Wesley Corpus

‘To this people Mr. Whitefield last spring began to preach the gospel of Christ; and as there were thousands of them who went to no place of public worship, he went out into their own wilderness “to seek and to save that which was lost.” When he was called away, others went “into the highways and hedges to compel them to come in.” And by the grace of God their labor was not in vain. The scene was entirely changed. Kingswood does not now, as a year ago, resound with cursing and blasphemy. It is no longer the seat of drunkenness, uncleanness, and all idle diversions that lead thereto. It is no longer filled with wars and rightings, with clamor and bitterness, with strife and envying. Peace and love are now there: the people in general are become mild, gentle, and easy to be entreated; they do not cry, neither strive, and hardly is their voice heard in the streets, or indeed in their own wood, unless when they are at their usual evening diversions, singing praise unto God their Savior. ‘That their children also might know the things that make for their peace, it was proposed some months since to build a school in Kingswood; and after many difficulties, the foundation of it was laid in June last in the middle of the wood, on a place called Two-Mile-Hill, between the London and Bath Roads, about three measured miles from Bristol. A large room was begun there for a school, having four small rooms at each end for the schoolmasters (and hereafter, if it should please God, some poor children) to lodge in it. Two persons are ready to teach, so soon as the house is fit to receive them, the shell of which is nearly finished. It is proposed in the usual hours of the day to teach chiefly the poorer children to read, write, and cast accounts; but more especially, by God's assistance, “to know God, and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent”: the elder people, being not so proper to be mixed with children (for we expect scholars of all ages, some of them gray-headed), will be taught in the inner room, either early in the morning of late at night, so as their work nay not be hindered.