CHAPTER X.
TEACHING IN PUBLIC.
Confusion as to dates was very common in the early-part of the eighteenth century. From force of habit people computed their time according to the Old Style; but on formal occasions, or when they thought of it, the New Style was adopted. This may probably account for the fact that the Rector of Epworth is said to have left behind him an unsatisfactory locum tenens when he went to Convocation in November 1710, but that the correspondence it led to between himself and his wife is dated February 1712.
The incident has hitherto been treated by every biographer of the Wesley family in a purely religious light, and the case has been stated as though the curate left to do duty in the church and parish had been a formalist of the driest order, and the congregation has invariably been described as longing to hear the "full Gospel" to which it had been accustomed when the Rector himself occupied the pulpit. This savours very much of the phraseology of "the
