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implies, a marsh, passable during the greater part of the year only by a causeway, and of so little value that the whole was let for a yearly rent of four marks. It was gradually drained; the first bricks which are known to have been used in London were made there; and in process of time the greater part of the ground was converted into gardens. These were destroyed that the City Archers might exercise themselves there. The bow and arrow fell into disuse; Bedlam was built there; part of the area was laid out in gravel walks, and planted with elms, and these convenient and frequented walks obtained the name of the City Mall. But from the situation of the ground, and the laxity of the police, it had now become a royalty of the rabble, a place for wrestlers and boxers, mountebanks and merry-andrews; where fairs were held during the holydays, and where at all times the idle, the dissolute and the reprobate resorted; they who were the pests of society, and they who were training up to succeed them in the ways of profligacy and wretchedness.

Preaching in Moorfields was what Whitefield called attacking Satan in one of his strong holds; and many persons told him, that if he attempted it he would never come away from the place alive. They knew not the power of empassioned eloquence upon a topic in which every hearer was vitally concerned; and they wronged the mob, who seldom or never are guilty of atrocities till they are deluded and misled. No popular prejudice had yet gone forth against the Methodists;

to those among the multitude by whom he was known he was an object of devout admiration, and all the others regarded him with curiosity or with wonder, not with any hostile or suspicious feeling. The table which had been placed for him was broken in pieces by the crowd; he took his stand therefore, upon a wall which divided the upper and lower Moorfields, and preached without interruption. There was great prudence in beginning the attack upon Satan on a Sunday: it was taking him at disadvantage, the most brutal of his black guard were not upon the ground, or not engaged in their customary sports of brutality; and the preacher derived some protection from the respect which was paid to the Sabbath-day: Whitefield did not venture as yet to encounter them when they were in full force. His favourite ground upon week-days was Kennington-Common, and there prodigious multitudes gathered together to hear him; he had sometimes fourscore carriages, (in those days no inconsiderable number for London to send forth on such an occasion,) very many horsemen, and from 30 to 40,000 persons on foot: and both there, and on his Sunday preachings in Moorfields, when he collected for the orphan-house, so many * half-pence were given him by his poor auditors, that he was wearied in receiving them, and they were more than one man could carry home.

* At Kennington, 471. were collected one evening, of which 167. were in half-pence. At Moorfields, 52/. 19s. 6d., of which more than twenty pounds were in half-pence.

While he was engaged in this triumphant career Wesley arrived, and on the day after his arrival accompanied him to Blackheath, expecting to hear him preach: but when they were upon the ground, where about 12 or 14,000 persons were assembled, Whitefield desired him to preach in his stead. Wesley was a little surprized at this, and somewhat reluctant, for he says nature recoiled; he did not however refuse, and being greatly moved with compassion for the rich that were present, he addressed his discourse particularly to them: "Some of them seemed to attend, while others drove away with their coaches from so uncouth a preacher." Whitefield notices this circumstance in his journal with great satisfaction: "I had the pleasure," he says, "of introducing my honoured and reverend friend Mr. John Wesley to preach at Blackheath. The Lord give him ten thousand times more success than he has given me! I went to bed rejoicing that another fresh inroad was made into Satan's territories, by Mr. Wesley's following me in field-preaching in London as well as in Bristol."

It deserves particular notice that no fits or convulsions had as yet been produced under Whitefield's preaching, though he preached the same doctrine as the Wesleys, and addressed himself with equal or greater vehemence to the passions, and with more theatrical effect. But when Wesley, on the second day after his arrival, was preaching to a society in Wapping, the symptoms re-appeared with their usual violence, and were more than

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usually contagious. He had begun the service, he says, weary in body and weak in spirit; and felt himself unable to open his mouth upon the text which he had premeditated. His mind was full of some place, he knew not where, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and begging God to direct him he opened the Testament on these words, Having therefore brethren, boldness to enter into the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he hath consecrated for us, that is to say, his flesh,-let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water." If such a prologue to the scene which ensues should excite a suspicion of Wesley's sincerity he would be wronged thereby; suspicious as it appears, it is the natural representation of one who under a strong delusion of mind, retraced his own feelings after the event, and explained them by the prepossession which fully occupied his mind. "While," he says, was earnestly inviting all men to enter into the Holiest by this new and living way, many of those that heard began to call upon God with strong cries and tears; some sunk down, and there remained no strength in them; others exceedingly trembled and quaked; some were torn with a kind of convulsive motion in every part of their bodies, and that so violently, that often four or five persons could not hold one of them. I have seen many hysterical and epileptic fits, but none of them were like these in many respects. I immediately prayed

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that God would not suffer those who were weak to be offended; but one woman was greatly, being sure they might help it if they would, no one should persuade her to the contrary; and she was got three or four yards, when she also dropt down in as violent an agony as the rest. Twenty-six of those who had been thus affected (most of whom, during the prayers which were made for them, were in a moment filled with peace and joy,) promised to call upon me the next day; but only eighteen came, by talking closely with whom I found reason to believe that some of them had gone home to their houses justified; the rest seemed to be patiently waiting for it."

A difference of opinion concerning these outward signs, as they were called, was one of the subjects which had distracted the London Methodists, and rendered Wesley's presence among them necessary. The French prophets also had obtained considerable influence over some of the society; these prophets had now for about half a century acted as frantic and as knavish a part for the disgrace of a good cause, as the enemies of that cause could have desired. Louis XIV., at the commencement of his reign, laid down for himself a wise system of conduct toward his Protestant subjects: he perceived that to employ persecution as a remedy for erroneous opinions, implies an ignorance of the nature of the disease, and he acknowledged that the reformers had originally much reason on their side; but as a Roman Catholic, he regarded the doctrines of the Huguenots as damnable, and as a

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