into a Society for Scripture-reading and practices of piety, and, as the state of morals was peculiarly lax in that seat of learning, they were jeered by their fellow-students, called the Godly Club, and, on account of their methodical manner of living, were nicknamed "Methodists," which afterwards became the general designation of the whole sect or society in all its numerous subdivisions. Wesley was ordained in the Anglican Church, and assisted his father for awhile as curate, till an appointment was offered to him in Georgia. He sailed, accordingly, for America, in company with his brother and two others. He led quite an ascetic life at this period, slept frequently on the bare boards, and continually practised mortification. He remained in America till 1738, and then returned to England. He was disappointed in a matrimonial speculation while there, and had a lawsuit also on hands. Like all Protestant apostles, a comfortable settlement in life appeared to him the first consideration. This is one of the principal causes of the sterility of all their missions; if, however, they do not seek first the kingdom of God, they take care that all other things that the world can afford shall be added to them, as the investigations into the land tenures of New Zealand and the islands of the Pacific bear witness. While in America he associated a great deal with the Moravians, and became imbued, to a great extent, with their peculiar doctrines of grace, the new birth, and justification, and on is return paid a visit to Herrenhutt, to commune with Zinzendorf. He was not at all popular in America; he appears to have been a proud, self-opinionated man, filled up with an extraordinary idea of his own perfections. Indeed, it only requires a glance at his diary, which, it would appear, he compiled, not so much for his own self-examination as for making a display before others, to be convinced that he was a vain, proud man. He was always a determined enemy of Catholicity, and for his bigoted attacks on Popery he received a just castigation from the witty and eloquent Father O'Leary. He dates the origin of Methodism himself from a meeting held in Fetter-lane, London, on the 1st of May, 1738. "The first rise of Methodism," he says, "was in November, 1729, when four of us met together at Oxford; the second was in Savannah, in April, 1736, when twenty or thirty persons met at my house; the last in London, when forty or fifty of us agreed to meet together every Wednesday evening, in order to free conversation, begun and ended with singing and prayer." Whitfield, a fellow-student of Wesley, began to preach at this time to numerous congregations in the open air. He was a man of fervid eloquence, and the people, deserted, in a great measure, by the parsons of the Anglican Church, flocked in crowds to hear him, and as he could not obtain leave to preach in the churches, he adopted the system of field-preaching. His doctrine was thoroughly Calvinistic, and this was, ultimately, the cause of a separation between him and
