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AND THEIR REFUTATION. 75
was disappointed in a matrimonial speculation while there, and
had a law-suit also on hands. Like all Protestant Apostles, a
comfortable settlement in life appeared to him the first considera
tion. This is one of the principal causes of the sterility of all
their missions ; if, however, they do not seek first the kingdom of
God, they tako care that all other things that the world can
afford shall he added to them, as the investigations into the land
tenures of New Zealand and the islands of the Pacific bear
witness. While in America ho associated a great deal with the
Moravians, and became imbued, to a great extent, with their
peculiar doctrines of grace, the new birth, and justification, and
on his return paid a visit to llcrronhutt, to commune with Zin-
zcndorf. Ho was not at all popular in America; ho appears to
have been a proud, self-opinionated man, filled up with an ex
traordinary idea of his own perfections. Indeed, it only requires
a glance at his Diary, which, it would appear, he compiled, not so
much for his own self-examination as for making a display before
others, to bo convinced that he was a vain, proud man. lie was
always a determined enemy of Catholicity, and for his bigoted
attacks on Popery, ho received a just castigation from the witty
and eloquent Father O Lcary. lie dates the origin of Method
ism himself from a meeting held in Fetter-lane, London, on the
1st of May, 1738.
" The
first rise of Methodism," he says,
" was
in November, 1729, when four of us met together at Oxford ;
the second was in Savannah, in April, 1736, when twenty or
thirty persons met at my house ;
the last in London, when forty
or fifty of us agreed to meet together every Wednesday evening,
in order to free conversation, begun and ended with singing and
prayer." Whitfield, a fellow-student of Wesley, began to preach
at this time to numerous congregations in the open air. lie was
a man of fervid eloquence, and the people, deserted, in a great
measure, by the parsons of the Anglican church, flocked in crowds
to hear him, and as ho could not obtain leave to preach in the
churches, he .adopted the system of
field-preaching. His doctrine
was thoroughly Calvinistic, and this was, ultimately, the cause of
a separation between him and Wesley. Indeed it would appear
Wesley could bear no competitor, lie ruled his society most
absolutely ; appointed preachers, and removed them, according to
his own will changed them from one station to another, or dis-