FOOTNOTES:[28]Naumann.
[28]Naumann.
[28]Naumann.
A.D. 1732
It was not only the beginning of a new commonwealth, destined to become an important State of the American Union, but also the spirit and purpose which led to it, that made the English colonization of Georgia a great and unique event in the history of this country.Seldom have military and philanthropic achievements been combined in the career of one man. James Oglethorpe was already a distinguished soldier and a member of the English Parliament when in 1732 he sailed with one hundred twenty men and founded Savannah. His express object was the settlement of Georgia, not only as a home for insolvent debtors, who suffered in English jails, but also for persecuted Protestants of the Continent. It was not the least of his services that on his second visit to the future "Empire State of the South" he took with him John and Charles Wesley, whose influence has been so marked among the American people.Prior to the undertaking of Sir Robert Montgomery in 1717, with which Stevens' narrative begins, few white men had visited the Georgia country, which was the home of various Indian tribes. De Soto traversed it on his great westward expedition (1539-1542), but little was known of it when in 1629 it was included in King Charles I's Carolina grant to Sir Robert Heath, or even at the time of the next Carolina grant (1663), when it passed to Monk, Clarendon, and others. Under the later proprietors it became known to Englishmen through such glowing descriptions as naturally aroused an interest in its settlement.
It was not only the beginning of a new commonwealth, destined to become an important State of the American Union, but also the spirit and purpose which led to it, that made the English colonization of Georgia a great and unique event in the history of this country.
Seldom have military and philanthropic achievements been combined in the career of one man. James Oglethorpe was already a distinguished soldier and a member of the English Parliament when in 1732 he sailed with one hundred twenty men and founded Savannah. His express object was the settlement of Georgia, not only as a home for insolvent debtors, who suffered in English jails, but also for persecuted Protestants of the Continent. It was not the least of his services that on his second visit to the future "Empire State of the South" he took with him John and Charles Wesley, whose influence has been so marked among the American people.
Prior to the undertaking of Sir Robert Montgomery in 1717, with which Stevens' narrative begins, few white men had visited the Georgia country, which was the home of various Indian tribes. De Soto traversed it on his great westward expedition (1539-1542), but little was known of it when in 1629 it was included in King Charles I's Carolina grant to Sir Robert Heath, or even at the time of the next Carolina grant (1663), when it passed to Monk, Clarendon, and others. Under the later proprietors it became known to Englishmen through such glowing descriptions as naturally aroused an interest in its settlement.
It was not until 1717 that any effort was made to improve the lands between the Savannah and the Altamaha. In that year Sir Robert Montgomery, Bart., whose father was joined with Lord Cardross in his measures for establishing a Scots colony in Port Royal, publishedA Discourse Concerning the Designed Establishment of a new Colony to the South of Carolina, in what he termed "the most delightful country in the universe." This pamphlet was accompanied by a beautiful but fanciful plan representing the form of settling the districts or county divisions in his province, which he styled "the Margraviate of Azilia." In hisdescription of the country he writes "that Nature has not blessed the world with any tract which can be preferable to it; that Paradise, with all her virgin beauties, may be modestly supposed, at most, but equal to its native excellencies."
Having obtained, from the Lords Proprietors of Carolina a grant of the lands between Savannah and the Altamaha, he issued his proposals for settling this "future Eden"; but, though garnished with the most glowing descriptions, and set forth under the most captivating attractions, they were issued in vain; and the three years having expired within which he was to make the settlement or forfeit the land, the territory reverted to Carolina, and his scheme of colonization came to an end. The Margraviate of Azilia was magnificent upon the map, but was impracticable in reality.
The Lords Proprietors of Carolina having failed in their scheme of government, and their authority being crushed by the provincial revolution of 1719, they sold their titles and interest in that province to Parliament in 1729; reserving to Lord John Carteret, one of their number, the remaining eight shares of the country, as he refused to join the others in disposing of the colony. After the purchase of the territory of Carolina, which then extended from the St. John's to Albemarle Sound, it was deemed too large for one government, and was therefore divided into two provinces, under the respective titles of North and South Carolina. The territorial boundary of South Carolina, however, on the south, was the Savannah River; the remaining portion being then held in reserve by the British Crown.
The same year that the House of Commons resolved on an address to the King to purchase the rights of the Lords Proprietors to this territory, a committee was appointed by Parliament "to inquire into the state of the gaols of the kingdom, and to report the same and their opinion thereupon to the House." This committee, raised on the motion of James Oglethorpe, Esq., in consequence of the barbarities which had fallen under his own observation while visiting some debtors in the Fleet and Marshalsea prisons, consisted of ninety-six persons, and Oglethorpe was made its chairman. A more honorable or effective committee could scarcely have been appointed. It embraced some of the first men in England; among them thirty-eight noblemen,the chancellor of the exchequer, the master of rolls, Admiral Vernon and Field Marshal Wade. They entered upon their labors with zeal and diligence, and not only made inquiries, through the Fleet prison, but also into the Marshalsea, the prison of the king's bench, and the jail for the county of Surrey.
The philanthropy of Oglethorpe, whose feelings were easily enlisted in the cause of misery, rested not with the discharge of his Parliamentary duty, nor yet in the further benefit of relaxing the rigorous laws which thrust the honest debtor into prisons which seemed to garner up disease in its most loathsome forms—crime in its most fiend-like works—humanity in its most shameless and degraded aspect; but it prompted still further efforts—efforts to combine present relief with permanent benefits, by which honest but unfortunate industry could be protected, and the laboring poor be enabled to reap some gladdening fruit from toils which now wrung out their lives with bitter and unrequited labors. To devise and carry out such efforts himself Lord Percival and a few other noblemen and gentlemen addressed a memorial to the privy council, stating "that the cities of London, Westminster, and parts adjacent do abound with great numbers of indigent persons who are reduced to such necessity as to become burthensome to the public, and who would be willing to seek a livelihood in any of his majesty's plantations in America if they were provided with a passage and means of settling there."
The memorialists promised to take upon themselves the entire charge of this affair, to erect a province into a proprietary government, provided the crown would grant them a portion of the land bought in 1729 by Parliament from the Lords Proprietors of South Carolina, lying south of the Savannah River; together with such powers as shall enable them to receive the charitable contributions and benefactions of all such persons as are willing to encourage so good a design.
