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the college. Joseph Benson, the commentator subsequently, was head master. The scheme was to admit only such young men as were truly converted, and meant to devote themselves to God's service. Students were at liberty to stay three years, during which time they were to have education and maintenance free, and a suit of clothes once a year. Afterward they might enter the ministry of the Established Church or any other Protestant denomination. Indeed, she seemed to encourage rather than discourage their taking orders in the Establishment, and exerted her influence to procure ordination and livings for them, thinking thus to spread a revival influence where it would be most useful, and where approach by other means was slow and difficult.

Trevecca for years was the head-quarters of the Calvinistic Methodists. It supplied their pulpits, and afforded important ministerial contributions to the Dissenters and the Established Church. The Countess resided there much of her time; it was convenient for the extended work which she was sustaining, and she could readily dispatch assistance from it to her many pulpits. Horses were kept to convey students on Saturdays to distant points, while nearer appointments were visited on foot. Frequently they went forth on remote "rounds" preaching in fields, barns, market-places, and private houses. The annual "commencements" were like Methodist camp-meetings. one occasion a thousand and three hundred horses of visitors and guests were turned into a large field, besides what were stationed in neighboring villages, and a great number of carriages. ‚A scaffold was erected at one end of the college-court, on which a book-stand was placed, and thence six or seven preached successively, to attentive and lively congregations. A visitor speaks of three hundred people breakfasting together on the premises; of sermons, exhortations, sacraments, love-feasts, in English and Welsh; of "many very hearty amens, and a fervent crying of 'Glory to God!""

On

Fletcher kept up his labors at Madely, and in the circuit he had formed around it; but he found time to superintend Trevecca. Benson describes his visits to the school of the prophets:

Here it was that I saw-shall I say-an angel in human flesh? I should not far exceed the truth if I said so. Prayer, praise, love, and zeal-all ardent, ele vated above what one would think attainable in this state of frailty-were the elements in which he continually lived. Languages, arts, sciences, grammar, rhet

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oric, logic, even divinity itself, as it is called, were all laid aside when he appeared in the school-room among the students. And they seldom hearkened long before they were all in tears, and every heart caught fire from the flame that burned in his soul.

Closing these addresses, Fletcher would say: "As many of you as are athirst for the fullness of the Spirit of God follow me into my room." Two or three hours were spent there in such prevailing prayer as seemed to bring heaven down to earth. "Indeed," says Benson, "I frequently thought, while attending to his heavenly discourse and divine spirit, that he was so different from, and superior to, the generality of mankind as to look more like Moses, or Elijah, or some prophet or apostle come again from the dead, than a mortal man dwelling in a house of clay."

A refreshing instance of Christian fidelity in high places is on record. The Archbishop of Canterbury, during one winter of fashion, had been giving balls and convivial routs at the archiepiscopal palace. His wife "eclipsed all the gay personages." The Methodist Countess, through her titled relatives, "obtained an audience with his Grace of Canterbury," and respectfully but earnestly remonstrated. She was snubbed, and his Grace violently abused those whom he was pleased to brand as Methodists and hypocrites. Lady Huntingdon then obtained an audience with the king, through Lord Dartmouth. George the Third, if not religious, was religiously inclined, and the archbishop soon received an admonitory letter:

MY GOOD LORD PRELATE: I could not delay giving you the notification of the grief and concern with which my heart was affected at receiving authentic information that routs had made their way into your palace. . From the dissatisfaction with which you must perceive I behold these improprieties, not to speak in harsher terms, and on still more pious principles, I trust you will suppress them immediately; so that I may not have occasion to show any further marks of my displeasure, or to interpose in a different manner. May God take your Grace into his almighty protection!

G. R.

A large building in London, known as the Pantheon, which had been erected as a place of Sunday amusements in a wicked and very neglected district, fell into the Countess's hands, and was fitted up, like another Foundry, for a church. "My heart," she says, "is strangely set upon having this temple of folly dedicated to Jehovah Jesus." Great expense was incurred, and great preparations made, and great preachers engaged. The

*Dr Cornwallis was then Archbishop of Canterbury.

scheme moved off prosperously, with crowded congregations and gracious revivals; but a catastrophe was at hand. The avaricious pluralist whose parish embraced the Pantheon-named Spafield's Chapel-put in his legal claims and pressed them. He claimed the right of nominating ministers to its pulpit, and of appointing a clerk whose salary should be paid by the proprietors; of reading prayers and preaching and administering the sacraments there, whenever he wished; of receiving a stipend (£40 per annum) for appointing such Methodist clergy as the proprietors desired, for the chapel; that all the money collected at the sacrament and from sittings be under the control of his church-wardens; and, for due performance of this, that the proprietors enter into a bond of £1,000.*

