Wesley Corpus

Your son was now at Holt: however, we continued to meet at our usual times, though our little affairs went on but heavily without him. But at our return from Lincolnshire in September we had the pleasure of seeing him again; when, though he could not be so active with us as formerly, yet we were exceeding glad to spend what time we could in talking and reading with him. It was a little before this time my brother and I were at London, when going into a bookseller's shop (Mr. Rivington, in St. Paul's Churchyard [Charles Rivington published The Christian's Pattern (Wesley's translation of Kempis) in 1735. See letter of May 28, 1725,n.]), after some other conversation, he asked us whether we lived in town; and upon our answering, ‘No; at Oxford,’ - ‘Then, gentlemen,’ said he, ‘let me earnestly recommend to your acquaintance a friend I have there, Mr. Clayton, of Brazen-nose.’ [John Clayton, son of a Manchester bookseller, was born in 1709, entered Brasenose in 1726, and was Hulme's exhibitioner in 1729. He was college tutor. He returned to Manchester in 1733, and became Chaplain of the Collegiate Church. Wesley visited him there on his return from Georgia; but after Wesley's evangelical conversion Clayton held aloof from him. See Tyerman's Oxford Methodists, pp. 24-56.] Of this, having small leisure for contracting new acquaintance, we took no notice for the present. But in the spring following (April 20), Mr. Clayton meeting me in the street, and giving Mr. Rivington's service, I desired his company to my room, and then commenced our acquaintance. At the first opportunity I acquainted him with our whole design, which he immediately and heartily closed with; and not long after, Mr. Morgan having then left Oxford, we fixed two evenings in a week to meet on, partly to talk upon that subject, and partly to read something in practical divinity.