on his blue apron and his snuffers*, washed mops, cleaned rooms, and became a professed and common drawer." In the little leisure which such employments allowed, this strange boy composed two or three sermons; and the romances, which had been his heart's delight, gave place for awhile to Thomas à Kempis.

When he had been about a year in this servile occupation, the inn was made over to a married brother, and George, being accustomed to the house, continued there as an assistant; but he could not agree with his sister-in-law, and after much uneasiness gave up the situation. His mother, though her means were scanty, permitted him to have a bed upon the ground in her house, and live with her, till Providence should point out a place for him. The way was soon indicated. A servitor of Pembroke College called upon his mother, and in the course of conversation told her, that after all his college expenses for that quarter were discharged, he had received a penny. She immediately cried out, this will do for my son; and turning to him said, Will you go to Oxford, George? Happening to have the same friends as this young man, she waited on them without delay; they promised their interest to obtain a servitor's place in the same college, and in reliance upon this George returned to the grammarschool. Here he applied closely to his books, and shaking off, by the strong effort of a religious mind, all evil and idle courses, produced, by the influence of his talents and example, some reformation among his school-fellows. He attended public service constantly, received the sacrament monthly, fasted often, and prayed often more than twice a day in private. At the age of eighteen he was removed to Oxford; the recommendation of his friends was successful; another friend borrowed for him ten pounds, to de

*So the word is printed in his own account of his life; it seems to mean the sleeves which are worn by cleanly men in dirty employments, and may possibly be a misprint for scoggers, as such sleeves are called in some parts of England.

fray the expense of entering; and with a good fortune beyond his hopes, he was admitted servitor immediately.

Servitorships are more in the spirit of a Roman Catholic than of an English establishment. Among the Catholics religious poverty is made respectable, because it is accounted a virtue: and humiliation is an essential part of monastic discipline. But in our state of things it cannot be wise to brand men with the mark of inferiority; the line is already broad enough. Oxford would do well if, in this respect, it imitated Cambridge, abolished an invidious distinetion of dress, and dispensed with services which, even when they are not mortifying to those who perform them, are painful to those to whom they are performed. Whitefield found the advantage of hav ing been used to a public house; many who could choose their servitor preferred him, because of his diligent and alert attendance; and thus, by help of the profits of the place, and some little presents made him by a kind-hearted tutor, he was enabled to live without being beholden to his relations for more than four-and-twenty pounds in the course of three years. Little as this is, it shows, when compared with the ways and means of the elder Wesley at college, that half a century had greatly enhanced the expenses of Oxford. At first he was rendered uncomfortable by the society into which he was thrown; he had several chamber fellows, who would fain have made him join them in their riotous mode of life; and as he could only escape from their persecutions by sitting alone in his study, he was sometimes benumbed with cold; but when they perceived the strength as well as the singularity of his character, they suffered him to take his own way in peace.

Before Whitefield went to Oxford, he had heard of the young men there who "lived by rule and method," and were therefore called Methodists. They were now much talked of, and generally despised. He, however, was drawn toward them by kindred

feelings, defended them strenuously when he heard them reviled, and when he saw them go through a ridiculing crowd to receive the sacrament at St. Mary's, was strongly inclined to follow their example. For more than a year he yearned to be acquainted with them; and it seems that the sense of his inferior condition kept him back. At length the great object of his desires was effected. A pauper had attempted suicide, and Whitefield sent a poor woman to inform Charles Wesley that he might visit the person, and administer spiritual medicine; the messenger was charged not to say who sent her; contrary to these orders, she told his name, and Charles Wesley, who had seen him frequently walking by himself, and heard something of his character, invited him to breakfast the next morning. An introduction to this little fellowship soon followed; and he also, like them," began to live by rule, and to pick up the very fragments of his time, that not a moment of it might be lost."

They were now about fifteen in number; when first they began to meet, they read divinity on Sunday evenings only, and pursued their classical studies on other nights; but religion soon became the sole business of their meetings: they now regularly visited the prisoners and the sick, communicated once a week, and fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays, the stationary days of the Ancient Church, which were thus set apart, because on those days our Saviour had been betrayed and crucified. They also drew up a scheme of self-examination, to assist themselves, by means of prayer and meditation, in attaining the simplicity and love of God. Except that it speaks of obeying the laws of the Church of England, it might fitly be appended to the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. Its obvious faults were, that self-examination would leave little time for any thing else; that the habits of life which it requires and pre-supposes would be as burthensome as the rules of the monastic orders; and that the proposed simplicity would generally end in producing the worst

of artificial characters; for where it made one out of a thousand a saint, it would make the rest inevitably formalists and hypocrites. Religion is defined in this scheme to be a recovery of the image of God. It cannot be doubted that they who framed it were filled with devotion the most fervent, and charity the most unbounded, however injudicious in many respects the means were whereby they thought to promote and strengthen such dispositions within themselves. But Wesley, when he had advanced in his career, looked back upon himself as having been at this time in a state of great spiritual ignorance; and the two leading ministers, who drew up for the use of the Methodists, and under the sanction of the collected preachers, the life of their founder, remark, that in this scheme the great sincerity and earnestness of Wesley and his friends are discernable, but that "the darkness of their minds to gospel truths is very evident to those who are favoured with true evangelical views."

To the younger members of the University their conduct, which now rather affected singularity than avoided it, was matter of general ridicule; and there were older and wiser heads who disapproved their course, as leading fast toward enthusiasm and extravagance. Wesley had not yet that confidence in his own judgment by which he was afterwards so strongly characterized, and he wrote to his father for advice. The principles upon which he proceeded were unexceptionable, the motives excellent; and the circumstances which gave offence, and excited just apprehension, would not only be unintentionally softened in his own representation, but would lose much of their weight when reported from a distance, and through this channel, to one who was prepossessed by natural affection. The father says in reply, "As to your designs and employments, what can I say less of them than valde probo: and that I have the highest reason to bless God for giving me two sons together at Oxford, to whom he has given grace and courage to turn the war against the World and the Devil,

which is the best way to conquer them." He advised them to obtain the approbation of the Bishop for visiting the prisoners; and encouraged them by saying, that when he was an under-graduate he had performed this work of charity, and reflected on it with great comfort now in his latter days. “ You have reason," he says, "to bless God, as I do, that you have so fast a friend as Mr. Morgan, who I see, in the most difficult service, is ready to break the ice for you. I think I must adopt him to be my son together with you and your brother Charles; and when I have such a Ternion to prosecute that war, wherein I am now miles emeritus, I shall not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate. If it be possible, I should be glad to see you all three here in the fine end of the summer. But if I cannot have that satisfaction, I am sure I can reach you every day, though you were beyond the Indies." He exhorted them to walk prudently, though not fearfully; and prayed that God would keep them humble. "Be not high minded," said he; "preserve an equal temper of mind under whatever treatment you meet with from. a not very just or well-natured world. Bear no more sail than is ✓ necessary, but steer steady. The less you value yourselves for these unfashionable duties, (as there is no such thing as works of supererogation,) the more all good and wise men will value you, if they see your actions are of a piece; and what is infinitely more, He by whom actions and intentions are weighed will both accept and reward you."

Thus encouraged and thus advised, Wesley consulted the Bishop, who sanctioned and approved their visiting the prisons. This was no doubtful matter; the parts of their conduct which he might have regarded with disapprobation, were precisely those upon which it would not be thought necessary to consult him. About this time Wesley became personally acquainted with William Law, a man ▾ whose writings completed what Jeremy Taylor, and the treatise De Imitatione Christi, had begun. When