Wesley Rides Twenty-four Hundred Miles in Seven Months

Tuesday, 7.--After preaching at four (because of the harvest) I took horse and rode easily to London. Indeed I wanted a little rest; having ridden, in seven months, about four-and-twenty hundred miles.

Monday, 13--l took a little ride to Croydon, one of the seats of the Archbishops of Canterbury. Was it one of these who ordered, many years ago (for the characters are of old standing), that dreadful inscription to be placed just over the communion table? "And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you. If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the Lord of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart. Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts, and one shall take you away with it" [Mal. 2-1-3].

The Archbishop's palace is an ancient, venerable pile, and the gardens are extremely pleasant. The late Archbishop had improved them at a large expense; but continual illness prevented his enjoying them; till, after four years' constant pain, he was called away--one may hope to the garden of God.

I dined at Mr. B.'s, in Epsom, whose house and gardens lie in what was once a chalkpit. It is the most elegant spot I ever saw with my eyes, everything within doors and without being finished in the most exquisite taste. Surely nothing on earth can be more delightful. Oh, what will the possessor feel when he cries out,

Thursday, 30--l preached at the Tabernacle in Norwich to a large, rude, noisy congregation. I took knowledge, what manner of teachers they had been accustomed to and determined to mend them or end them. Accordingly, the next evening after sermon I reminded them of two things: the one, that it was not decent to begin talking aloud as soon as service was ended, and hurrying to and fro, as in a bear garden. The other, that it was a bad custom to gather in knots just after sermon and turn a place of worship into a coffee house. I therefore desired that none would talk under that roof, but go quietly and silently away. And on Sunday, September 2, I had the pleasure to observe that all went as quietly away as if he had been accustomed to it for many years.

Sunday, September 9.--I met the society at seven and told them in plain terms that they were the most ignorant, self-conceited, self-willed, fickle, untractable, disorderly, disjointed society that I knew in the three kingdoms. And God applied it to their hearts so that many were profited; but I do not find that one was offended.