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Nothing of the above author's recanting his former latitudinarian practices of hearing, and thereby practically encouraging, that vagrant Episcopalian, Whitefield; his communicating, which natively implies union, with the Revolution Church, in one of the seals of the covenant; nor his public praying for an Erastian government, in a way, and for a reason, that must needs be understood as an homologation of their authority.

The resolution was a bold one, for field-preaching was then utterly unknown in England, and it needed no common courage to brave all the obloquy and derision it must provoke, and to commence the experiment in the centre of a half-savage population. Whitefield, however, had a just confidence in his cause and in his powers.

Even at Oxford, where he resided as a fellow of Lincoln, he had been looked upon as head of the group of Methodists, and after his return from a quixotic mission to the Indians of Georgia he again took the lead of the little society, which had removed in the interval to London. In power as a preacher he stood next to Whitefield; as a hymn-writer he stood second to his brother Charles.

We may blame, but we can hardly, I think, wonder at the hostility all this aroused among the clergy. It is, indeed, certain that Wesley and Whitefield were at this time doing more than any other contemporary clergymen to kindle a living piety among the people.

But as to his separation from the London Moravians, Wesley could not have acted otherwise without seriously damaging the cause which he had at heart. His dispute with Whitefield will come under our notice in connexion with the Calvinistic controversy, which forms a painfully conspicuous feature in the Evangelical movement.

One turns in relief from the partisan struggles in Parliament and out of it, from the intrigues and counter-intrigues of selfish and perfidious statesmen, and the alcove conspiracies of worthless women, to Wesley and his religious visions, to Whitefield and his colliers, to Charles Wesley and his sweet devotional hymns.

They were never weary of urging that all men are in a condition of damnation who have not experienced a sudden, violent, and supernatural change, or of inveighing against the clergy for their ignorance of the very essence of Christianity. "Tillotson," in the words of Whitefield, "knew no more about true Christianity than Mahomet."

A revival of spiritual life was in progress under the preaching of Wesley and Whitefield, which was quickening the consciences of the people, imparting high ideals and renovating the social and political life of the nation.

Wesley had already broken away from spiritual communion with some of his old friends, the Moravians. Probably he felt all the stronger for his own work now that he stood as a leader all but alone. He walked his own wild road; Whitefield took a path for himself. Wesley soon found that he was gaining more followers than he had lost.

The leaders of the great revival of the eighteenth century were divided into two great groups, the one headed by John Wesley, the other by George Whitefield. The Calvinism of the latter at times seemed dangerously rigid to the former; while Whitefield sometimes spoke and acted as though he feared that in preaching free grace Wesley lost sight altogether of the Divine sovereignty.