he mere _fidus Achates_, or man
Friday, of his brother John. Quite apart from his poetry, the effects of
which upon the early Methodist movement it would be difficult to
exaggerate, he played a most important part in the revival. As a
preacher, he was almost as energetic as John; and before his marriage he
was almost as effective an itinerant. His elder brother always spoke of
the work which was being done as their joint work; 'my brother and I' is
the expression he constantly used in describing it.[753]

As a general rule, the two brothers acted in complete harmony; but
differences occurred sometimes, and, when they did, Charles Wesley
showed that he had a very decided will of his own; and he could
generally make it felt. For instance, in 1744, when the Wesleys were
most unreasonably suspected of inclining to Popery, and of favouring the
Pretender, John Wesley wrote an address to the king, 'in the name of the
Methodists;' but it was laid aside because Charles Wesley objected to
any act which would seem to constitute them a sect, or at least would
seem to allow that they were a body distinct from the National Church.
Again, from the first, Charles Wesley looked with great suspicion on the
bodily excitement which attended his brother's preaching, and it is more
than probable that he helped to modify John Wesley's opinions on this
subject. On the ordination question, Charles Wesley felt very strongly;
he never fell in with his brother's views, but vehemently disapproved of
his whole conduct in the matter. He would probably have interfered still
more actively, but for some years before the ordination question arose
he had almost ceased to itinerate, partly, Mr. Tyerman thinks, because
he was married, and partly because of the feeling in many societies, and
especially among many preachers, against the Church. In 1753, when John
Wesley was dangerously ill, Charles Wesley distinctly told the societies
that he neither could nor would stand in his brother's place, if it
pleased God to take him, for he had neither a body, nor a mind, nor
talents, nor grace for it. In 1779, he wrote to his brother in terms as
peremptory as John himself was wont to use, and such as few others would
have dared to employ in addressing the founder of Methodism. 'The
preachers,' he writes,[754] 'do not love the Church of England. When we
are gone, a separation is inevitable. Do you not wish to keep as many
good people in the Church as you can? Somethin