Wesley Corpus

Paul's was very large and very attentive. The judge, immediately after sermon, sent me an invitation to dine with him; but having no time I was obliged to send my excuse, and set out between one and two." He had to reach Epworth for the Sunday, and got to Stilton, about thirty miles, by seven. Next morning he started between four and five, and through frost and flood covered the ninety miles to Epworth by ten that night. He says, "I was little more tired than when I rose in the morning!" -- tough, wiry little man that he was! The judge on this occasion was Sir Edward Clive, who had been made a Judge of the Common Pleas and knighted in 1753. He was just a year younger than John Wesley, and died in 1771. A caricature of him may be found in Hogarth's plate "The Bench," published in this very year, 1758. He is sitting between the Lord Chief Justice Willes and Mr. Justice Bathurst, who has fallen asleep. He is represented with a small head almost lost in his full-bottomed wig, a long, thin nose, and a nut-cracker chin. The sermon was published separately by Trye in the same year at the request of the High Sheriff and others, and went through some ten editions in Wesley's lifetime. The Rev. Richard Green calls it "a model sermon," and says, "It is well-formed, plain, practical, earnest; the statements are all supported by apt scripture, and the truth faithfully applied to the conscience." The title "The Great Assize" was a familiar name for the Last Judgement; it is found as early as 1340 in Hampole's Prick of Conscience, 5514, and several other instances are given in the Oxford Dictionary, s.v. "Assize." The preliminary note, "Preached at the Assizes," etc., in the modern editions is from the title-page of the second edition, also published in London by Trye; it appears in an abbreviated form in the 1771 edition, without the last clause "Published at the request," etc.