and recovery of sight to them that are blind to proclaim the acceptable year of the lord. And William Webb was converted on that occasion 30 years old his first convert.

He lived 67 more years full of peace and joy in believing. There's a beacon there now on Hannah Mount 65 feet high with a flashing green light on it and a plaque and an extract from Whitfield's journals and Wesley's journals where the beginning of open-air preaching and the evangelical awakening of the 18th century began.

This then was Wesley's great work the preaching of his lifetime which he spent more than 50 years. He started that April in 1739 and by the end of the year he preached 500 sermons only eight in buildings.

He had invitations everywhere to preach and so here we find him doing a series on Romans on Saturday nights in Bristol and going to Newgate prison and doing a series on John. And soon there are enormous congregations everywhere.

He and Whitfield in London are preaching to 14 ,000 people for usefulness. There is nothing that can compare with open-air preaching. He said. His voice was clear and strong. It wasn't as rich as Whitfield's.

It was measured the distance it could carry 84 yards and heard perfectly. He spoke of the language of the faith and the hands. And he sometimes thought that Whitfield's actions were too violent. He often preached with his hands held high and prayed extemporaneously always wore a gown and cassock and Geneva band in the open air nursed to pray.

And the text he most commonly preached upon in his open-air ministry was the verse from Corinthian Jesus Christ who of God is made unto us wisdom righteousness sanctification and redemption. It's very significant.

I think such a theological text should be the text that he used so much in open-air preaching. The sermons were printed and they were sold by the thousands. They were used as trucks then as tests of orthodoxy guidelines to orthodox evangelical doctrine.

They were used for reading in the little society meetings when there was no Wesleyan preacher who could minister to them um in cricket on the Derby Nottingham border that the preacher failed to arrive one Sunday and so the steward the the elder in the congregation went to across the way to his home and brought back some of the sermons of Wesleyan to look to the congregation nervously and said well I've got um several sermons here and I'll read one of them but I don't know which one to the voice came from the gallery read the shortest Henry.

And of course Wesley kept the journal. He began it in 1735 October the 14th and he ended it on October the 24th 1790 54 years. He kept the journal 21 neat volume. His base was London where there was a foundry which had been ruined.

They were casting a cannon. The cannon had exploded and killed many people and devastated this building and they bought it for 115 pounds and spent 700 pounds repairing it. They put an apartment there for Wesley a chapel a book room for literature stable a study.

But he was never in London long because he was always in demand for preaching. He traveled a quarter of a million miles and preached 40 ,000 sermons and wrote over 200 pamphlets and books. And he often walked.

When he was in Georgia he was walking a thousand miles a year. When he was 85 he was still capable of walking five miles in a day but um he usually rode on his horse about 65 miles. But in his 60s he grew tired of the horse and they had a carriage specially built for him which had a bookcase fitted into it and it was his study and his office and his library.

And even when he was on board ships as often he went across to Ireland he'd sit in his carriage on top of the ship and go across in that way. In the early years there was tremendous hardship and poverty.

When he went down to Cornwall they walked down or two of them shared a horse between them and took it in turn to ride it between three of them and they lived on black blackberries mulberries. As they went down in St Ives he and John Nelson had to sleep on the floor.

Well Wesley using Nelson's top coat as a pillow and Nelson using Birkett's notes on the New Testament as his pillow. And there for two weeks they slept on the floor and preached in St Ives in the open air and the chiming church clock would wake them on the hours at three o 'clock.

Nelson woke up one night and groaned as he turned over so stiff lying on the floor and Wesley called across him through the darkness. Cheer up brother the skin is only off one side so far. So Wesley claimed that he never lost a night's sleep and that he could he could sleep anywhere just for a few minutes.

He preached at everywhere doorways and barns and main streets market places the horse block the steps of Cardiff Castle in hollows on rocks village greens in a bowling green a shooting range a brickyard cliff tops and beaches quayside forge rooms butter market theatres ballrooms.

If he stayed in an inn then the first thing he did in the morning before he left he would preach in the yard to the people there. He would preach in the chapels of the baptists and the presbyterians the independents and the quakers wherever people gathered.

If he was walking and came across a funeral service he would wait for the service to be over. Then he would preach to the people that were gathered there. He worked on a triangle. His northern base was Newcastle on.

Isaiah 53 and Wesley’s Gospel Proclamation

And when he first went there with John Taylor and saw the town it's depravity it's drunkenness it's swearing and it's cursing you and I would be moved to despair. But he was moved to hope it was a town right for the gospel.

And so 7am in the morning he and John Taylor stood together at the end of a and struck up the hundredth psalm. All people that on earth do dwell sing to the Lord with cheerful voice. Three or four people gathered around.

And then he announced his text from Isaiah 53. He was bruised. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquity. The chastisement of our peace was upon him with his stripes we're healed.

For the time he'd finished preaching. There were 1500 people standing in that street. If you want to know who I am my name is at five o 'clock this evening with God's help I'll be here to preach again.

People were waiting for him greater crowds than ever. That was the pattern of his ministry at Epworth. He returned after 13 years and found an old servant of his father's there and was delighted to find that this man was a believer offered the curate there his services to preach that night the man refused and so he went to worship there.

And the curate preached on quench not the spirit. And one of the ways of quenching the spirit was enthusiasm. He preached well John Taylor was the first out of the congregation. And as all the congregation left he told them at the door John Wesley will preach here tonight in the graveyard.

And so there was John standing on his father's gravestone preaching that night. And the kingdom of heaven is not meat and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the holy ghost. And every evening that week he continued to preach the great crowd of people.

Great indeed was the shaking among them. Lamentation and great mourning was heard God bowing their hearts so that on every side with one accord they lift up their voice and weep aloud. Surely he who sent his spirit to breathe upon them will hear their cry and will help them.

He often preached at five in the morning he would go to the village cross and the street and begin to sing. The five o 'clock service he said was the glory of Methodism and was grieved if he heard a Methodist preacher was neglecting the early morning service because then you'd catch the miner on his way to the pit and the steel worker on the way to the forge or the mill or the farm laborer going to the farm early rising was a great part of Wesley's life.

Dr. Lloyd-Jones says you can divide all all men into two classes. They're either eaters or sleepers. He gets that from Lord Horton. His was the king's physician that he worked with. Either you you're a good eater and a poor sleeper or you sleep well and you're a poor eater.

Everyone is one or the other. Well now Wesley must have been a good eater because he slept very little. He got an alarm clock. He found he wasn't sleeping through the night. He got an alarm clock and set it at seven still awoke in the night.

The next morning he set it at six still awoke in the night. Next morning set it at five still he was awake in the night. The next morning he set it at four and slept right through the night. And that was the time that he kept for the rest of his life.

He always woke up at four and he says very naively by the same experiment rising earlier and earlier every morning anyone may find how much sleep he really needs. Well Wesley used his time so powerfully.

Wesley’s Zeal Amid Opposition and Violence

He um he was confronted with tremendous violence. Players seeing a crowd would come across and would act and dramatize and put on a show would juggle and to try and would divert attention from him. But mobs were often screaming after his blood.

In Walsall a crowd came racing after him shouting drown him hang him crucify him tear his clothes off. He lost the lapel of his coat. He was hemmed in against the river and a man carried him across on his shoulder at foul mouth.

The crowd burst into the house and began to push down the last and plopped the wall the room where he was and the maid told him to hide in the cupboard but he suddenly opened the door and went out and confronted the mob.

Sure am i which of you has anything to say to me. To which of you have i done anything wrong to you. Or you or you pushing his way through them. He comes to the street neighbors countrymen. Do you desire to hear me speak.