This petition, referred at first to a committee of the privy council, was by them submitted to the consideration of the board of trade, who, after a second commitment, made their report, that the attorney and solicitor-general should be directed to prepare a draft of the charter. This report, being laid before his majesty, was by him approved and he directed the proper officerto make out the charter. The charter thus prepared was approved by the King, but in consequence of the formalities of office did not pass under the great seal until June 9, 1732.
This instrument constituted twenty noblemen and gentlemen a body corporate, by the name and style of "The Trustees for establishing a Colony of Georgia, in America"; giving to the projected colony the name of the monarch who had granted to them such a liberal territory for the development of their benevolence.
The charter revealed two purposes as the object of this colonization: the settling of poor but unfortunate people on lands now waste and desolate, and the interposing of this colony as a barrier between the northern colonies and the French, Spanish, and Indians on the south and west. These designs the trustees amplified and illustrated in their printed papers and official correspondence.
Oglethorpe, in hisNew and Accurrate Account, declares: "These trustees not only give land to the unhappy who go thither, but are also empowered to receive the voluntary contributions of charitable persons to enable them to furnish the poor adventurers with all necessaries for the expense of the voyage, occupying the land, and supporting them till they find themselves comfortably settled. So that now the unfortunate will not be obliged to bind themselves to a long servitude, to pay for their passage, for they may be carried gratis into a land of liberty and plenty, where they immediately find themselves in possession of a competent estate in a happier climate than they knew before; and they are unfortunate, indeed, if here they cannot forget their sorrows."
This was the main purpose of the settlement; and such noble views were "worthy to be the source of an American republic." Other colonies had been planted by individuals and companies for wealth and dominion; but the trustees of this, at their own desire, were restrained by the charter "from receiving any grant of lands in the province, or any salary, fee, perquisite, or profit whatsoever, by or from this undertaking." The proprietors of other colonies were looking to their own interests; the motto of the trustees of this was "Non sibi, sed aliis." The proprietors of other colonies were anxious to build up cities and erect statesthat should bear their names to a distant posterity; the trustees of this only busied themselves in erecting an asylum, whither they invited the indigent of their own and the exiled Protestants of other lands. It was the first colony ever founded by charity. New England had been settled by Puritans, who fled thither for conscience' sake; New York by a company of merchants and adventurers in search of gain; Maryland, by papists retiring from Protestant intolerance; Virginia, by ambitious cavaliers; Carolina by the scheming and visionary Shaftesbury, and others, for private aims and individual aggrandizement; but Georgia was planted by the hand of benevolence, and reared into being by the nurturings of a disinterested charity.
But the colony was not to be confined to the poor and unfortunate. The trustees granted portions of five hundred acres to such as went over at their own expense, on condition that they carried over one servant to every fifty acres, and did military service in time of war or alarm. Thus the materials of the new colony consisted of three classes: the upper, or large landed proprietors and officers; the middle, or freeholders, sent over by the trustees; and the servants indented to that corporation or to private individuals.
Subsidiary to the great design of philanthropy was the further purpose of making Georgia a silk, wine, oil, and drug-growing colony. "Lying," as the trustees remark, "about the same latitude with part of China, Persia, Palestine, and the Madeiras, it is highly probable that when hereafter it shall be well peopled and rightly cultivated England may be supplied from thence with raw silk, wine, oil, dyes, drugs, and many other materials for manufactures which she is obliged to purchase from southern countries."
Such were the principal purposes of the trustees in settling Georgia. Extravagance was their common characteristic; for in the excited visions of its enthusiastic friends, Georgia was not only to rival Virginia and South Carolina, but to take the first rank in the list of provinces depending on the British Crown. Neither the El Dorado of Raleigh nor the Utopia of More could compare with the garden of Georgia; and the poet, the statesman, and the divine lauded its beauties and prophesied its future greatness. Oglethorpe, in particular, was quite enthusiastic in his description of the climate, soil, productions, and beauties of this American Canaan. "Such an air and soil," he writes, "can only be fitly described by a poetical pen, because there is but little danger of exceeding the truth."
With such blazoned exaggerations, strengthened by the interested efforts of a noble and learned body of trustees, and by the personal supervision of its distinguished originator, it is no matter of wonder that all Europe was aroused to attention; and that Swiss and German, Scotch and English, alike pressed forward to this promised land. Appeals were made by the trustees to the liberal, the philanthropic, the public-spirited, the humane, the patriotic, the Christian, to aid in this design of mercy, closing their arguments with the noble thought: "To consult the welfare of mankind, regardless of any private views, is the perfection of virtue, as the accomplishing and consciousness of it are the perfection of happiness."
These preliminaries settled, we are brought to the period when the plan, the charity, the labors of the trustees, were to be put into efficient operation. Fortunate was it for the corporation that they had among their number one whose benevolence, whose fortune, and whose patriotism, as well as his military distinction conspired to make him the fittest leader and pioneer of so noble an undertaking. That one was James Oglethorpe, the originator, the chief promotor, the most zealous advocate of the colony; an honor conceded by his associates, and acknowledged by all.
We are brought now to the dock-yard at Deptford, to behold the first embarkation of the Georgia pilgrims.
The trustees, having selected from the throng of emigrants thirty-five families, numbering in all about one hundred twenty-five "sober, industrious, and moral persons," chartered the Ann, a galley of two hundred tons, Captain John Thomas, and stationed her at Deptford, four miles below London, to receive her cargo and passengers. In the mean time the men were drilled to arms by sergeants of the guards; and all needed stores were gathered to make them comfortable on the voyage and to establish them on land.
It was not until the early part of November that the embarkation was ready for sailing.
On the 16th they were visited by the trustees, "to see nothing was wanting, and to take leave" of Oglethorpe; and having called the families separately before them in the great cabin they inquired if they liked their usage and voyage; or if they had rather return, giving them even then the alternative of remaining in England if they preferred it; and having found but one man who declined—on account of his wife, left sick in Southwark—they bid Oglethorpe and the emigrants an affectionate farewell. The ship sailed the next day, November 17, 1732, from Gravesend, skirted slowly along the southern coast of England, and, taking its departure from Sicily light, spread out its white sails to the breezes of the Atlantic.
