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Thousands were convicted and truly converted. It was necessary that
these sheep be protected from ravening wolves. Wesley had no thought
of forming a new denomination, but he organized them under what
was called the Methodist Connection.
Mysterious and trying was the opposition which these preachers
encountered from the established church; yet God, in his wisdom, had
overruled events to cause the reform to begin within the church itself.
Had it come wholly from without, it would not have penetrated where
it was so much needed. But as the revival preachers were churchmen,
and labored within the pale of the church wherever they could find
opportunity, the truth had an entrance where the doors would otherwise
have remained closed. Some of the clergy were roused from their moral
stupor, and became zealous preachers in their own parishes. Churches
that had been petrified by formalism were quickened into life.
In Wesley’s time, as in all ages of the church’s history, men of
different gifts performed their appointed work. They did not harmonize
upon every point of doctrine, but all were moved by the Spirit of God,
and united in the absorbing aim to win souls to Christ. The differences
between Whitefield and the Wesleys threatened at one time to create
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alienation; but as they learned meekness in the school of Christ, mutual
forbearance and charity reconciled them. They had no time to dispute,
while error and iniquity were teeming everywhere, and sinners were
going down to ruin.
The servants of God trod a rugged path. Men of influence and
learning employed their powers against them. After a time many of the
clergy manifested determined hostility, and the doors of the churches
were closed against a pure faith, and those who proclaimed it. The
course of the clergy in denouncing them from the pulpit, aroused the
elements of darkness, ignorance, and iniquity. Again and again did
John Wesley escape death by a miracle of God’s mercy. When the
rage of the mob was excited against him, and there seemed no way of
escape, an angel in human form came to his side, the mob fell back,
and the servant of Christ passed in safety from the place of danger.
Of his deliverance from the enraged mob upon one of these occa-
sions, Wesley said: “Many endeavored to throw me down while we
were going down hill on a slippery path to the town; as well judging
that if I were once on the ground, I should hardly rise any more. But I
made no stumble at all, nor the least slip, till I was entirely out of their