Whitefield would appear to have grown alarmed at the correspondence and its tendency, for about this time he wrote a friend, "For Christ's sake, desire dear brother Wesley to avoid disputing with me"; and he also begged Wesley himself not to allude to the strife in his sermons, that it might not become public property. But Wesley had already had a smart verbal and public encounter on the topic of Calvinism with one of his leading members named Acourt, who left the meeting with the threat: "I will go and tell all the world that you and your brother are false prophets." Whitefield himself now adopted a less pleasing tone.

Give me leave [he wrote to Wesley] with all humility to exhort you not to be strenuous in opposing the doctrines of election and final perseverance when, by your own confession, you have not the witness of the Spirit within yourself, and consequently are not a proper judge. I am assured God has now for some years given me this living witness in my soul.... I cannot bear the thoughts of opposing you; but how can I avoid it if you go about, as your brother

Charles once said, to drive John Calvin out of Bristol?

As the controversy went on, Whitefield became more severe and personal; and, thick-skinned in such matters as Wesley was, he could scarcely have liked it:

My dear brother, take heed! [wrote Whitefield]. See that you are in Christ a new creature! Beware of a false peace: strive to enter in at the strait gate; and give all diligence to make your calling and election sure: remember you are but a babe in Christ, if so much! Be humble, talk little, think and pray much.

The controversy led to a split in the Methodist society in Bristol, where the Calvinists found a leader in a young man named Cennick. To him, however. and his followers Wesley gave short shrift. After a brief and animated argument he expelled them. vinism made a permanent division in what had seemed externally a more or less united body. For Whitefield Wesley always entertained a cordial affec

Indeed, Cal

tion. In what was his final utterance at this period he writes to Whitefield :

But I spare you! mine hand shall not be upon you: the Lord be judge between thee and me. The general tenor 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 Absolom, for my sake.

In the course of this correspondence one passage occurs which, in the light of modern developments, is amusing enough. Writing to Whitefield, Wesley says:

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 each in the middle; and- nay, I know no more. Now which of these can be spared I know not; neither would I desire more adorning or less.

The language used towards Wesley, by Whitefield's fellow Calvinistic Methodists, was much more bitter than that of their chief; and nothing can well ex

ceed the bitterness with which they assailed him towards the end of his life. Among the most notable writers on their side were Augustus Montague Toplady, vicar of Broad Hembury, Devonshire, now best known perhaps as author of the hymn "Rock of Ages"; the brothers Richard (afterwards Sir Richard) and Rowland Hill and the Rev. Mr. Berridge, of Everton. Mr. Toplady had published a Treatise upon Absolute Predestination, chiefly translated from the Latin of Zanchius. At the close of an analysis of this treatise, Wesley made the following observations, which gave grave offence to his opponents:

The sum of all this,- one in twenty, suppose, of mankind are elected; nineteen in twenty are reprobated. The elect shall be saved, do what they will; the reprobate shall be damned, do what they can. Reader, believe this or be damned. Witness my hand, A—T—

This making light of the initials of his

signature at the end of this caustic parody of his views seems to have annoyed Toplady profoundly. At all events, he could scarcely have been in a happy frame of mind when he wrote as follows:

In almost any other case a similar forgery would commit the criminal to Virginia or Maryland, if not to Tyburn. The Satanic guilt of the person who could excogitate and publish to the world a position like that baffles all power of description, and is only to be exceeded (if exceedable) by the Satanic shamelessness which dares to lay the black position at the door of other men.

Mr. Wesley, having cleared himself from the absurd aspersion that he intended the passage quoted to be taken as an excerpt from Toplady's work, withdrew personally from the controversy, leaving the conduct of it to one of his preachers, Thomas Olivers, an able and a zealous man, who had once been a shoemaker. Toplady was irritated by the implied contempt, and it must be borne in mind that aristocratic Method