Wesley Corpus

Because they did not dare to worship God according to other men's consciences ! So they and their families were, at one stroke, turned out of house and home, and reduced to little less than beggary, for no other fault, real or pretended, but because they could not assent and consent to that manner of worship which their worthy governors prescribed ! But this was not all. It was further enacted by the same merciful lawgivers: “If any person act as a Teacher, Tutor, or Schoolmaster, in any private family, before he has sub scribed hereto, he shall suffer three months’ imprisonment, without bail or mainprize.” Liberty for ever ! Here is security for your person, as well as your property. By virtue of the Act against Conventicles, if any continued to worship God according to their own conscience, they were first robbed of their substance, and, if they persisted, of their liberty; often of their lives also. For this crime, under this “our most religious and gracious King,” (what were they who publicly told God he was such 7) Englishmen were not only spoiled of their goods, but denied even the use of the free air, yea, and the light of the sun, being thrust by hundreds into dark and loathsome prisons ! 18. Were matters much better in the neighbouring king dom? Nay, they were inexpressibly worse. Unheard-of cruelties were practised there, from soon after the Restoration till the Revolution.* What fining, plundering, beating, maiming, imprisoning, with the most shocking circumstances ! For a specimen, look at Dunotter Castle; where young and old, of both sexes, (sick or well, it was all one,) were thrust together between bare walls, and that in the heat of summer, without a possibility of either lying or sitting; yea, without any convenience of any kind; till many of them, through hunger, thirst, heat, and stench, were set at liberty by death !