But the death of one slander seemed to be the birth of
two or three fresh ones. And sometimes opposite slanders sprang up
together. "If he had been a good man," said one, "he would have stopped
in the Connexion quietly, and waited for reform!" "If he had been an
honest man," said another, "he would have left the Connexion long ago,
and not remained in a community that he thought in error." I had been
"too hasty" for one, and "too slow" for another. One wrote to assure me
that I should die a violent death in less than eighteen months. Another
said he foresaw me lying on my death-bed, with Satan sitting on my
breast, ready to carry away my soul to eternal torments. One sent me a
number of my pamphlets blotted and torn, packed up with a piece of wood,
for the carriage of which I was charged from four to five shillings.
Another sent me a number of my publications defaced in another way,
with offensive enclosures that do not admit of description.
At one time it was reported that I had died suddenly at Leeds. "After
lecturing there one night," the story said, "a certain person got upon
the platform to oppose me, and I was so frightened, that I first turned
pale, then fainted, and in two hours breathed my last." I was preaching
at Penrith, in Cumberland, some seventy or eighty miles away, at the
time I was said to have died at Leeds.
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