mother, to whom these feelings were imparted, agreed with him that the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination was shocking, and ought utterly to be abhorred. The church doctrine, she argued, if it were properly understood, in no wise derogated from God's free grace, nor impaired the liberty of man; for there could be no more reason to suppose that the prescience of God is the cause why so many finally perish, than that our knowing the sun will rise to-morrow is the cause of its rising. But she wondered why men would amuse themselves with searching into the decrees of God, which no human art could fathom, and not rather employ their time and powers in making their own election sure. "Such studies," she said, "tended more to confound than to inform the understanding: but as he had entered upon it, if her thoughts did not satisfy him, he had better consult his father, who was surely much better qualified for a casuist than herself."

The course of these studies, aided also by his meeting, for the first time, with a religious friend, produced a great change in Wesley's frame of mind. He began to alter the whole form of his conversation, and to set in earnest upon a new life. He communicated every week, and began to pray for that inward holiness, of the necessity of which Bishop Taylor had convinced him, and to aim at it with his utmost endeavours. Thus prepared in heart as well as in knowledge, he was ordained in the autumn of the year 1725 by Dr. Potter, then bishop of Oxford, and afterwards primate. In the ensuing spring he offered himself for a fellowship at Lincoln College. Even in college elections there is play enough for evil passions, and too much license allowed them. Though Wesley was not yet eccentric in his habits of life, the strictness of his religious principles was sufficiently remarkable to afford subject for satire ; and his opponents hoped to prevent his success by making him ridiculous. Upon this occasion his father told him it was a callow virtue that could not bear being laughed at. His mother encouraged him

in a different manner. "If," said she, "it be a weak virtue that cannot bear being laughed it, I am sure it is a strong and well-confirmed virtue that can stand the test of a brisk buffoonery. Many people, though well inclined, have yet made shipwreck of faith and a good conscience, merely because they could not bear raillery. I would therefore advise those who are in the beginning of a Christian course, to shun the company of profane wits, as they would the plague or poverty: and never to contract an intimacy with any but such as have a good sense of religion." Notwithstanding this kind of opposition, he attained the object in view, and was elected fellow in March, 1726, having been much indebted to his brother Samuel's influence, and to the good will of the rector of the college, Dr. Morley. This was a great joy to his father, who was now far advanced in the vale of years. In writing to congratulate him he says, "What will be my own fate before the summer be over, God knows: sed passi graviora. Wherever I am, my Jack is Fellow of Lincoln."

This removal enabled him to rid himself of all unsympathizing acquaintance, in a manner which he related, sixty years afterwards, in his sermon on leaving the world. "When it pleased God," he says, "to give me a settled resolution to be not a nominal, but a real Christian, (being then about twenty-two years of age,) my acquaintance were as ignorant of God as myself. But there was this dif ference: I knew my own ignorance; they did not know theirs. I faintly endeavoured to help them, but in vain. Meantime I found, by sad experience, that even their harmless conversation, so called, damped all my good resolutions. But how to get rid of them was the question which I revolved in my mind again and again. I saw no possible way, unless it should please God to remove me to another College. He did so, in a manner utterly contrary to all human probability. I was elected fellow of a college, where I knew not one person. I foresaw

abundance of people would come to see me, either out of friendship, civility, or curiosity, and that I should have offers of acquaintance new and old; but I had now fixed my plan. Entering now, as it were, into a new world, I resolved to have no acquaintance by chance, but by choice, and to choose such only as I had reason to believe would help me on my way to heaven. In consequence of this, I narrowly observed the temper and behaviour of all that visited me. I saw no reason to think that the greater part of these truly loved or feared God. Such acquaintance, therefore, I did not choose: I could not expect they would do me any good. Therefore, when any of these came, I behaved as courteously as I could: but to the question, When will you come to see me?' I returned no answer. When they had come a few times, and found I still declined returning the visit, I saw them no more. And I bless God," he adds, "this has been my invariable rule for about threescore years. I knew many reflections would follow; but that did not move me, as I knew full well it was my calling to go through evil report and good report."

