1783 METHODIST TRACT. Life and Death of John Janeway - To be Given Away. By James Wheatley.

A rather scarce tract printed by the Methodists, offered at auction just once in the last 100+ years. Unusually, issued by the Methodists as a free tract, not to be sold, and also without the authors name, for reasons which will be obvious in a moment. 

The subject was one well-known in the puritan era. John Janeway, also a puritan, was brother of eminent non-conformist divine, James Janeway. John, however, was quite ill and died before his ministry could fully take shape. That said, his death was, in the words of the age, "triumphant." His death was an echo of the triumphant deaths of the early martyrs of the first few centuries and of the reformation . . . but the wicked persecutors of Eusebius and Foxe are recast as the universal foe . . . mortality.  

This particular edition, first written in 1749, and here issued in 1783, was produced by the pen of Methodist wild-man, James Wheatley. 

Wheatley became a Methodist itinerant evangelist c. 1742/3, but was expelled from the Methodist movement in 1751 by John Wesley following allegations of immoral conduct . Wheatley attracted a large following (but also riotous aggression) as an independent preacher in Norwich from 1751.

He built a wooden meeting-house, which was destroyed by a mob, but subsequently replaced it with a proper chapel, called the Tabernacle and supported by Selina, Countess of Huntingdon. In 1754 he was charged in the Consistory Court with adultery [again], convicted, and forced to flee Norfolk. Ah, that's why the pamphlet is anonymous. 

A rare survivor.

[Wheatley, James]. An Extract of the Life and Death of Mr. John Janeway, Fellow of King's-College, in Cambridge. This Books is not to be sold, but given away. London. Printed by John Paramore, at the Foundry, Upper-Moorfields, 1783. 40pp.

Very good in 20th century marbled boards, title page neatly filled, and some old ex library stamps washed by still faintly evident.