n of York was the third formal attack made by
the Church of England clergy upon the characters of their unoffending
Methodist brethren and those of other religious persuasions; but no
defence of the assailed parties had as yet been written. In a subsequent
discussion on another topic, referring to this matter, I said:

"Up to this time not a word had been written respecting the clergy
of the Church of England, or the Clergy Reserve question, by any
minister or member of the Methodist Church. At that time the
Methodists had no law to secure a foot of land, on which to build
parsonages, Chapels, and in which to bury their dead; their
ministers were not allowed to solemnize matrimony; and some of
them had been the objects of cruel and illegal persecution on the
part of magistrates and others in authority. And now they were the
butt of unprovoked and unfounded aspersions from two heads of
Episcopal Clergy, while pursuing the 'noiseless tenor of their
way,' through trackless forests and bridgeless rivers and streams,
to preach among the scattered inhabitants the unsearchable riches
of Christ."[7]

_The Review_, in defence of the Methodists and others against such
gratuitous and unjust imputations, consisted of about thirty octavo
pages, appeared over the signature of "A Methodist Preacher;" it was
commenced near Newmarket, in a cottage owned by the late Mr. Elias
Smith, whose wife was a sister of the Lounts--a woman of great
excellence. It was written piecemeal in the humble residences of the
early settlers, in the course of eight days, during which time I rode on
horseback nearly a hundred miles and preached seven sermons. On its
publication I pursued my country tour of preaching, &c., little
conscious of the storm that was brewing; but on my return to town, at
the end of two weeks, I received newspapers containing four replies to
my _Review_--three of them written by clergymen, and one by a scholarly
layman of the Church of England. In those replies to the then unknown
author of the _Review_, I was assailed by all sorts of contemptuous and
criminating epithets--all denying that the author of such a publication
could be "a Methodist Preacher,"--but was "an American," "a rebel," "a
traitor,"--and that the _Review_ was the "prodigious effort of a party."

My agitation was extreme; finding myself, against my own intention and
will, in the very tempest of a disc