W E S

857

W E S

WENNERSBORG, or WENNERSBURG, a town of Swe - 1den, in W. Gothland, 15 miles E. of Uddevalla .

WENSYSSEL, a town of Denmark, in N. Jutland , 17 milesN. W. of Alborg . Lon. 9. 40. E. Lat. 57. 4. N.

WEOBLY, an ancient borough of England, in Herefordshire ,

8 miles N. W. of Hereford . Lon. 2. 41. W. Lat. 52. 9. N.

VVERBEN, a town of Brandenburg, 60 miles N. W. of Berlin.Lon. 12. 12. E. Lat. 53. 5. N.

WERCHTER EN, atown of the Netherlandsin Biabant, seatedat ihe conflux of the Denier with the Dyle, 9 miles E. of Mechlin.Lon. 4. 49. E. Lat/51. 0. N. '

WERDEN, a town in Wesfphalia, 10 miles N. E. of Dussel-dorf, and 10 E. of Duisburg . Lon. 7. 1. E. Lat. 51. 17. N.

WERDENBERG, or WERDENBURG, a town of Swit-zerland in the canton of Giarus, and capital of a late county sonamed, 16 miles N. E. of Giarus. Lon. 9. 25. E. Lat. 46.58. N.

WEREGILD, in old customs, the price of homicide; paidpartly to tile king for the loss of a subject, partly to the lordwhose vassal he was, and partly to the next of kin of the personslain.

WERN, a town of Germany, in Westphalia , 28 miles S. byW. of Munster . Lon. 7. 30. E. Lat. 51. 35. N.

WERNERITE, in mineralogy, is of a colour between yellowand green ; it occurs crystallized ; specific gravity is about 3.6.

It intumesces before the blow-pipe, and melts into a whitish ena-mel. It is found in the iron-mines in Sweden and Norway .

WERNIGERODE , a county in Upper Saxony; bound-ed on the N. by the county of Halherstadt; E. and S.by Blankenburg; and W. by the Hartz forest: 12 miles long,and 8 broad. It is partly mountainous, partly level. Its highestmountain, or perhaps the highest in Germany , is the Broken,which extends into Hanover.

Weiinigerode, the capital of the above county, 10 miles W.of Halherstadt, and 27 S. S. E. of Wolfenbuttle. Lon. 11. 10. E.Lat. 52. 2. N.

WERTHEIM, a town of Germany in Franconia , 20 miles W. jof Wurzburg . Lon. 9. 53. E. Lat. 49. 46. N. ,

WERTURIAN MOUNTAINS, or UR ALT AN, a-famouschain of mountains, forming part of the boundary of Asia . Itbegins distinctly (yet it may be traced interruptedly farther S,) nearthe town of Kungur , in the government of Kasan, in lat. 57° 20';runs N. and ends opposite to the Waygatz strait, and rises again inthe isle of Nova Zemlja. These were the Riphafi Montes.

WERVICK, or WERWICK, atown in the province of Aus-trian Flanders, seated on the Lys, S miles S. E. of Ypres . Lon.

2. 58. E. Lat. 50. 46. N.

WES EL, a town in the duchy of Cleves, seated near the con-fluence of the Rhine and the Lippe, 25 miles S. of Cleves, and45 N. ofCologn. Lon. 6. 37. E. Lat. 51. 27. N.

WESENBURG, a fortified town of Russia , in the govern-ment of Esthonia , 55 miles S. E. of Revel. Lon. 25. 48. E.Las. 59. 10. N.

WESLEY, Samuel, an English divine, born in Dorsetshire ,and educated at Oxford ; but was bred a Dissenter. He after-wards conformed, and wrote some tracts against his former friends.He obtained lire living of South Ormesby, arid afterwards that ofEpworth, both in Lincolnshire . He wrote many sacred poems;but his chief work is, “ The Life of Christ,” an heroic poem, in12 books, with learned notes. He also wrote, “ Dissertationson the Book of Job,” in Latin, folio . He died at Epworth, in1735.

