“I am sure I cannot tell you,” said Miss Newton, laughing. “I have heard my father speak of them with some very strong language after it—that I know. My dear Miss Courtenay, does everything rouse your enthusiasm? For how you can bring that brilliant light into your eyes for the Prince, and for Mr Wesley, is quite beyond me. I should have thought they were the two opposite ends of a pole.”
“I don’t know anything about Mr Wesley,” I said, “and I have only heard Mr Whitefield preach once in Scotland.”
“You have heard him?” she asked.
“Yes, and liked him very much,” said I.
Miss Newton shrugged her shoulders in that little French way she has. “Why, some people think him the worse of the two,” she said. “I don’t know anything about them, I can tell you—only that Mr Wesley makes Dissenters faster than you could make tatting-stitches.”
“What does he do to them?” said I.
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know,” said she. “If he had lived in former times, I am sure he would have been taken up for witchcraft. He is a clergyman, or they say so; but I really wonder the Bishops have not turned him out of the Church long ago.”
“A clergyman, and makes people Dissenters!” cried I. “Why, Mr Whitefield quoted the Articles in his sermon.”
“They said so,” she replied. “I know nothing about it; I never heard the man, thank Heaven! but they say he goes about preaching to all sorts of dreadful creatures—those wild miners down in Cornwall, and coal-heavers, and any sort of mobs he can get to listen. Only fancy a clergyman—a gentleman—doing any such thing!”
I thought a moment, and some words came to my mind.