Wesley Corpus

Thur. 13.--We walked in the afternoon to see two persons that were sick near Phoenix Park. That part of it which joins to the city is sprinkled up and down with trees, not unlike Hyde Park. But about a mile from the town is a thick grove of old, tall oaks ; and in the centre of this, a round, open green, (from which are vistas all four ways,) with a handsome stone pillar in the midst, having a phoenix on the top. I continued preaching, morning and evening, to many more than the house would contain, and had more and more reason to hope they would not all*be unfruitful hearers. Fri. 14.--I procured a genuine account of the great Irish massacre in 1641. Surely never was there such a transaction before, from the yeginning ofthe world! More than two hundred thousand men, women, me es - re t aw ath lee ek ea 406 “REV. J. WESLEY’S JOURNAL. [ Aug. 1747. and children, butchered within a few months, in cool blood, and with such circumstances of cruelty as make one’s blood run cold! It is well if God has not a controversy with the nation, on this very account, to this day. Sat. 15.--I stayed at home, and spoke to all that came. But I found scarce any Irish among them. At least ninety-nine in a hundred of the native Irish remain in the religion of their forefathers. The Protestants, whether in Dublin or elsewhere, are almost all] transplanted lately from England. Nor is it any wonder that those who are born Papists generally live and die such, when the Protestants can find no better ways to convert them than penal laws and acts of parliament. Sun. 16.--We went to St. James’s church in the morning, (there being no service at St. Patrick’s,) and in the afternoon to Christ church. When I came out of the choir, I could not but observe well nigh the whole congregation drawn up in rows in the body of the church, from the one end to the other. I walked through the midst of them ; and they stared their fill: but scarce one spoke either good or bad. In the evening I had a large number of them in Marlborough-street, both within doors and without.