Bickering about JW

Sun 31 Oct 1742: Several of the leaders desired to have an hour’s conversation with me. I found they were greatly perplexed about ‘want of management, ill husbandry, encouraging idleness, improper distribution of money’, ‘being imposed upon by fair pretences’, and ‘men who talked well, but had no grace in their hearts’. I asked who those men were. But that they could not tell. Who encouraged idleness? When and how? What money had been improperly distributed? By whom and to whom? In what instances I had been imposed on (as I presumed they meant me), and what were the particulars of that ill husbandry and mismanagement of which they complained? They stared at one another, as men in amaze. I began to be amazed too, not being able to imagine what was the matter, till one dropped a word, by which all came out. They had been talking with Mr. Hall, who had started so many objections against all I said or did that they were in the utmost consternation, till the fire thus broke out; which then at once vanished away.