Lord's command now, I believe, is, Take the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes.' Help me by your prayers; it is an ease thus to unbosom myself to a friend. I have sought the Lord by prayer and fasting, and he assures me that he will be with me; whom then should I fear?"-" The Lord is girding me for the battle, and strengthening me mightily in the inner man."

In this state of mind he reached London: Charles Wesley was there, and their meeting was affectionate. "It would have melted any heart," says Whitefield," to have heard us weeping after prayer, that, if possible, the breach might be prevented." Old feelings of respect and love revived with such strength in his heart, that he promised never to preach against the Wesleys, whatever his private opinion might be. But many things combined to sour him at this time. He had written against Archbishop Tillotson's works, and the Whole Duty of Man, a book in those days of unrivalled popularity, in a manner which he himself then acknowledged to be intemperate and injudicious; and this had offended persons, who were otherwise favourably disposed towards him. His celebrity also seemed to have passed away; the twenty thousands who used to assemble at his preaching had dwindled down to two or three hundred; and in one exhibition at Kennington Common, the former scene of his triumphs, scarcely a hundred were gathered together to hear him. Worldly anxieties, too, were fretting him,

and those of a kind which made the loss of his celebrity a serious evil. The Orphan House in Georgia was to be maintained: he had now nearly a hundred persons in that establishment, who were to be supported by his exertions: there were not the slightest funds provided, and Georgia was the dearest part of the British dominions. He was above a thousand pounds in debt upon that score, and he himself not worth twenty. Seward, the wealthiest and most attached of his disciples, was dead, and had made no provision for him, nor for the payment of a bill for 3501. on the Orphan House account, which he had drawn, and for which Whitefield was now responsible, and threatened with an arrest. If his celebrity were gone, the Bank of Faith, upon which he had hitherto drawn with such confidence and such success, would be

• A letter from Charles Wesley to Whitefield makes it evident that this zealous man was bestowing his property as well as his time in the service of Methodism. Writing from London in 1759, he says, “ I cannot preach out on the week-days for the expence of coach-hire, nor can I accept of dear Mr. Seward's offer, to which I should be less backward would he follow my advice, but while he is so lavish of his Lord's goods I cannot consent that his ruin should in any degree seem to be under my hands." These goods were his family's also, as well as his Lord's; and therefore it is not surprizing that when Mr. Seward was lying ill of a fever at his house at Bengeworth, and Charles Wesley came there in one of his rounds, the wife, the brother, and the apothecary should have taken especial care to keep all Methodists from him; and when they could not prevail upon Wesley to give up his intention of preaching near the house, which the apothecary declared would throw his patient back, that they should have endeavoured to drive him out of the town by force. Seward's early loss is thus noticed by John Wesley: " Monday, Oct. 27. (1740.) The surprizing news of poor Mr. Seward's death was confirmed. Surely God will maintain his own cause! Righteous art thou O Lord." His journal was published, and is often quoted in Bishop Lavington's curious work,

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closed against him. He called it truly a trying time: " Many, very many of my spiritual children," says he, who, at my last departure from England, would have plucked out their own eyes to have given me, are so prejudiced by the dear Messrs. Wesleys dressing up the doctrine of election in such horrible colours, that they will neither hear, see, nor give me the least assistance; yea, some of them send threatening letters that God will speedily destroy me." This folly on the part of Wesley's hot adherents irritated him, and that irritation was fomented by his own. He began naturally to regard his former friends as heretics and enemies; and when Wesley, who had been summoned by his brother Charles to London on this occasion, went to him, to see if the breach might yet be closed, Whitefield honestly told him, that they preached two different gospels, and therefore he not only would not join with him, or give him the right hand of fellowship, but would publicly preach against him wheresoever he preached at all. He was reminded of the promise which he had but a few days before made, that whatever his opinion might be he would not do this but he replied, that promise was only an effect of human weakness, and he was now of another mind.

This temper disposed him to listen to the representations of paltry minds; and he wrote to Wesley upon the points which he thought had been improperly managed during his absence in America. Wesley replied, "Would you have me deal plainly with you, my brother? I believe you would:

each in the Now, which

nor would I

But lodgings

then by the grace of God I will. Of many things I find you are not rightly informed; of others you speak what you have not well weighed. The Society room at Bristol you say is adorned. How? Why, with a piece of green cloth nailed to the desk; two sconces for eight candles middle; and-nay, I know no more. of these can be spared I know not; desire either more adorning or less. are made for me or my brother. That is, in plain English, there is a little room by the school, where I speak to the persons who come to me; and a garret in which a bed is placed for me. And do you grudge me this? Is this the voice of my brother, my son Whitefield?" Another and a heavier charge was, that he had perverted Whitefield's design for the poor colliers; and this was answered by a plain statement of the matter, which must have made Whitefield blush for the hasty and ungenerous accusation. "But it is a poor case," said Wesley, "that you and I should be talking thus! Indeed these things ought not to be. It lay in your power to have prevented all, and yet to have borne testimony to what you call the truth. If you had disliked my sermon, you might have printed another on the same text, and have answered my proofs without mentioning my name. This had been fair or friendly. You rank all the maintainers of Universal Redemption with Socinians themselves. Alas! my brother, do you not know even this, that the Socinians allow no redemption at all? that Socinus himself speaks thus, Tota re

demptio nostra per Christum metaphora; and says expressly, Christ did not die as a ransom for any, but only as an example for all mankind? How easy were it for me to hit many other palpable blots in that which you call an answer to my ser mon! And how above measure contemptible would you then appear to all impartial men, either of sense or learning! But I spare you! mine hand shall not be upon you: the Lord be judge between thee and me. The general tenor both of my public and private exhortations, when I touch thereon at all, as even my enemies know, if they would testify, is, Spare the young man, even Absalom, for my sake!" "

Wesley, however, felt more resentment than he here thought proper to express; and thinking that it became him to speak his sentiments freely, he observed to him in private, that the publication of his letter had put weapons into the hands of their common enemies; that viewing it in the light of an answer, it was a mere burlesque, for he had left half the arguments of the sermon untouched, and handled the other half so gently, as if he was afraid of burning his fingers with them; but that he had said enough of what was wholly foreign to the question to make an open, and, probably, an irreparable breach between them, seeing that for a treacherous wound, and for the betraying of secrets, every friend will depart.