Susanna Wesley

12 SUSANNA WESLEY.
for he was engaged to translate some of the works of
John Biddle, regarded as the father of English Unitarians
;
but it is said that as he could not conscientiously
approve of their tendency, he threw up the affair.
The passion of writing lampoons, however, remained
strong, and was further fanned by his meeting at
Dr. Annesley's with John Dunton, the bookseller,
who was then wooing Elizabeth Annesley. The two
became firm friends, as is not unusual when a wealthy
publisher meets with a young man of literary ability,
whose peculiar line of talent runs parallel with the
taste of the times. From that hour his literary earnings
went far towards his support, and he needed them ,
for he was becoming discontented with the Dissenters
and beginning to find fault with their doctrines. Dr.
Owen wished him and some others to graduate at one of
the English universities, with the notion that the tide
might soon turn, and that Dissenters might be allowed
to take the ordinary degrees ;
but the idea that any
of them would prove recreant to Nonconformist principles
does not appear to have entered the good man's
head. It also appears that a e: "
reverend and worthy
member of the Wesley family came to London from a
great distance, and held serious converse with his
young kinsman against the " Dissenting schism " ;
so it is probable that several influences combined to
induce Samuel, at the age of one-and-twenty, to quit
his non-conforming friends and join the Church of
England. He had, moreover, made up his mind to go
to Oxford, and, as a young man of spirit, could surely
not have wished to be hampered and baulked in his
University career by entering that abode of learning
without belonging to the Established Church. It was
the reaction of the frame of mind in which he had