[425] The title was, "The Weekly History; or, an account of the most remarkable particulars relating to the present progress of the Gospel. London: printed by J. Lewis. Price one penny." The newspaper was a small folio of four pages; and the first number appears to have been issued on April 11, 1741, exactly a month after Whitefield's arrival from America. In No. 4, the editor says: "The Rev. Mr. Whitefield intends to supply me with fresh matter every week." The periodical was continued weekly until November 13, 1742, when No. 84 was issued, to which the editor appended the following note: "Now that this first volume is finished, we purpose to begin the next in a more commodious manner. It is to be printed in a neat pocket volume, and to be delivered (every week, as it was at the first,) at the Tabernacle, and at people's houses, at the price of one penny."
[426] No doubt, Whitefield evinced bad taste in doing this; but the error, in Wesley's meeting-houses, was not repeated. At the time of Whitefield's death, Wesley, in a letter published in Lloyd's Evening Post, remarked: "Mr. Whitefield did not everywhere preach the eternal covenant and absolute predestination. I never heard him utter a sentence on one or the other. Yea, all the times he preached in West-street chapel, and in our other chapels throughout England, he did not preach these doctrines at all, no, not in a single paragraph." (Wesley's Works, vol. xiii., p. 378.)
[427] Wesley's Works, vol. xi., p. 463.
[428] See Weekly Miscellany of March 14, 1741.
[429] Wesley's Works, vol. xii., p. 148.
[430] Gillies' "Life of Whitefield."
[431] The Weekly History, July 25, 1741, and August 22, 1741.
[432] Gillies' "Historical Collections," vol. ii., p. 132.
[433] Whitefield's Works, vol. i., p. 258.
[434] If Whitefield acquired his knowledge of Wesley's doctrine of Christian perfection mainly from witnesses such as these, no wonder that he was prejudiced against it.