Day after day and week after week the voyagers seem the centre of the same watery circle canopied by the same bending sky. No mile-stones tell of their progress. The way-marks of the mariner are the sun by day and the moon and stars by night; no kindred ship answers back its red-cross signal; but there they float, the germ of a future nation, upon the desert waters. Sailing a circuitous route, they did not reach the coast of America until January 13, 1733, when they cast anchor in Rebellion Roads, and furled their sails at last in the harbor of Charleston.
Oglethorpe immediately landed, and was received by the Governor and Council of South Carolina with every mark of civility and attention. The King's pilot was directed by them to carry the ship into Port Royal, and small vessels were furnished to take the emigrants to the river Savannah. Thus assisted, in about ten hours they resumed their voyage and shortly dropped anchor within Port Royal bar.
The colony landed at Beaufort on January 20th, and had quarters given them in the new barracks. Here they received every attention from the officers of His Majesty's Independent Company and the gentlemen of the neighborhood, and refreshed themselves after the fatigues and discomforts of their long voyage and cramped accommodations.
Leaving his people here, Oglethorpe, accompanied by Colonel William Bull, of South Carolina, went forward to the Savannah River to select a site for the projected settlement. Winding among the inlets, which break into numerous islands the low flatseaboard, their canoe at last shot into the broad stream of the Savannah; and bending their course upward they soon reached a bold, pine-crowned bluff, at the foot of which they landed to inspect its localities.
Reaching its top, a beautiful prospect met their eyes. At their feet, some fourteen yards below, flowed the quiet waters of the Savannah, visible for some distance above and traceable through its green landscape till it emptied itself into the ocean. Before them lay a beautiful island of richest pasturage, beyond which was seen the north branch of the Savannah bordered by the slopes of Carolina, with a dark girdle of trees resting against the horizon. Behind them was the unbroken forest of tall green pines, with an occasional oak draperied with festoons of gray moss or the druidical mistletoe. A wide expanse of varied beauty was before them; an ample and lofty plain around them; and, though spring had not yet garnished the scene with her vernal glories, sprinkling the woods with gay wild-flowers and charming creepers, and making the atmosphere balmy with the bay, the jessamine, and the magnolia, yet, even in winter, were there sufficient charms in the spot to fix on it the heart of Oglethorpe, and cause him to select it as the home of his waiting colony. "The landscape," he writes, "is very agreeable, the stream being wide and bordered with high woods on both sides," On the northern end of this bluff they found a trading-house and an Indian village called Yamacraw. The chief of this little tribe was Tomochichi; and the trader's name was Musgrove, married to a half-breed, named Mary. By an ancient treaty of the Creeks with the Governor of South Carolina, no white settlement was allowed to be made south of the Savannah River without their consent.
Satisfied with the eligibility of this situation, Oglethorpe applied to Mary Musgrove, who could speak both Indian and English, to obtain from the tribe their agreement to his settlement. They at first appeared uneasy and threatened to take up arms, but were pacified by her representations of the benefits which would accrue to them; and she gained from them a provisional treaty, until the consent of the whole nation could be obtained. The Indians, once made sensible of the advantages they would derive from the erection of a town within their limits, hailed their coming with joy and busied themselves in many offices of serviceand regard. The land selected, the consent of the tribe obtained, and the services of Mary secured as an interpreter in their subsequent intercourse with the red men, Oglethorpe returned to Beaufort on January 24th; and the Sunday after was made a day of praise and thanksgiving for their safe arrival in America, and the happy auspices which clustered round the opening prospects of Georgia. During the stay of the colonists in South Carolina they were treated with genuine hospitality, and when they departed they were laden with most substantial and valuable tokens of interest and benevolence.
Leaving the ship at Port Royal, Oglethorpe engaged a sloop of seventy tons, and five plantation-boats, and embarked the colonists on Tuesday, the 30th, but, detained by a storm, they did not reach their destination until the afternoon of Thursday, February 12 (new style), 1733. The people immediately pitched four large tents, being one for each tithing, into which municipal divisions they had already been divided; and, landing their bedding and other necessaries, spent their first night in Georgia.
As soon as the tents had been pitched, the Indians came forward with their formal salutations. In front advanced, with antic dancings, the "medicine man," bearing in each hand a spread fan of white feathers fastened to a rod hung from top to bottom with little bells; marching behind this jingling symbol of peace and friendship, came the King and Queen, followed by about twenty others, making the air ring with their uncouth shouts. Approaching Oglethorpe, who walked out a few steps from his tent to meet them, the medicine man came forward with his fans, declaiming the while the deeds of their ancestors, and stroked him on every side with the emblems of amity. This over, the King and Queen bade him welcome and, after an interchange of compliments, they were conducted to Oglethorpe's tent and partook of a pleasant entertainment hastily prepared for the occasion.
And now all was bustle upon the bluff. The unlading of goods, the felling of trees, the hewing of timber, the clearing of land, the erection of palisades—all supervised by the watchful eye and directed by the energetic mind of their leader—gave a brisk and industrious air to the novel scene.
On the 9th Oglethorpe and Colonel Bull marked out thesquare, the streets, and forty lots for houses; and the first clapboard-house of the colony of Georgia was begun that day. On March 12th Oglethorpe writes: "Our people still lie in tents; there being only two clapboard houses built, and three sawed houses framed. Our crane, our battery of cannon, and magazine are finished. This is all we have been able to do by reason of the smallness of our numbers, of which many have been sick, and others unused to labor, though I thank God they are now pretty well, and we have not lost one since our arrival."
The most generous assistance was given them by South Carolina. The Assembly, which met in Charleston three days after the arrival of the emigrants, immediately resolved to furnish the colony with large supplies of cattle and rice; to provide boats for the transportation of the people from Port Royal to Savannah; and placed under Oglethorpe's command the scout-boats and a troop of fifteen rangers for his protection. They further appointed Colonel William Bull one of the Governor's council, and a gentleman esteemed "most capable of assisting Oglethorpe in settling the colony by reason of his experience in colonial affairs, the nature of lands and the intercourse with Indians," to attend him and offer him his advice and assistance. Such was the readiness of all to assist him that the Governor wrote, "Had not our Assembly been sitting I would have gone myself."
