John Gambold

Charles brought him under the influence of John Wesley, and he joined the "Holy Club" which was a forerunner to the Methodist church.

Gambold entered for the Anglican priesthood and was ordained in September 1733 by John Potter, the bishop of Oxford.

In 1749 he addressed a letter to Zinzendorf, proposing the formation of an "Anglican tropus", a plan for the admission, as Moravian brethren, of persons who should still remain members of the church of England.

Gambold was willing to concede that an Anglican prelate should exercise some supervision in Moravian affairs, and assist at their ordinations; also that the common prayer-book should be adopted in their assemblies.

The latter provision was not carried out; but, at a synod in London in September 1749, Thomas Wilson, the bishop of Sodor and Man, was chosen "antistes" of the "reformed tropus" (with permission to employ his son as substitute).

His portrait was painted by Abraham Louis Brandt, a Moravian minister; from this there is mezzotint (1771) by Spilsbury, a copy drawn by Hibbart (1789), and a small engraving by Topham (1816).

The hesitations of his career are in part to be explained by the underlying scepticism of his intellectual temperament, from which he found refuge in an anxious and reclusive piety.

This appears in his poems, e.g. "The Mystery of Life", his epitaph for himself, in which occurs the line, "He suffered human life—and died"; and still more in his letters.

His very remarkable "Letter to a Studious Young Lady" (1737) contains a curious argument to show that any absorbing pursuits will elevate the mind equally well.

In an unpublished letter (15 April 1740) to Wesley he writes: "I hang upon the Gospel by a mere thread, this small unaccountable inclination towards Christ."