hey
read the service with propriety, did not scandalize their cause by
gross indulgences, and did not meddle with the two exciting subjects
of all ages,--politics and religion,--they were sure of peace and
plenty. But their churches were comparatively deserted, and infidel
opinions had been long undermining respect for the institutions and
ministers of religion. Swearing and drunkenness were fashionable vices
among the higher classes, while low pleasures and lamentable ignorance
characterized the people. The dissenting sects were more religious,
but were formal and cold. Their ministers preached, too often, a mere
technical divinity, or a lax system of ethics. The Independents were
inclined to a frigid Arminianism, and the Presbyterians were passing
through the change from ultra Calvinism to Arianism and Socinianism.

The reformation was not destined to come from Dissenters, but from the
bosom of the Established Church, a reformation which bore the same
relation to Protestantism as that effected by St. Francis bore to
Roman Catholicism in the thirteenth century; a reformation among the
poorer classes, who did not wish to be separated from the Church
Establishment.

[Sidenote: Early Life of Wesley.]

John Wesley belonged to a good family, his father being a respectable
clergyman in a market town. He was born in 1703, was educated at
Oxford, and for the church. At the age of twenty, he received orders
from the Bishop of Oxford, and was, shortly after, chosen fellow of
Lincoln College, and then Greek lecturer.

While at Oxford, he and his brother Charles, who was also a fellow and
a fine scholar, excited the ridicule of the University for the
strictness of their lives, and their methodical way of living, which
caused their companions to give them the name of _Methodists_. Two
other young men joined them--James Hervey, author of the Meditations,
and George Whitefield. The fraternity at length numbered fifteen young
men, the members of which met frequently for religious purposes,
visited prisons and the sick, fasted zealously on Wednesdays and
Fridays, and bound themselves by rules, which, in many respects,
resembled those which Ignatius Loyola imposed on his followers. The
Imitation of Christ, by A Kempis, and Taylor's Holy Living, were their
grand text-books, both of which were studied for their devotional
spirit. But the Holy Living was the favorite book of Wesley, who did
not fully approve of the rigid asceticism of