Nor was private benevolence in any way behind public munificence. It is pleasant, in looking over the list of individual benefactions, to read such records as these:
February.—"Colonel Bull came to Savannah with four laborers, and assisted the colony for a month; he himself measuring the scantling, and setting out the work for the sawyers, and giving the proportion of the houses. Mr. Whitaker and his friends sent the colony one hundred head of cattle. Mr. St. Julian came to Savannah and stayed a month, directing the people in building their houses and other work. Mr. Hume gave a silver boat and spoon for the first child born in Georgia, which being born of Mrs. Close, were given accordingly. Mr. Joseph Bryan himself, with four of his sawyers, gave two months' work in the colony. The inhabitants of Edisto sent sixteen sheep. Mr. Hammerton gave a drum. Mrs. Ann Drayton sent two pair of sawyers to work in the colony. Colonel Bull and Mr. Bryan came to Savannah with twenty servants, whose labor they gave to the colony. His excellency Robert Johnson gave seven horses, valued at twenty-five pounds, Carolina currency."
These, with many other like records, evince their spirit in promoting the settlement of Georgia. And well they might; for the planting of this colony to the south of the Savannah increased their security from invasion by the Spaniards, and from the incursions and massacres of the Indian tribes, and still further operated as a preventive to the enticing lures held out to the negroes, by which desertion was rendered common and insurrection always dreaded. They were prepared, therefore, to hail the new colony as a bulwark against their Floridian and savage enemies, as opening further opportunities of trade, and as enhancing the value of their frontier possessions, which, according to the best authorities, were raised to five times their former value about Port Royal and the Savannah River.
The fostering care of South Carolina was to be repaid by the protecting service of Georgia. The labors of the colonists were great, but they had much to cheer them; and the assiduity and attention of Oglethorpe won upon their hearts so that they styled him "Father," and he exercised his paternal care by unremitting efforts to advance their welfare. He spared not himself in any personal efforts, but took his turn regularly in doing night-guard duty, as an example to the rest, and at times worked at the hardest labor to encourage their industry.
Having put Savannah in a posture of defence, supplied it with provisions, and taken hostages of the Indians, Oglethorpe set out for Charleston, attended by Tomochichi and his two nephews, being desirous of cultivating the acquaintance and securing the good offices of the Governor, council, and Assembly of South Carolina. At Charleston he was met at the water-side by his excellency the Governor and council, who conducted him to Governor Johnson's house, where the speaker and House of Assembly came to present their official congratulations on his arrival. His solicitations for assistance were promptly answered. The Assembly voted two thousand pounds currency for the assistance of Georgia the first year, and soon after the committee of supply brought in a bill for granting eight thousand pounds currency for the use of the new colony the ensuing year. The citizens also subscribedone thousand pounds currency, five hundred pounds of which were immediately paid down.
Grateful for this munificence Oglethorpe returned to Georgia to meet the great council of the towns of the Lower Creeks, whom he had desired to meet him in Savannah to strengthen the provisional treaty already made with Tomochichi, and secure their abiding amity for the future. In answer to this desire, eighteen chief men and their attendants, making in all about fifty, came together from the nine tribes of the nation, and met him in solemn council on the afternoon of May 18th. Speeches, not lacking in interest, but full of Indian hyperbole and the inflations of interpreters, were made by the chiefs, and answered by Oglethorpe through the medium of Messrs. Wiggin and Musgrove; and on May 21st the treaty was concluded.
The principal stipulations of it were that the trustees' people should trade in the Indian towns; their goods being sold according to fixed rates mutually agreed upon: thus, a white blanket was set down at five buckskins, a gun at ten; a hatchet at three doeskins, a knife at one, and so on. Restitution and reparation were to be made for injuries committed and losses sustained by either party; the criminals to be tried by English law. Trade to be stopped with any town violating any article of the treaty. All lands not used by the Indians were to be possessed by the English, but, upon the settling of any new town, certain lands agreed on between the chiefs and the magistrates were to be reserved for the former. All runaway negroes were to be restored to Carolina, the Indians receiving for each one thus recovered four blankets and two guns, or the value thereof in other goods. And lastly, they agreed, with "straight hearts" and "true love," to allow no other white people to settle on their lands, but ever to protect the English. The Indians, having received suitable presents, were dismissed in amity and peace; while Oglethorpe left the same day for Charleston, satisfied at having obtained, by such honorable means, the cession of such a fine country to the crown of England. This treaty was ratified by the trustees the following October.
The judicious and honorable conduct of Oglethorpe toward the Indians was of more security to the colony than its military defences. For a long time he had regarded the Indians withkindly feelings. At his suggestion Bishop Wilson, one of the bright and shining lights of the English Church, wroteAn Essay Toward an Instruction for the Indians, which he dedicated to Oglethorpe; and, now that he met them on their native soil, he evinced the same care for their interests, and through life manifested in all his acts his regard for their welfare. He was the red man's friend; showing in his intercourse with him the honorableness of William Penn, without his private interests to subserve; the generosity of Lord Baltimore, without a patent of immense tracts to secure to his descendants; the compassion of Roger Williams, without his mercantile views, to incite him to foster among the Indians kindness and regard.
Oglethorpe stands superior to all, because he had no private end to gratify, no lands to secure, no property to invest, no wealth to accumulate from or among the tribes whose amity he cultivated.
The art of the painter has commemorated the treaty of Penn with the Leni Lenapes, under the elm-tree of Shakamaxon; but neither this scene on the north edge of Philadelphia, nor the treaty of Roger Williams with "the old Prince Caconicas" at Seconke, nor the alliance of Leonard Calvert with the Susquehannas at Yoacomoco, excels, in any element of philanthropy or in any trait of nobleness, the treaty of Oglethorpe with the tribes of the Muscogees, under the "four pine-trees" on the bluff of Yamacraw.
A.D. 1738
Next to the founders of the world's great religions, the principal figures in religious history are the leaders of its new movements, the founders of sects or denominations. In this subordinate class few names outrank that of John Wesley, while those of his brother, Charles, and George Whitefield, their eloquent colleague, are inseparably associated with that of the great founder of Methodism, one of the most striking of the epochal religious movements of modern times.Although not intending to break with the Anglican Church, Wesley and his followers were carried out upon independent lines which led to the upbuilding of a distinct type of religious faith and organization, whose power has been especially marked in Great Britain and America, and has been increasingly spread throughout the world.Between Whitefield and John Wesley, in 1741, a separation occurred on points of doctrine, Whitefield adhering to a rigid Calvinism, while Wesley inclined to Arminianism, and thenceforth they followed their several paths. Although Whitefield founded no sect, he exerted a widespread influence by his presence and voice. Before their separation both preachers had been in America, and the personality and eloquence of Whitefield not only wrought a spell upon the multitude, but even exercised a degree of fascination over such a philosophical spirit as Franklin. Wesley's work in America was deeper and more enduring, and is still a growing feature of the country's religious development.Nothing could be happier for the present purpose than the treatment of this great religious movement, in its beginnings, as it is here dealt with by the dispassionate historian of England during the century in which the movement arose.
