it commanded the apprehension of Whitefield for 'making and composing a false, malicious, scandalous, and infamous libel against the clergy' of the province of South Carolina. He appeared in court, confessed to his share in the letter, and gave security to appear by his attorney at the next general quarter sessions, under a penalty of one hundred pounds proclamation money. He was now satisfied that he was a persecuted man. But that bold tongue of his could always inflict punishment for punishment; and he did not forget to declaim, before a sympathising audience, against the wickedness of persecuting under the pretence of religion.

Apprehensive of some difficulties that awaited him in England, he took ship, along with some friends, in the middle of January. During the whole voyage he was anxious for the future. One day he was yearning for a full restoration of friendship with the Wesleys; the next, he was meditating the publication of his answer to the sermon on Free Grace,' and consoling himself with the thought that it was written in much love and meekness; a third day he seemed to hear the Divine voice saying to him, Fear not, speak out, no one shall set upon thee to hurt thee;' another day he was writing to Charles Wesley deploring the impending separation, expostulating with him and John as if they could undo the past, and declaring that he would rather stay on the sea for ever than come to England to oppose him and his brother. He knew not what to do, though he knew perfectly well what he wanted the old friendship to be what it had once been, and every dividing thing, whether raised by himself or the brothers, done utterly away. Nor were his longings for peace stronger than those of Charles Wesley. It is painful to observe the way in which the two friends strove, with unavailing effort, against a tide which they felt was hurrying them into trouble and sorrow. Four months before Whitefield wrote his reply

BREACH WITH WESLEY.

6

6

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to the sermon on Free Grace,' Charles, just recovering from a severe illness, sent him a letter, ‘labouring for peace,' in which he used the strongest and most affectionate language; he declared that he would rather Whitefield saw him dead at his feet than opposing him; that his soul was set upon peace, and drawn after Whitefield by love stronger than death. It faints, in this bodily weakness,' he wrote, with the desire I have of your happiness. You know not how dear you are to me.'1 When Whitefield reached England, the meeting between them was most touching. 'It would have melted any heart,' says Whitefield, 'to have heard us weeping, after prayer, that, if possible, the breach might be prevented.' Soon afterwards, however, he submitted his letter, which he had had printed before leaving America, to the judgment of his friend, who returned it endorsed with these words, Put up again thy sword into its place.' But not

So.

That evil fortune which made Wesley preach and print a sermon on one of the profoundest subjects, under the provocation of an anonymous letter, and at the dictation of a lot; which prevailed over Charles' loving letter, and tempted Whitefield to pen and print his reply, still hovered near, and soon triumphed over the counsel of love and wisdom which was heeded only for awhile. At first he said that he would never preach against the brothers, whatever his private opinion might be. Then his doctrines seemed to him to be too important to be held back; and when he went to the Foundry, at the invitation of Charles, to preach there, he so far forgot himself, though Charles was sitting by him, as to preach them, according to the testimony of John, 'in the most peremptory and offensive manner.' When John, who had been summoned to London, met him, he was so far from listening to compromise as to say, that 'Wesley and

The Journal of the Rev. Charles Wesley, M.A.' by Thomas Jackson, vol. ii. p. 167.

he 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 next ungenerously accused Wesley of having mismanaged things at Bristol, and perverted the school at Kingswood to improper uses, foreign to the intention with which the school had been undertaken. It was easy for the accused to answer all that was alleged against him; but, unfortunately, he took occasion, at the same time, to indulge in most irritating language towards Whitefield. He assumed an air of superiority, of patronage and pity, which would have ruffled many a cooler man than his former friend. It was more taunting than kindly to write, 'How easy were it for me to hit many other palpable blots in that which you call an answer to my sermon! 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!"'

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It may be safely affirmed that the two friends would not have quarrelled had they been left to themselves. They were the unwilling heads of rival parties among their own converts. Many, I know,' said Charles Wesley in his letter to Whitefield, 'desire nothing so much as to see George Whitefield and John Wesley at the head of different parties, as is plain from their truly devilish plans to effect it; but, be assured, my dearest brother, our heart is as your heart.' Whitefield, as we have seen from his American letters, received embittering news from home; and on his arrival his ear was assailed by reports from brethren who were already openly opposed to Wesley and to those who held his views. True, there

was also the anger of Wesley on account of Whitefield's indefensible breach of confidence; and that and the meddling of partisans did more damage than the doctrines in dispute. The matter may be summed up thus: Wesley was wrong in the beginning: 1. In attacking Whitefield's views at the taunt of an anonymous enemy; he struck the first blow, and struck it without a sufficient cause. 2. In printing and publishing his sermon because of a lot. 3. In using irritating language to his opponent. Whitefield was wrong: 1. In yielding his mind to the influence of inflaming representations sent to him from England, and made to him when he returned home. In exposing private opinions and deeds. 3. In preaching his peculiar views in the chapel of the Wesleys.

2.

It is but a sad task to record these things, and the evident worth of the chief actors makes it all the more painful. Happily, the course of events soon took a different direction; and the shadow resting upon the close of this chapter and the opening of the next will soon be seen breaking and vanishing away.

CHAPTER IX.

March, 1741, to August, 1744.

LOSS OF POPULARITY-FIRST VISIT TO SCOTLAND-CONDUCT OF THE DISSENTERS.

It was a dark report which Whitefield had to send to his family; and no little anxiety would be felt at the orphanhouse when the following letter, addressed to Habersham, arrived :

'London, March 25, 1741.

My dear Sir, I wrote to you immediately on my coming on shore. We arrived at Falmouth last Wednesday was sevennight, and got here the Sunday following. Blessed be God we had a summer's passage. Many of our friends, I find, are sadly divided, and, as far as I am able to judge, have been sadly misled. Congregations at Moorfields and Kennington Common on Sunday were as large as usual. On the following week days, quite the contrary; twenty thousand dwindled down to two or three hundred. It has been a trying time with me. A large orphan family, consisting of near a hundred, to be maintained about four thousand miles off, without the least fund, and in the dearest part of his majesty's dominions: also, above a thousand pounds in debt for them, and not worth twenty pounds in the world of my own, and threatened to be arrested for three hundred and fifty pounds drawn for in favour of the orphan-house by my late dear deceased friend and fellow-traveller Mr. Seward. My bookseller, who, I believe, has got some hundreds by me, being drawn away by the Moravians, refuses to print for me; and many, very many of my spiritual children, who at my last departure from England would have plucked out their own eyes to have given to 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