to his horror the vicar cleaning his guest’s boots; how he is said (though this anecdote is rather apocryphal) once to have made his congregation sing all the 176 verses of the 119th Psalm, while he went out to beat up the wanderers to attend public worship; how he once interrupted a preacher who was congratulating the Haworth people on the advantages they enjoyed under a Gospel ministry, by crying out in a loud voice, ’No, no, sir, don’t flatter them; they are most of them going to Hell with their eyes open;’ these and many other such stories might be told at full length.[802] But it is more profitable to dwell upon the noble, disinterested work which he did, quite unrecognised by the great men of his day, in a district which had sore need of such apostolical labours.  His last words were, ’Here goes an unprofitable servant’—­words which are no doubt true in the mouths of the best of men; but if any man might have boasted that he had done profitable service in his Master’s cause, that man would have been William Grimshaw.

There is a strong family likeness between Grimshaw and Berridge of Everton (1716-1793), but the marked features of the character were more conspicuous in the latter than in the former.  Both were energetic country parsons, and both itinerated; but Berridge went over a wider field than Grimshaw.  Both were oddities; but the oddities of Berridge were more outrageous than those of Grimshaw.  Both were stirring preachers; but the effects of Berridge’s preaching were more startling if not more satisfactory than those which attended Grimshaw.  Both were Calvinists; but Berridge’s Calvinism was of the more marked type of the two.  Moreover, Berridge rushed into the very thick of the Calvinistic controversy, from which Grimshaw held aloof.  Berridge was the better read and the more highly trained man of the two.  He was a Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, and before his conversion he was much sought after, and that by men of great eminence, as a wit and an amusing boon companion.  The parish church of Everton was constantly the scene of those violent physical symptoms which present a somewhat puzzling phenomenon to the student of early Methodism.  Berridge’s eccentricities, both in the pulpit and out of it, caused pain to the more sober-minded of the Evangelical party.  Thus we find John Thornton expostulating with him in the following terms:  ’The tabernacle people are in general wild and enthusiastic, and delight in anything out of the common, which is a temper of mind, though in some respect necessary, yet should never be encouraged.  If you and some few others, who have the greatest influence over them, would use the curb instead of the spur, I am persuaded the effects would be very blessed.  You told me you was born with a fool’s cap on.  Pray, my dear sir, is it not high time it was pulled off?’ Berridge, in his reply, admits the impeachment, but cannot resist giving Thornton a Roland for his Oliver.  ‘A fool’s cap,’ he writes, ’is not put off so readily as a night-cap.  One cleaves to the head, and one to the heart.  It has been a matter of surprise to me how Dr. Conyers could accept of Deptford living, and how Mr. Thornton could present him to it.  Has not lucre led him to Deptford, and has not a family connection ruled your private judgment?’[803]