Next to the founders of the world's great religions, the principal figures in religious history are the leaders of its new movements, the founders of sects or denominations. In this subordinate class few names outrank that of John Wesley, while those of his brother, Charles, and George Whitefield, their eloquent colleague, are inseparably associated with that of the great founder of Methodism, one of the most striking of the epochal religious movements of modern times.
Although not intending to break with the Anglican Church, Wesley and his followers were carried out upon independent lines which led to the upbuilding of a distinct type of religious faith and organization, whose power has been especially marked in Great Britain and America, and has been increasingly spread throughout the world.
Between Whitefield and John Wesley, in 1741, a separation occurred on points of doctrine, Whitefield adhering to a rigid Calvinism, while Wesley inclined to Arminianism, and thenceforth they followed their several paths. Although Whitefield founded no sect, he exerted a widespread influence by his presence and voice. Before their separation both preachers had been in America, and the personality and eloquence of Whitefield not only wrought a spell upon the multitude, but even exercised a degree of fascination over such a philosophical spirit as Franklin. Wesley's work in America was deeper and more enduring, and is still a growing feature of the country's religious development.
Nothing could be happier for the present purpose than the treatment of this great religious movement, in its beginnings, as it is here dealt with by the dispassionate historian of England during the century in which the movement arose.
The Methodist movement was a purely religious one. All explanations which ascribe it to the ambition of its leaders, or to merely intellectual causes, are at variance with the facts of the case. The term Methodist was a college nickname bestowed upon a small society of students at Oxford who met together,between 1729 and 1735, for the purpose of mutual improvement. They were accustomed to communicate every week, to fast regularly on Wednesdays and Fridays and on most days during Lent; to read and discuss the Bible in common, to abstain from most forms of amusement and luxury, and to visit sick persons, and prisoners in the jail.
John Wesley, the master spirit of this society, and the future leader of the religious revival of the eighteenth century, was born in 1703, and was the second surviving son of Samuel Wesley, the rector of Epworth, in Lincolnshire. His father, who had early abandoned Nonconformity, and acquired some reputation by many works both in prose and verse, had obtained his living from the government of William, and had led for many years a useful and studious life, maintaining a far higher standard of clerical duty than was common in his time. His mother was the daughter of an eminent Nonconformist minister, who had been ejected in 1662, and was a woman of rare mental endowments, of intense piety, and of a strong, original, and somewhat stern character.
Their home was not a happy one. Discordant dispositions and many troubles darkened it. The family was very large. Many children died early. The father sank slowly into debt. His parishioners were fierce, profligate, and recalcitrant. When John Wesley was only six years old the rectory was burned to the ground, and the child was forgotten among the flames, and only saved at the last moment by what he afterward deemed an extraordinary providence.
All these circumstances doubtless deepened the natural and inherited piety for which he was so remarkable; and some strange and unexplained noises which during a long period were heard in the rectory, and which its inmates concluded to be supernatural, contributed to that vein of credulity which ran through his character. He was sent to the Charterhouse, and from thence to Oxford, where at the age of twenty-three he was elected fellow of Lincoln. He had some years before acquired from his brother a certain knowledge of Hebrew, and he was speedily distinguished by his extraordinary logical powers, by the untiring industry with which he threw himself into the studies of the place, and above all by the force and energy of his character.
His religious impressions, which had been for a time somewhat obscured, revived in their full intensity while he was preparing for ordination in 1725. He was troubled with difficulties, which his father and mother gradually removed, about the damnatory clauses in the Athanasian Creed, and about the compatibility of the articles with his decidedly Arminian views concerning election; and he was deeply influenced by theImitationof St. Thomas à Kempis, by theHoly Living and Dyingof Jeremy Taylor, and by Law'sSerious Call. His life at Oxford became very strict. He rose every morning at four, a practice which he continued till extreme old age. He made pilgrimages on foot to William Law to ask for spiritual advice. He abstained from the usual fashion of having his hair dressed, in order that he might give the money so saved to the poor. He refused to return the visits of those who called on him, that he might avoid all idle conversation. His fasts were so severe that they seriously impaired his health, and extreme abstinence and gloomy views about religion are said to have contributed largely to hurry one of the closest of his college companions to an early and a clouded death.
The society hardly numbered more than fifteen members, and was the object of much ridicule at the university; but it included some men who afterward played considerable parts in the world. Among them was Charles, the younger brother of John Wesley, whose hymns became the favorite poetry of the sect, and whose gentler, more submissive, and more amiable character, though less fitted than that of his brother for the great conflicts of public life, was very useful in moderating the movement and in drawing converts to it by personal influence. Charles Wesley appears to have been the first to originate the society at Oxford; he brought Whitefield into its pale, and, besides being the most popular poet, he was one of the most persuasive preachers of the movement.
There, too, was James Hervey, who became one of the earliest links connecting Methodism with general literature. During most of his short life he was a confirmed invalid. His affected language, his feeble, tremulous, and lymphatic nature formed a curious contrast to the robust energy of Wesley and Whitefield; but he was a great master of a kind of tumid and over-ornamentedrhetoric which has an extraordinary attraction to half-educated minds. HisMeditationswas one of the most popular books of the eighteenth century. HisTheron and Aspasio, which was hardly less successful, was an elaborate defence of evangelical opinions; and though at this time the pupil and one of the warmest admirers of Wesley, he afterward became conspicuous in the Calvinistic section of the party, and wrote with much acerbity against his old master.
There, too, above all, was George Whitefield, in after-years the greatest pulpit orator of England. He was born in 1714, in Gloucester, in the Bell Inn, of which his mother was proprietor, and where upon the decline of her fortunes he was for some time employed in servile functions. He had been a wild, impulsive boy, alternately remarkable for many mischievous pranks and for strange outbursts of religious zeal. He stole money from his mother, and he gave part of it to the poor. He early declared his intention one day to preach the Gospel, but he was the terror of the Dissenting minister of his neighborhood, whose religious services he was accustomed to ridicule and interrupt. He bought devotional books, read the Bible assiduously, and on one occasion, when exasperated by some teasing, he relieved his feelings, as he tells us, by pouring out in his solitude the menaces of Psalm cxviii; but he was also passionately fond of card-playing, novel-reading, and the theatre; he was two or three times intoxicated, and he confesses with much penitence to "a sensual passion" for fruits and cakes. His strongest natural bias was toward the stage. He indulged it on every possible occasion, and at school he wrote plays and acted in a female part.