The chapel authorities not yielding to his terms, Sellen instituted suit in the Spiritual Court of the Bishop of London, against the two clergymen officiating at Spafield's Chapel for irregularity in preaching in a place not episcopally consecrated, and for carrying on divine worship there contrary to the wish of the minister of the parish. Verdicts were obtained against them, the chapel was closed, and one of the finest congregations in London was dispersed. As a peeress of the realm, the Countess supposed she had a right to employ her own chaplains at any time and place, and she put them in the stead of the two suspended ministers. But Sellen, like another Sanballat, renewed the attack in the ecclesiastical courts against every clergyman she engaged to preach there; and the verdict being against them, they discontinued their services. Harassed and obstructed, the Countess was obliged to take shelter under the Toleration Act. "In this case," she wrote, "I am reduced to turn the finest congregation not only in England, but in any part of the world, into a Dissenting meeting." Lady Huntingdon and her preachers were strongly attached to the Church of England; used its forms as far as practicable in worship, and preached its doctrines, and hoped to carry on a work of revival within its pale-if not helped, at least not prohibited; but that hope is at an end. In creed and at heart she and her chaplains and co-workers were not Dissenters. But in order to protect her chapels from suppression, or appropriation by the Established Church, she had to avail herself, in 1779, of the law by which all religious societies that would not be sub

*The Life and Times of Lady Huntingdon.

Death of Lady Huntingdon.

249

ject to the established ecclesiastical power, could control their own chapels by an avowal, direct or virtual, of Dissent. Her "Connection" thus took its place among the Dissenting Churches, and that brilliant and powerful band of preachers whom she had kept circulating through the kingdom under the best advantages, stirring spiritual stagnation and enlightening darkness, among the high and low-Romaine, Madan, Venn, Berridge, Townsend, and others ceased preaching in her chapels.

When the lease upon Trevecca expired, the college was removed nearer the metropolis, and exists to our day as Cheshunt College. There John Harris, author of "Mammon," and other useful and evangelical scholars have been bred and labored.

The Countess died at the age of eighty-four, uttering with her last breath: "My work is done. I have nothing to do but to go to my Father." She left her fortune for the support of sixty-four chapels which she had helped to build in various parts of the kingdom.

The Lady Huntingdon Connection was in part absorbed by the Dissenting Churches, and went to revive "the languishing Nonconformity of the age;" but its greater result was the contribution made, directly and indirectly, to the Evangelical, or Lowchurch, element in the Establishment, from which have sprung measures in legislation and in philanthropy that have signalized the past and the present century.

CHAPTER XX.

The Opening in the Colonies-Intolerance in Virginia-Patrick Henry on the Parsons-Tobacco-Whitefield's Sixth Visit-Strawbridge-The First Society and First Methodist Meeting-house in America-Orphan-house-The Founder's Comfort-Whitefield's Last Visit; his Death; his Will-Exeunt Omnes.

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HE current of emigration, set in motion by revolutions and persecutions in the Old World during the seventeenth centary, distributed along the shores of the New very different populations. New England received earnest Puritans; New York, Dutch Reformers; Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Presbyterians and Quakers; the equal laws of Maryland invited a generous population of different creeds; the Carolinas were enriched by Palatines and Huguenots; but Virginia was stinted to an accession of bigoted Churchmen, who neither preached the gospel themselves nor allowed others to preach it. Numbers of cavaliers and loyal gentry flocked to the ancient Dominion, where toasts to the health of Charles II. were drank long before the Restoration, and where the Act of Toleration was not accepted for fifty years after William and Mary had been crowned.

Whitefield's gown gave him a passport through Virginia, except, possibly, in a few places; Devereux Jarratt was another Grimshaw, and that scholarly and Christian man, Dr. Blair, a Scotchman by birth, was for half a century the commissary. Doubtless there were other and similar mitigations of the moral influence which the execrable State-church system was calculated to produce. A high authority says: "If we turn from the clergy to the laity, facts present themselves such as might naturally be supposed to exist under the ministrations of such a clergy. Indeed, it scarce admits of a doubt that between the two classes there was a mutual action and reaction for evil; each probably contributed to make the other worse."*

We have seen how the Methodists and Moravians were warned off before they came in sight, and with what difficulty the Presbyterians got a footing in the colony. The Baptists bore the brunt of persecution. "They were beaten and imprisoned," says *Hawks's Narrative of the Protestant Episcopal Church.

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