ith difficulties, which his father and mother
gradually removed, about the damnatory clauses in the Athanasian Creed,
and about the compatibility of the articles with his decidedly Arminian
views concerning election; and he was deeply influenced by the
_Imitation_ of St. Thomas a Kempis, by the _Holy Living and Dying_ of
Jeremy Taylor, and by Law's _Serious Call_. His life at Oxford became
very strict. He rose every morning at four, a practice which he
continued till extreme old age. He made pilgrimages on foot to William
Law to ask for spiritual advice. He abstained from the usual fashion of
having his hair dressed, in order that he might give the money so saved
to the poor. He refused to return the visits of those who called on him,
that he might avoid all idle conversation. His fasts were so severe that
they seriously impaired his health, and extreme abstinence and gloomy
views about religion are said to have contributed largely to hurry one
of the closest of his college companions to an early and a clouded
death.

The society hardly numbered more than fifteen members, and was the
object of much ridicule at the university; but it included some men who
afterward played considerable parts in the world. Among them was
Charles, the younger brother of John Wesley, whose hymns became the
favorite poetry of the sect, and whose gentler, more submissive, and
more amiable character, though less fitted than that of his brother for
the great conflicts of public life, was very useful in moderating the
movement and in drawing converts to it by personal influence. Charles
Wesley appears to have been the first to originate the society at
Oxford; he brought Whitefield into its pale, and, besides being the most
popular poet, he was one of the most persuasive preachers of the
movement.

There, too, was James Hervey, who became one of the earliest links
connecting Methodism with general literature. During most of his short
life he was a confirmed invalid. His affected language, his feeble,
tremulous, and lymphatic nature formed a curious contrast to the robust
energy of Wesley and Whitefield; but he was a great master of a kind of
tumid and over-ornamented rhetoric which has an extraordinary
attraction to half-educated minds. His _Meditations_ was one of the most
popular books of the eighteenth century. His _Theron and Aspasio_, which
was hardly less successful, was an elaborate defence of evangelical
opinions; and though at this time