Owing to the great poverty of his mother, he could only go to Oxford as a servitor, and his career there was a very painful one. St. Thomas à Kempis, Drelincourt'sDefence against Death, and Law's devotional works had all their part in kindling his piety into a flame. He was haunted with gloomy and superstitious fancies, and his religion assumed the darkest and most ascetic character. He always chose the worst food, fasted twice a week, wore woollen gloves, a patched gown, and dirty shoes, and was subject to paroxysms of a morbid devotion. He remained for hours prostrate on the ground in Christ Church Walk in the midst of the night, and continued his devotions till his hands grew blackwith cold. One Lent he carried his fasting to such a point that when Passion Week arrived he had hardly sufficient strength to creep upstairs, and his memory was seriously impaired. In 1733 he came in contact with Charles Wesley, who brought him into the society. To a work calledThe Life of God in the Soul of Man, which Charles Wesley put into his hands, he ascribed his first conviction of that doctrine of free salvation which he afterward made it the great object of his life to teach.
With the exception of a short period in which he was assisting his father at Epworth, John Wesley continued at Oxford till the death of his father, in 1735, when the society was dispersed, and the two Wesleys soon after accepted the invitation of General Oglethorpe to accompany him to the new colony of Georgia. It was on his voyage to that colony that the founder of Methodism first came in contact with the Moravians, who so deeply influenced his future life. He was surprised and somewhat humiliated at finding that they treated him as a mere novice in religion; their perfect composure during a dangerous storm made a profound impression on his mind, and he employed himself while on board ship in learning German, in order that he might converse with them. On his arrival in the colony he abandoned, after a very slight attempt, his first project of converting the Indians, and devoted himself wholly to the colonists at Savannah. They were of many different nationalities, and it is a remarkable proof of the energy and accomplishments of Wesley that, in addition to his English services, he officiated regularly in German, French, and Italian, and was at the same time engaged in learning Spanish, in order to converse with some Jewish parishioners.
His character and opinions at this time may be briefly described. He was a man who had made religion the single aim and object of his life, who was prepared to encounter for it every form of danger, discomfort, and obloquy; who devoted exclusively to it an energy of will and power of intellect that in worldly professions might have raised him to the highest positions of honor and wealth. Of his sincerity, of his self-renunciation, of his deep and fervent piety, of his almost boundless activity, there can be no question. Yet with all these qualities he was not an amiable man. He was hard, punctilious, domineering, and in acertain sense even selfish. A short time before he left England, his father, who was then an old and dying man, and who dreaded above all things that the religious fervor which he had spent the greater part of his life in kindling in his parish should dwindle after his death, entreated his son in the most pathetic terms to remove to Epworth, in which case he would probably succeed to the living, and be able to maintain his mother in her old home.
Wesley peremptorily refused to leave Oxford, and the reason he assigned was very characteristic. "The question," he said, "is not whether I could do more good to others there than here; but whether I could do more good to myself, seeing wherever I can be most holy myself there I can most promote holiness in others." "My chief motive," he wrote when starting for Georgia, "is the hope of saving my own soul. I hope to learn the true sense of the Gospel of Christ by preaching it to the heathen." He was at this time a High-Churchman of a very narrow type, full of exaggerated notions about church discipline, extremely anxious to revive obsolete rubrics, and determined to force the strictest ritualistic observances upon rude colonists, for whom of all men they were least adapted. He insisted upon adopting baptism by immersion, and refused to baptize a child whose parents objected to that form. He would not permit any non-communicant to be a sponsor, repelled one of the holiest men in the colony from the communion-table because he was a Dissenter; refused for the same reason to read the burial-service over another; made it a special object of his teaching to prevent ladies of his congregation from wearing any gold ornament or any rich dress, and succeeded in inducing Oglethorpe to issue an order forbidding any colonist from throwing a line or firing a gun on Sunday. His sermons, it was complained, were all satires on particular persons. He insisted upon weekly communions, desired to rebaptize Dissenters who abandoned their Nonconformity, and exercised his pastoral duties in such a manner that he was accused of meddling in every quarrel and prying into every family.
A more unpropitious commencement for a great career could hardly be conceived. Wesley returned to England in bad health and low spirits. He redoubled his austerities and his zeal inteaching, and he was tortured by doubts about the reality of his faith. It was at this time and in this state of mind that he came in contact with Peter Boehler, a Moravian teacher, whose calm and concentrated enthusiasm, united with unusual mental powers, gained a complete ascendency over his mind. From him Wesley for the first time learned that form of the doctrine of justification by faith which he afterward regarded as the fundamental tenet of Christianity. He had long held that in order to be a real Christian it was necessary to live a life wholly differing from that of the world around him, and that such a renewal of life could only be effected by the operation of the divine Spirit; and he does not appear to have had serious difficulties about the doctrine of imputed righteousness, although the ordinary evangelical doctrine on this matter was emphatically repudiated and denounced by Law.
From Boehler he first learned to believe that every man, no matter how moral, how pious, or how orthodox he may be, is in a state of damnation, until, by a supernatural and instantaneous process wholly unlike that of human reasoning, the conviction flashes upon his mind that the sacrifice of Christ has been applied to and has expiated his sins; that this supernatural and personal conviction or illumination is what is meant by saving faith, and that it is inseparably accompanied by an absolute assurance of salvation and by a complete dominion over sin. It cannot exist where there is not a sense of the pardon of all past and of freedom from all present sins. It is impossible that he who has experienced it should be in serious and lasting doubt as to the fact; for its fruits are constant peace—not one uneasy thought; "freedom from sin—not one unholy desire." Repentance and fruits meet for repentance, such as the forgiveness of those who have offended us, ceasing from evil and doing good, may precede this faith, but good works in the theological sense of the term spring from, and therefore can only follow, faith.
