olute supremacy. His word was literally law, and that law extended
not only to strictly religious matters, but to the minutest details of
daily life. It is most amusing to read his letters to his itinerant
preachers, whom he addresses in the most familiar terms. 'Dear Tommy' is
told that he is never to sit up later than ten. In general he (Mr.
Wesley) desires him to go to bed about a quarter after nine.[726] 'Dear
Sammy' is reminded, 'You are called to obey _me_ as a son in the Gospel.
But who can prove that you are so called to obey any other person?'
Another helper is admonished, 'Scream no more, at the peril of your
soul. Speak with all your heart, but with a moderate voice. It is said
of our Lord, "He shall not cry"--literally, scream.' The helpers
generally are commanded 'not to affect the gentleman. You have no more
to do with this character than with that of a dancing-master.' And
again, 'Do not mend our rules, but keep them,' with much more to the
same effect. His preachers in Ireland are instructed how they are to
avoid falling into the dirty habits of the country and the most minute
and delicate rules about personal cleanliness are laid down for them.

The congregations are ruled in almost the same lordly fashion as the
preachers. Of a certain congregation at Norwich Wesley writes, 'I told
them in plain terms that they were the most ignorant, self-conceited,
self-willed, fickle, untractable, disorderly, disjointed society that I
knew in the three kingdoms. And God applied to their hearts, so that
many were profited, but I do not find that one was offended.'[727] At
one time he had an idea that tea was expensive and unwholesome, and his
people are commanded to abstain from the deleterious beverage, and so to
'keep from sickness and pay their debts.' 'Many,' he writes, 'tell me to
my face I can persuade this people to anything;' so he tried to persuade
them to this. In the same year (1746) he determines to physic them all.
'I thought,' he says, 'of a kind of desperate experiment. I will prepare
and give them physic myself.' This indefatigable man provided for their
minds as well as for their souls and bodies. He furnished them with a
'Christian library,' writing, abridging, and condensing many books
himself, and recommending and editing others; and few, probably, of the
early Methodists read anything else.

As to the Conference, Wesley clearly gave its members to understand that
his autocracy was to be in no way