Wesley Corpus

Tues. 8.--I visited the classes, and wondered to find no witness of the great salvation. Surely the flame which is kindled in Dublin will not stop there. The next evening God did indeed kindle it here; a cry went up on every side; and the lively believers seemed all on fire to be “cleansed from all unrighteousness.” On Friday and Saturday I had much conversation with a very noted person. But I found none in town who expected that any good could be done to such a sinner as him ! Such a sinner? Why, were we not all such? We were dead in sin. And is he more than dead? Sun. 13.--Being informed I had shot over the heads of the soldiers, who did not “understand any thing but hell and damnation,” I took my leave of them this evening by strongly applying the story of Dives and Lazarus: They seemed to understand this; and all but two or three boy officers behaved as men fearing God. Mon. 14.--I rode to Cork. Here I procured an exact account of the late commotions. About the beginning of December last, a few men met by night near Nenagh, in the county of Limerick, and threw down the fences of some commons, which had been lately inclosed. Near the same time others met in the county of Tipperary, of Waterford, and of Cork. As no one offered to suppress or hinder them, they increased in number continually, and called them selves Whiteboys, wearing white cockades, and white linen frocks. In February there were five or six parties of them, two or three hundred men in each, who moved up and down, chiefly in the night; but for what end did not appear. Only they levelled a few fences, dug up some grounds, June, 1762.] JOURNAL. 97 and hamstrung some cattle, perhaps fifty or sixty in all. One body of them came into Cloheen, of about five hundred foot, and two hundred horse. They moved as exactly as regular troops, and appeared to be throughly disciplined. They now sent letters to several gentlemen, threatening to pull down their houses. They compelled every one they met to take an oath to be true to Queen Sive (whatever that meant) and the Whiteboys; not to reveal their secrets: and to join them when called upon. .