Which is, I guess, how a tabloid of the period might have described it:
As a founding father of Methodism, Charles Wesley has been revered for centuries as a deeply holy man.
But a secret code in his 270-year-old diaries has been cracked - revealing that he was dogged by sexual scandal and feuded with his church leader brother John.
In the 18th century, Charles joined John on a missionary trip to a new British colony in America but mysteriously returned after just a few months.
The decoded diaries reveal that he fled home amid allegations that he had sex with a colonist after trapping her husband under a tree.
The coded sections began in March 1736, when Charles was in the new colony of Georgia.
While parts in plain English talk of his calling the colonists to prayers at all hours, the coded paragraphs show he was accused of sexual misconduct by one Anne Welch, wife of a doctor to the colonists, James Welch.
Mrs Welch first told Charles Wesley that the governor of the colony of Georgia, James Oglethorpe, was 'a wicked man' who kept three mistresses in England. It later emerged however that she had been making similar allegations to Mr Oglethorpe about Charles.
A section reveals Mr Oglethorpe told Charles: 'She came crying to me with complaints that you had confined her husband by keeping him three days under a tree, and come to bed with her'.
Charles fiercely denied the allegations - but also had to face taunts that he had sex with a maid.
He wrote that a pair of colonists shouted out to him as he strolled along in conversation with the maid: 'There goes the parson with his whore. I saw her and him were under the bushes.'
Goodness me.
*snort*
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