6

From this time Wesley began to keep a diary, according to a practice which at one time was very general among persons religiously disposed. To this practice the world owes some valuable materials for history as well as individual biography; but perhaps no person has, in this manner, conveyed so lively a picture of himself as Wesley. During a most restless life of incessant occupation, he found time to register not only his proceedings, but his thoughts, his studies, and his occasional remarks upon men and books, and not unfrequently upon miscellaneous subjects, with a vivacity which characterised him to the last. Eight months after his election to a fellowship, he was appointed Greek lecturer and moderator of the classes. At that time disputations were held six times a week at Lincoln College; and however the students may have profited by them, they were of singular use to the moderator. "I could not

avoid," he says, "acquiring hereby some degree of expertness in arguing; and especially in discerning and pointing out well-covered and plausible fallacies. I have since found abundant reason to praise God for giving me this honest art. By this, when men have hedged me in by what they called demonstrations, I have been many times able to dash them in pieces: in spite of all its covers, to touch the very point where the fallacy lay, and it flew open in a moment." He now formed for himself a scheme of studies, resolving not to vary from it for some years at least.Mondays and Tuesdays were allotted for the classics; Wednesdays to logic and ethics; Thursdays to Hebrew and Arabic; Fridays to metaphysics and natural philosophy; Saturdays to oratory and poetry, but chiefly to composition in those arts; and the Sabbath to divinity. It appears by his diary, also, that he gave great attention to mathematics. But he had come to that conclusion, at which, sooner or later, every studious man must arrive,-that life is not long enough for the attainment of general knowledge, and that there are many things of which the most learned must content themselves to be ignorant. He says to his mother, "I am perfectly come over to your opinion, that there are many truths it is not worth while to know. Curiosity, indeed, might be a sufficient plea for our laying out some time upon them, if we had half a dozen centuries of lives to come; but methinks it is great ill husbandry to spend a considerable part of the small pittance now allowed us, in what makes us neither a quick nor a sure return." Full of business as he now was, he found time for writing, by rising an hour earlier in the morning, and going into company an hour later in the evening.

As his religious feelings grew upon him, that state of mind came on which led the enthusiasts of early ages into the wilderness. He began to think that such society as that wherein he was placed, hindered his progress in spiritual things. He thought it "the settled temper of his soul," that he should, for some time at least, prefer such a retirement as might

seclude him from all the world, where he might con firm in himself those habits which he thought best, before the flexibility of youth should be over. A school was proposed to him, with a good salary annexed to it, in one of the Yorkshire dales. Some persons, who knew the place, gave him what they thought a frightful description of it, according to the fashion of an age in which the sense of picturesque beauty seems hardly to have existed. They told him that it was a little vale, so pent up between two hills, that it was scarcely accessible on any side; little company was to be expected from without, and there was none within. "I should therefore," says he, "be entirely at liberty to converse with company of my own choosing, whom, for that reason, I would bring with me; and company equally agreeable, wherever I fixed, could not put me to less expense.

"The sun that walks his airy way,

To cheer the world and bring the day :
The moon that shines with borrowed light,
The stars that gild the gloomy night;
All of these, and all I see,

Should be sung, and sung by me :

These praise their Maker as they can,
But want and ask the tongue of man."

The option of this retirement, to which he seems at this time to have been so well inclined, was not given him, and his mother was not sorry that the school was otherwise disposed of: "That way of life," she said, "would not agree with your constitution, and I hope God has better work for you to do;" words which, perhaps, in after years, carried with them a prophetic import and impulse to his imagination. The elder Wesley was now, from age and infirmity, become unequal to the duty of both his livings, especially as the road between them was bad, and sometimes dangerous in the winter. John therefore, at his desire, went to reside at Wroote, and offi ciated there as his curate. Though a native. of the county, he did not escape the ague, which was then