Wesley Corpus

This sister wrote to her from another part of the kingdom, that she had dreamed the very same thing. She carried this letter to her father, a gentleman that lives not far off, and was surprised to hear that he likewise, on the same night, had had a dream to the same effect. The lad had been observed to come up, about noon, into his lady's apartment, with a case-knife in his hand; and being asked why he did so, he said, he was going into the adjoining room, to scrape the dirt off from his master's embroidered clothes.- His master now took the lad aside, and examined him strictly. After denying it for a considerable time, it was at length extorted from him, that he had always remembered, with indignation, his master’s severity to him, and that he was fully resolved to be revenged, but in what particular manner he would not confess. On this he was totally dismissed without delay. I HAVE lately heard; to my no small surprise, that a person professing himself a Quaker, and supposed to be a man of some character, has confidently reported, that he has been at Sunderland himself, and inquired into the case of Elizabeth Hobson; that she was a woman of a very indiffer ent character; that the story she told was purely her own invention; and that John Wesley himself was now fully convinced that there was no truth in it. From what motive a man should invent and publish all over England (for I have heard this in various places) a whole train of absolute, notorious falsehoods, I cannot at all imagine. On the contrary, I declare to all the world, 1. That Elizabeth Hobson was an eminently pious woman; that she lived and died without the least blemish of any kind, without the least stain upon her character. 2. That the relation could not possibly be her own invention, as there were many witnesses to several parts of it; as Mr. Parker, the two Attorneys whom she employed, Miss Hosmer, and many others. And, 3. That I myself am fully persuaded, that every circumstance of it is literally and punctually true. I know that those who fashionably deny the existence of spirits are hugely disgusted at accounts of this kind.