Thursday, September 13, 2012

Dangerous Preaching (3)

In the meantime my strength and my voice returned, and I broke out aloud in prayer. And now the man who just before headed the mob turned and said, “Sir, I will spend my life for you: follow me, and not one soul here shall touch a hair of your head.” Two or three of his fellows confirmed his words and got close to me immediately. At the same time, the gentleman in the shop cried out, “For shame, for shame! Let him go.”

An honest butcher, who was a little farther off, said it was a shame they should do thus; and he pulled back four or five, one after another, who were running on the most fiercely. The people then, as if it had been by common consent, fell back to the right and left, while those three or four men took me between them and carried me through them all. But on the bridge the mob rallied again: we therefore went on one side, over the milldam, and thence through the meadows; till, a little before ten, God brought me safe to Wednesbury; I having lost only one flap of my waistcoat and a little skin from one of my hands. 

The Journal of John Wesley

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