Wesley, John, a very pious and great man , and a most emi-nent Christian minister. By his means religion was revived, withgreat success, not only in the United Kingdom, but in America , andvarious other places. His grand-father, John Wesley, was one of the non-conforming ministers who suffered so severely by theblack Bartholomew act, in the reign of Charles the Second. Hewas ejected from the living of Blandford in Dorsetshire . Jn thispersecuted condition, he designed his son, Samuel, for the Chris-tian ministry among the Dissenters, and accordingly sent him toone of their academies. But while there, his sentiments were sochanged, that he left the academy without consulting any of hisrelations, and entered as a student of Exeter-College, Oxford .After taking his degrees in the usual way, he was ordained, and

VOL. tv.— no, 216.

appointed chaplain of a man of war, and afterwards was presentedto the livings of Epworth and Wroote, troth in tire county ofLincoln. Pie married the youngest daughter of Dr. Samuel An-neslay, a celebrated nonconformist, who was first cousin to theEar! of Anglesey. By her he had nineteen children, the mostdistinguished of whom svas the Rev. John Wesley , of whom wenow write. He was born at Epworth in Lincolnshire ; of whichplace his father was rector, June ) 7th (old style) 1703. When butsix years of age he narrowly escaped being burnt to death in theParsonage-house, which was so dreadfully on fire before he wastaken out of a window, that the instant he was received by hisfriends, the whole roof fell in. The memory of this remarkabledeliverance is still preserved in one of his prints. Under his por-trait, there is a house in flames, with this inscription, “ fs not thisa brand plucked out of the burning?” At a very early age hismind appears to have been impressed with sentiments of religion,and he partook of the Lord’s Supper when only eight years old.When very young he was placed at the Charter-House in’ London ,under that eminent scholar, Dr. Walker, w ilh whom he soon be-came a favourite, on account of his sobriety and application.From the Charter-House he was removed to Christ-Church Col-lege, Oxford , where he look his degree of Bachelor of Arts. Inthe year 1724, he was elected Fellow of Lincoln College, arrdtwo years after, he took his degree of Master of Arts. He nowbecame conspicuous as a scholar. Nor was he barely acquaintedwith the learned languages; he read them as a critic, and relishedall their beauties. He conversed fluently in Latin , which liespoke and wrote with remarkable purity and elegance. TheGreek Testament was as familiar to him as the English . Fivevolumes were published by hint on Natural Philosophy , whichshew how well he had studied that branch of know ledge. His skillin logic was so well known, that it was almost proverbial. Hispoetic abilities were not inconsiderable, but he did not cultivatethem much after he left the University , being called to a higherwork, in which he was so fully employed, that he was forced togive up writing poetry. Nevertheless, the pieces he did publishabundantly prove the strength and elegance of his genius in thisrespect. Some time after his election to a Fellowship, he wasappointed Greek Lecturer, and Moderator of the Classes. Bein<rthus in some measure prepared for the ministry, for which he haftfrom the beginning been designed by his father, lie was ordainedin the year 1725, by Dr. Potter, afterwards Archbishop of Can-terbury, and preached his first sermon at South Lve, near Oxford ,About this lime he met with Bishop Taylor’s “ Rules and Exer-cises of Holy Living and Dying;” and being exceedingly af-fected in reading some parts of that book, he resolved to dedicateIns whole life to God , considering religion as an uniform follow-ing of our Lord Jesus Christ . And having united with severalyoung men, who were likeminded with himself, they agreed tomeet together at appointed times, to assist each other in striving tolive to the glory of God . By their diligence and regularity inusing the means of grace, and'being zealous of good works, theywere soon publicly noticed, and among other nick-names bestow-ed upon them, was that of Methodists, which is still applied to aSociety of Christians, of which Mr. Wesley was the founder andhead, consisting, by the last account, in various parts of theworld, of upwards of three hundred and fifty seven thousandproper members, who are not a fourth part of the number thatconstantly attend their places of public worship, who also gene-rally share the name of Methodists, vhich is now grown into anhonourable rather than a reproachful term. How little did Mr.Wesley think of being the instrument of raising up such a bodyof religious people, when, by an extraordinary Providence, hewas called from his beloved situation in Oxford , to go abroad as aMissionary to preach to the Indians in America ! With this callhowever, after several weighty objections, he complied, and sail-ed for Georgia in October, 1735. And after many severe trialshe returned to England in the beginning of 1738. Whatevermight be the designs of man, in Mr. Wesley ’s being sentabroad, it appears that the grand design of God was to bring himmore fully acquainted with the plan of salvation by Jesus Christ Andthis end was accomplished by means of some of the MoravianBrethren , who sailed with him for Amelia in the same ship; a fullaccount of which was published by himself, above half a centuryago. On his return to London , he was invited to preach in several of10 1 the