watching for some occasion against me; and I thank God, that they have hitherto, with all that malignity of heart which some of them have expressed, been able to find no greater!

"As for you, dear Sir, I must always number you among my most affectionate and faithful friends; and though the human heart is not so formed that it is agreeable to hear ourselves spoken of with disrespect, yet I am well assured that the writing the information you gave me was among the instances of your greatest kindness. You know, Sir, that a fear to offend God, by doing as most self-prudent people do, has generally been esteemed a weakness: and my conscience testifies that those actions of mine which have been most reproached, have proceeded from that principle. It is impossible to represent to you the reason, at least the excuse, I have had, and esteemed a reason, unless I could give you an account of the several circumstances in which I have successively been placed for these few past years. If I could, I believe you would be less inclined to blame me than you are; though I am sensible your censures are very moderate, when compared with those of many others.

“I had, indeed, great expectations from the methodists and Moravians. I am grieved, from my very heart, that so many things have occurred among them which have been quite unjustifiable: and I assure you faithfully, they are such as would have occasioned me to have dropped that intimacy of correspondence which I once had with them. And I suppose they have also produced the same sentiments in the archbishop of Canterbury, who, to my certain knowledge, received Count Zinzendorf with open arms, and wrote of his being chosen the Moravian bishop, as what was done 'plaudente toto cœlesti choro.' I shall always be ready to weigh whatever can be said against Mr. Whitefield, as well as against any of the rest: and, though I must have actual demonstration before I can admit him to be a dishonest man, and though I shall never be able to think all he has written, and all I have heard from him, nonsense, yet I am not so zealously attached to him as to be disposed to celebrate him as one of the greatest men of the age, or to think that he is the pillar that bears up the whole interest of religion among And if this moderation of sentiment towards him will not

us.

appease my angry brethren, as I am sensible it will not abate the enmity which some have, for many years, entertained towards me, I must acquiesce, and be patient till the day of the Lord, when the secrets of all hearts shall be made manifest; in which, I do from my heart believe, that with respect to the part I have acted in this affair, I shall not be ashamed.

"I had before heard from some of my worthy friends in the west of the offence which had been taken at two of my pupils there, for the respect they showed to Mr. Whitefield; and yet they are both persons of eminent piety. He whose name is chiefly in question, I mean Mr. Darracott, is one of the most devout and extraordinary men I ever sent out; and a person who has, within these few years, been highly useful to numbers of his hearers. Some of these, who were the most abandoned characters in the place, are now become serious and useful christians; and he himself has honoured his profession, when to all around him he seemed on the borders of eternity, by a behaviour which, in such awful circumstances, the best of men might wish to be their own. Mr. Fawcett labours likewise at Taunton ; and his zeal, so far as I can judge, is inspired both with love and prudence. Yet I hear these men are reproached because they have treated Mr. Whitefield respectfully; and that one of them, after having had a correspondence with him for many years, admitted him into his pulpit. I own I am very thoughtful when these things will end in the mean time, I am as silent as I can be! I commit the matter to God in prayer, and earnestly beg his direction, that he would lead me in a plain path. Sometimes I think the storm will soon blow over, and that things will return again to their natural course. I am sure I see no danger that any of my pupils will prove methodists: I wish many of them may not run into the contrary extreme. It is really, Sir, with some confusion that I read your encomium upon my sermon: I am sensible it is some consolation to me, amidst the uneasiness which, as you conclude, other things must give me. I hope our design will go on, though it has not at present the success I could have wished. The dissenters do their part, but I am sorry to say the neighbouring clergy are exceedingly deficient in theirs." Doddridge.

Neal was not the only person of influence amongst the dissenters who was alarmed at Doddridge's liberality. Dr. Jennings assailed him for prefacing a book of Mason's; by which "his friends were given by name," he says, " to be baited by the methodists, as their opposers." At the same time, also, Mr. Blair wrote to him, begging his opinion of Whitefield—" a man," he says, " more railed at by some, and idolized by others, than any person I ever knew in my life." His friend Barker also told him, that he had thought it " needful to warn his hearers to avoid the errors" of Whitefield and his followers. So little did good men appreciate or understand Whitefield at this time!

CHAPTER XI.

WHITEFIELD'S DOMESTIC LIFE.

It is, indeed, almost a misnomer, to call Whitefield's conjugal life, domestic. His engagements, like Wesley's, were incompatible with domestic happiness,-as that is understood by domestic men. Accordingly, their kind and degree of home enjoyment he neither expected nor proposed to himself. All that he wanted was, a help meet, who could sympathize in his absorbing public enterprises, as well as in his personal joys and sorrows; and a home, where he might recruit after labour and exhaustion. And such a wife and a home he deserved, as well as needed. He mistook sadly, however, when he sought for such a wife in the ranks of widowhood, then. There were no missionaries' widows "in these days." A young female, of eminent piety and zeal, might have fallen in with his habits and plans, and even found her chief happiness in sustaining his mighty and manifold undertakings, like Paul's Phoebe but a widow, who had been "a housekeeper" (her own) "many years," and that in the retirement of Abergavenny, in Wales, could hardly be expected to unlearn the domestic system of the country, nor to become a heroine for the world. Both Whitefield and Wesley forgot this obvious truth, and married widows.

How much Wesley smarted for this oversight, is as proverbial as it is painful. Mrs. Whitefield had none of Mrs. Wesley's faults. She had, however, no commanding virtues, running in grand parallel with any of the noble features of her husband's character; and thus, because she was not prominently a help to him, she seems to have been reckoned a hinderance, by the

gossips and busybodies who watched Mrs. Wesley. These, in their fears for their own "dear minister's comfort," watched Mrs. Whitefield also, lest he should be made as unhappy as his old friend!

The tattle of such spies is beneath contempt. It has, however, found some countenance from a quarter which no impartial judge can overlook or underrate. Cornelius Winter, in the letters which form the substance of his "Life," by Jay of Bath, has said expressly, that Whitefield "was not happy in his wife;" that "she certainly did not behave as she ought;" and that "her death set his mind much at rest." Now, whatever this sweeping charge means, it came from a man of the highest character. Of Cornelius Winter, Matthew Wilks used to say, "I am never in this man's company without being reminded of Paradisaical innocence." Rowland Hill also, although he did not give Winter credit for all the candour Jay has done, did not hesitate to say of him, that "he would make the worst devil of any man in the world;" meaning, that he was the most unlike the devil. All this is so true,-that Winter's account of Mrs. Whitefield has acquired currency, although it is neither confirmed nor illustrated by a single document or line from any other writer, so far as I can learn. It will, no doubt, surprise some, however, who have formed their opinion of her from this single source, to be informed that Winter's opportunity of knowing her, from personal observation, was very short. Whitefield was married to her before Winter was born. She died in 1768. Now Winter says, that Berridge introduced him to Whitefield by letter, in February, 1767. Jay's Life of Winter. And even then, he did not become "one of the family" until his "fidelity was proved." Thus he had not two years to judge; and even this brief space occurred when Mrs. Whitefield was breaking down. Unless, therefore, he received his information from Whitefield himself, (and he does not say so,) Winter must be deemed, for once, rash, at least.

This is a painful conclusion; but it is inevitable, except on the supposition that the sweeping charge was made against her by her husband. But his first report of her is, that "Mrs. James," although "once gay, is now a despised follower of the