Such, as clearly as I can state it, was the fundamental doctrine which Wesley adopted from the Moravians. His mind was now thrown, through causes very susceptible of a natural explanation, into an exceedingly excited and abnormal condition, and he has himself chronicled with great minuteness in his journal the incidents that follow. On Sunday, March 5, 1738, he tells us that Boehler first fully convinced him of the want of that supernatural faith which alone could save. The shock was very great, and the first impulse of Wesley was to abstain from preaching, but his new master dissuaded him, saying: "Preach faith till you have it; and then because you have faith you will preach faith." He followed the advice, and several weeks passed in a state of extreme religious excitement, broken, however, by strange fits of "indifference, dulness, and coldness." While still believing himself to be in a state of damnation, he preached the new doctrine with such passionate fervor that he was excluded from pulpit after pulpit. He preached to the criminals in the jails. He visited, under the superintendence of Boehler, some persons who professed to have undergone the instantaneous and supernatural illumination. He addressed the passengers whom he met on the roads or at the public tables in the inns. On one occasion, at Birmingham, he abstained from doing so, and he relates, with his usual imperturbable confidence, that a heavy hailstorm which he afterward encountered was a divine judgment sent to punish him for his neglect.
This condition could not last long. At length, on May 24th, a day which he ever after looked back upon as the most momentous in his life—the cloud was dispelled. Early in the morning, according to his usual custom, he opened the Bible at random, seeking for a divine guidance, and his eye lighted on the words, "There are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, even that we would be partakers of the divine nature." Before he left the house he again consulted the oracle, and the first words he read were, "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." In the afternoon he attended service in St. Paul's Cathedral, and the anthem, to his highly wrought imagination, seemed a repetition of the same hope. The sequel may be told in his own words: "In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed; I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken awaymysins, even mine, and saved mefrom the law of sin and death. I began to pray with all my might for those who had in a more especial manner despitefully used me and persecuted me. I then testified openly to all what I now first felt in my heart."
Pictures of this kind are not uncommon in the lives of religious enthusiasts, but they usually have a very limited interest and importance. It is, however, scarcely an exaggeration to say that the scene which took place at that humble meeting in Aldersgate Street forms an epoch in English history. The conviction which then flashed upon one of the most powerful and most active intellects in England is the true source of English Methodism. Shortly before this, Charles Wesley, who had also fallen completely under the influence of Boehler, had passed through a similar change; and Whitefield, without ever adopting the dangerous doctrine of perfection which was so prominent in the Methodist teaching, was at a still earlier period an ardent preacher of justification by faith of the new birth. It was characteristic of John Wesley that ten days before his conversion he wrote a long, petulant, and dictatorial letter to his old master, William Law, reproaching him with having kept back from him the fundamental doctrine of Christianity, and intimating in strong and discourteous language his own conviction, and that of Boehler, that the spiritual condition of Law was a very dangerous one.
It was no less characteristic of the indefatigable energy which formed another and a better side of his nature, that immediately after this change he started on a pilgrimage to Herrnhut, the head-quarters of Moravianism, in order that he might study to the best advantage what he now regarded as the purest type of a Christian church. He returned objecting to many things, but more than ever convinced of his new doctrine, and more than ever resolved to spend his life in diffusing it. In the course of 1738 the chief elements of the movement were already formed. Whitefield had returned from Georgia. Charles Wesley had begun to preach the doctrine with extraordinary effect to the criminals in Newgate and from every pulpit into which he was admitted. Methodist societies had already sprung up under Moravian influence. The design of each was to be a church within a church, a seed-plot of a more fervent piety, the centre ofa stricter discipline and a more energetic propagandism, than existed in religious communities at large.
In these societies the old Christian custom of love-feasts was revived. The members sometimes passed almost the whole night in the most passionate devotions, and voluntarily submitted to a spiritual tyranny that could hardly be surpassed in a Catholic monastery. They were to meet every week, to make an open and particular confession of every frailty, to submit to be cross-examined on all their thoughts, words, and deeds. The following, among others, were the questions asked at every meeting: "What known sin have you committed since our last meeting? What temptations have you met with? How were you delivered? What have you thought, said, or done of which you doubt whether it be sin or not? Have you nothing you desire to keep secret?"
Such rules could only have been accepted under the influence of an overpowering religious enthusiasm, and there was much truth in the judgment which the elder brother of John Wesley passed upon them in 1739. "Their societies," he wrote to their mother, "are sufficient to dissolve all other societies but their own. Will any man of common-sense or spirit suffer any domestic to be in a band engaged to relate to five or ten people anything without reserve that concerns the person's conscience, how much soever it may concern the family? Ought any married person to be there unless husband and wife be there together?"
From this time the leaders of the movement became the most active of missionaries. Without any fixed parishes they wandered from place to place, proclaiming their new doctrine in every pulpit to which they were admitted, and they speedily awoke a passionate enthusiasm and a bitter hostility in the Church. Nothing, indeed, could appear more irregular to the ordinary parochial clergyman than those itinerant ministers who broke away violently from the settled habits of their profession, who belonged to and worshipped in small religious societies that bore a suspicious resemblance to conventicles, and whose whole tone and manner of preaching were utterly unlike anything to which he was accustomed. They taught in language of the most vehement emphasis, as the cardinal tenet of Christianity, the doctrineof a new birth in a form which was altogether novel to their hearers. They were never weary of urging that all men are in a condition of damnation who have not experienced a sudden, violent, and supernatural change, or of inveighing against the clergy for their ignorance of the very essence of Christianity. "Tillotson," in the words of Whitefield, "knew no more about true Christianity than Mahomet."The Whole Duty of Man, which was the most approved devotional manual of the time, was pronounced by the same preacher, on account of the stress it laid upon good works, to have "sent thousands to hell."
The Methodist preacher came to an Anglican parish in the spirit and with the language of a missionary going to the most ignorant heathens; and he asked the clergyman of the parish to lend him his pulpit, in order that he might instruct the parishioners—perhaps for the first time—in the true Gospel of Christ. It is not surprising that the clergy should have resented such a movement; and the manner of the missionary was as startling as his matter. The sermons of the time were almost always written, and the prevailing taste was cold, polished, and fastidious. The new preachers preached extempore, with the most intense fervor of language and gesture, and usually with a complete disregard of the conventionalities of their profession. Wesley frequently mounted the pulpit without even knowing from what text he would preach, believing that when he opened his Bible at random the divine Spirit would guide him infallibly in his choice. The oratory of Whitefield was so impassioned that the preacher was sometimes scarcely able to proceed for his tears, while half the audience were convulsed with sobs. The love of order, routine, and decorum, which was the strongest feeling in the clerical mind, was violently shocked. The regular congregation was displaced by an agitated throng who had never before been seen within the precincts of the church. The usual quiet worship was disturbed by violent enthusiasm or violent opposition, by hysterical paroxysms of devotion or remorse, and when the preacher had left the parish he seldom failed to leave behind him the elements of agitation and division.
