Wesley Corpus

However, some persons who were not of his mind, having pitched on a convenient place, (catled Bear Field, or Bury Field,) on the top of the hill under which the town lies; I there offered Christ to about a thousand people, for ‘ wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.” Thence I returned to Bath, and preached on, ‘“ What must I do to be saved?” to a larger audience than ever before. I was wondering the “god of this world” was so still; when, at my return from the place of preaching, poor R----d Merchant told me, he could not let me preach any more in his ground. I asked him, why: he said, the people hurt his trees, and stole things out of his ground. “« And besides,” added he, “I have already, by letting thee be there, merited the displeasure of my neighbours.” O fear of man! Who is above thee, but they who indeed “ worship God in spirit and in truth ?”” Not even those who have one foot in the grave! Not even those who dwell in rooms of cedar; and who have heaped up gold as the dust, aud silver as the sand of the sea. Sat. 21.--I began expounding, a second time, our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount. In the morning, Sunday, 22, as I was explaining, «‘ Blessed are the poor in spint,” to about three thousand people, we had a fair opportunity of showing all men, what manner of spirit we were of: for in the middle of the sermon, the press-gang came, and seized on one of the hearers ; (ye learned in the law, what becomes of Magna Charta, and of English liberty and property? Are not these mere sounds, while, on any pretence, there is such a thing as a pressgang suffered in the land?) a] the rest standing still, and none opening his mouth or lifting up his hand to resist them. 146 REV. J. WESLEY’S JOURNAL. [July, 1739