G. W.
P. S. I know not whether your Grace or the Lord President hath the copy of the New-Jersey College charter. I gave it to Mr. Secretary Sharp, in order that your Grace and his Lordship might see it. Mr. Sharp being dead, obliges me to trouble your Grace with this particular: I should not otherwise have taken the freedom.
Mr. Whitefield to the Archbishop.
Tottenham-Court, February 12, 1768.
May it please your Grace,
AS not only the Governor, Council and Assembly of Georgia, have been for a long season, and are now waiting for an account of what hath been done in respect to the affair of the intended Bethesda college, I find myself under a necessity of giving them and the contributors, on this, as well as the other side of the water, a plain narration of the steps I have been taking; and at the same time I intend to lay before the public a draught of the future plan, which, God willing, I am now determined to prosecute. And as the letters which I have had the honour of writing to your Grace, contain most of what I have to say on this subject, I suppose your Grace can have no objection against my publishing those letters, together with the answers returned, and the issue of the correspondence. To prevent your Grace’s having further trouble, as I hear your Grace is at present much indisposed, I shall look upon silence as an approbation, at least as a tacit allowance of what is designed by, may it please your Grace,
Your Grace’s most dutiful son and servant, in the King of kings and Lord of lords,
G. W.
Thus, may it please your excellency, concluded my correspondence with his Grace, and I humbly hope, the province of Georgia, in the end, will be no loser by this negociation. For, God willing, I now purpose to add a public academy, to the Orphan-house, as the college[¹] of Philadelphia was constituted a public academy, as well as charitable school, for some time before its present college charter was granted by the honourable proprietors of Pensylvania in the year 1755.
[¹] This college was originally built, above twenty-eight years ago, for a charity school and preaching place for me, and ministers of various denominations, on the bottom of the doctrinal articles of the church of England. The trustees, as a public and standing acknowledgment of this, have inserted a clause in their Grant, for leave for a part of the building still to be allowed for that purpose. Accordingly I preached a sermon in it, for the benefit of their charity children, when I was last at Philadelphia, before a very large auditory, and Dr. Smith, the present Provost, read prayers.