We may blame, but we can hardly, I think, wonder at the hostility all this aroused among the clergy. It is, indeed, certain that Wesley and Whitefield were at this time doing more thanany other contemporary clergymen to kindle a living piety among the people. It is equally certain that they held the doctrines of the Articles and the Homilies with an earnestness very rare among their brother-clergymen, that none of their peculiar doctrines were in conflict with those doctrines, and that Wesley at least was attached with an even superstitious reverence to ecclesiastical forms. Yet before the end of 1738 the Methodist leaders were excluded from most of the pulpits of the Church, and were thus compelled, unless they consented to relinquish what they considered a divine mission, to take steps in the direction of separation.
Two important measures of this nature were taken in 1739. One of them was the creation of Methodist chapels, which were intended, not to oppose or replace, but to be supplemental and ancillary to, the churches, and to secure that the doctrine of the new birth should be faithfully taught to the people. The other, and still more important event, was the institution by Whitefield of field-preaching. The idea had occurred to him in London, where he found congregations too numerous for the church in which he preached, but the first actual step was taken in the neighborhood of Bristol. At a time when he was thus deprived of the chief normal means of exercising his talents his attention was called to the condition of the colliers of Kingswood. He was filled with horror and compassion at finding in the heart of a Christian country, and in the immediate neighborhood of a great city, a population of many thousands sunk in the most brutal ignorance and vice, and entirely excluded from the ordinances of religion. Moved by such feelings, he resolved to address the colliers in their own haunts. The resolution was a bold one, for field-preaching was then utterly unknown in England, and it needed no common courage to brave all the obloquy and derision it must provoke, and to commence the experiment in the centre of a half-savage population.
Whitefield, however, had a just confidence in his cause and in his powers. Standing himself upon a hillside, he took for his text the first words of the Sermon which was spoken from the Mount, and he addressed with his accustomed fire an astonished audience of some two hundred men. The fame of his eloquence spread far and wide. On successive occasions five, ten, fifteen,even twenty thousand were present. It was February, but the winter sun shone clear and bright. The lanes were filled with the carriages of the more wealthy citizens, whom curiosity had drawn from Bristol. The trees and hedges were crowded with humbler listeners, and the fields were darkened by a compact mass. The face of the preacher paled with a thrilling power to the very outskirts of that mighty throng. The picturesque novelty of the occasion and of the scene, the contagious emotion of so great a multitude, a deep sense of the condition of his hearers and of the momentous importance of the step he was taking, gave an additional solemnity. His rude auditors were electrified. They stood for a time in rapt and motionless attention. Soon tears might be seen forming white gutters down cheeks blackened from the coal-mine. Then sobs and groans told how hard hearts were melting at his words. A fire was kindled among the outcasts of Kingswood, which burned long and fiercely, and was destined in a few years to overspread the land.
It was only with great difficulty that Whitefield could persuade the Wesleys to join him in this new phase of missionary labor. John Wesley has left on record, in his journal, his first repugnance to it, "having," as he says, "been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church." Charles Wesley, on this as on most other occasions, was even more strongly conservative. The two brothers adopted their usual superstitious practice of opening their Bibles at random, under the belief that the texts on which their eyes first fell would guide them in their decision. The texts were ambiguous and somewhat ominous, relating for the most part to violent deaths; but on drawing lots the lot determined them to go. It was on this slender ground that they resolved to give the weight of their example to this most important development of the movement. They went to Bristol, from which Whitefield was speedily called, and continued the work among the Kingswood colliers and among the people of the city; while Whitefield, after a preaching tour of some weeks in the country, reproduced on a still larger scale the triumphs of Kingswood by preaching with marvellous effect to immense throngs of the London rabble at Moorfields and on Kennington Common. Fromthis time field-preaching became one of the most conspicuous features of the revival.
The character and genius of the preacher to whom this most important development of Methodism was due demand a more extended notice than I have yet given them. Unlike Wesley, whose strongest enthusiasm was always curbed by a powerful will, and who manifested at all times and on all subjects an even exaggerated passion for reasoning, Whitefield was chiefly a creature of impulse and emotion. He had very little logical skill, no depth or range of knowledge, not much self-restraint, nothing of the commanding and organizing talent, and, it must be added, nothing of the arrogant and imperious spirit so conspicuous in his colleague. At the same time a more zealous, a more single-minded, a more truly amiable, a more purely unselfish man it would be difficult to conceive. He lived perpetually in the sight of eternity, and a desire to save souls was the single passion of his life. Of his labors it is sufficient to say that it has been estimated that in the thirty-four years of his active career he preached eighteen thousand times, or on an average ten times a week; that these sermons were delivered with the utmost vehemence of voice and gesture, often in the open air, and to congregations of many thousands; and that he continued his exertions to the last, when his constitution was hopelessly shattered by disease. During long periods he preached forty hours, and sometimes as much as sixty hours, a week. In the prosecution of his missionary labors he visited almost every important district in England and Wales. At least twelve times he traversed Scotland, three times he preached in Ireland, thirteen times he crossed the Atlantic.
Very few men placed by circumstances at the head of a great religious movement have been so absolutely free from the spirit of sect. Very few men have passed through so much obloquy with a heart so entirely unsoured, and have retained amid so much adulation so large a measure of deep and genuine humility. There was indeed not a trace of jealousy, ambition, or rancor in his nature. There is something singularly touching in the zeal with which he endeavored to compose the differences between himself and Wesley, when so many of the followers of each leader were endeavoring to envenom them; in the profound respect he continually expressed for his colleague at the time oftheir separation; in the exuberant gratitude he always showed for the smallest act of kindness to himself; in the tenderness with which he guarded the interests of the inmates of that orphanage at Georgia around which his strongest earthly affections were entwined; in the almost childish simplicity with which he was always ready to make a public confession of his faults.
A.D. 1739