“We gathered up our wreck,—raros nantes in gurgite vasto; for nine out of ten are swallowed up in the dead sea of stillness. O, why was not this done six months ago? How fatal was our delay and moderation! ‘Let them alone, and they will soon be weary, and come to themselves of course,’ said one,—unus qui nobis cunctando restituet rem! I tremble at the consequence. Will they submit themselves to every ordinance of man, who refuse subjection to the ordinances of God? I told them plainly, I should only continue with them so long as they continued in the Church of England. My every word was grievous to them. I am a thorn in their sides, and they cannot bear me.
“They modestly denied that we had any but hearsay proof of their denying the ordinances. I asked them all and every one, particularly Bray, Bell, etc., whether they would now acknowledge them to be commands or duties; whether they sinned in omitting them; whether they did not leave it to every man’s fancy to use them or not; whether they did not exclude all from the Lord’s table, except those whom they called believers. These questions I put too close to be evaded; though better dodgers never came out of the school of Loyola. Honest Bell and some others spoke out, and insisted upon their antichristian liberty. The rest put by their stillness, and delivered me over to Satan for a blasphemer, a very Saul (for to him they compare me), out of blind zeal persecuting the Church of Christ.”[81]
Ingham continued among these angry people a week longer, when John Wesley wrote:—
“1740. June 18.—I went to our own society, of Fetter Lane, before whom Mr. Ingham (being to leave London on the morrow) bore a noble testimony for the ordinances of God, and the reality of weak faith.[82] But the short answer was, ‘You are blind, and speak of the things you know not.’”[83]
Matters now reached a crisis. For about two years, Wesley had been a sort of member and minister of the Moravian Society in Fetter Lane. Five weeks after this, by a vote of the Brethren, Wesley was expelled; and Molther, his rival, was left in full possession. Those who sympathised with Wesley were, in number, about twenty-five men and fifty women, all of whom seceded with him, and, on July 23rd, 1740, met, for the first time, at the Foundery, instead of at Fetter Lane; and thus the Methodist Society was founded.
Whitefield was in America; but, in the midst of these wretched squabbles, wrote to Ingham the following Calvinistic, and not too luminous epistle:—
“Boston, September 26th, 1740.
“My dear Brother Ingham,—I thank you for your kind letter. It is the first I have received from you since I left England. I bless God, that the work goes on in Yorkshire. May our glorious, sin-forgiving Lord, bless you and your spiritual children more and more!
“I find our friends are got into disputing one with another. O, that the God of peace may put a stop to it! I wish many may not be building on a false foundation, and resting in a false peace. They own free justification, and yet seem to think that their continuance in a justified state depends on their doings and their wills. This, I think, is establishing a righteousness of our own. My dear brother, if we search the Scriptures, we shall find that the word justified implies, not only pardon of sin, but also all its consequences. ‘Thus,’ says St. Paul, ‘those whom He justified, them He also glorified;’ so that, if a man was once justified, he remains so to all eternity. There lies the anchor of all my hopes,—our Lord having once loved me, He will love me to the end. This fills me with joy unspeakable and full of glory. I now walk by faith. I work not to keep myself in a justified state, (for men nor devils can pluck me out of Christ’s hands,) but to express my love and gratitude for what Jesus hath done for my soul. This, I think, is what the apostle calls, ‘faith working by love.’
“My dear brother, my heart’s desire and prayer to God is, that we may all think and speak the same things; for, if we are divided among ourselves, what an advantage will Satan get over us! Let us love one another, excite all to come to Christ without exception, and our Lord will show us who are His.