Wesley Corpus

Sat. October 1.--I preached at Waywick about one, and then rode -- quietly on to Bristol. I examined the society the following week, leaving out every careless person, and every one who wilfully and obstinately refused to meet his brethren weekly. By this means their number was reduced from nine hundred to about seven hundred and thirty. Sun. 9.---I began examining the classes in Kingswood; and was never before so fully convinced of the device of Satan, which has often made our hands hang down, and our minds evil affected to our brethren. Now, as ten times before, a cry was gone forth, “ What a scandal do these people bring upon the Gospel! What a society is this! With all these drunkards and tale bearers and evil speakers in it!” I expected therefore, that I should find a heavy task upon my hands ; and that none of these scandalous people might be concealed, I first met all the leaders, and inquired particularly of each person in every class. I repeated this inquiry when the classes themselves met. And what was the ground of all this outcry? Why, two persons had relapsed into drunkenness within three months’ time ; and one woman was proved to have made, or at least related, an idle story concerning another. 1 should rather have expected two and twenty instances of the former, and one hundred of the latter kind. Thur. 13.--I preached in Bath at noon to many more than the room would contain. In the evening I preached in the street at Westbury, under Salisbury Plain. The whole congregation behaved well, though it was a town noted for rough and turbulent people. Fri. 14.--I preached at Reading; and on Saturday, 15, rode to London: Sat. 22.--I spent an hour in observing the various works of God in the Physic Garden at Chelsea. It would be a noble improvement of the design, if some able and industrious person were to make a full and accurate inquiry into the use and virtues of all these plants: without this, what end does the heaping them thus together answer, but the gratifying an idle curiosity ?