“With regard to perfection itself, I believe that when Mr. Wesley is altogether consistent upon that subject, he means absolutely nothing by it but the full cluster of Gospel blessings, which Lady Huntingdon so warmly presses the students to pursue; namely, Gospel faith, the immediate revelation of Christ, the baptism of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of adoption, the kingdom that cannot be moved, the element of forgiving love, deep and uninterrupted poverty of spirit, and, in a word, a standing upon Mount Sion and enjoying its great and glorious privileges. And I am fully persuaded that, in this respect, there is more misunderstanding between my lady and Mr. Wesley about words and modes of expression than about things and essential principles. All the difference between them seems to me to consist in this: my lady is more for looking to the misery and depth of the fall; Mr. Wesley more for considering the power and effects of the recovery. My lady speaks glorious things of free grace; and Mr. Wesley inculcates the glorious use we ought to make of it. Both appear to me to maintain one and the same truth, and to guard it; my lady against the Legalists, Mr. Wesley against the Antinomians. If, therefore, they do not understand one another, and fall out by the way, I shall think it is a great pity, and shall continue to be, at least in my heart, the loving servant of both; though both will possibly think me prejudiced for not seeing just as they do.
“I was also grieved that my lady should have received for truth so absurd an imagination as that of Mr. Wesley being willing to give £100 a-year to a rigid Calvinist in bondage, who just read prayers with a Welsh accent, and that wise Benson made the foolish proposal to him, when Benson, to my certain knowledge, feared his head was at times a little affected. And I began to fear lest my lady should, upon the most improbable assertions, receive unfavourable impressions against me, as she had done against her old friend Mr. Wesley, especially as my particular regard for him was still the same.
“Be that as it will, my regard for Lady Huntingdon and the students made me send her ladyship my sentimental creed, that, if she did not disapprove of it, I might come to the College; and I came, to my thinking and feeling, as free and as happy as ever, and was quite free on the Saturday evening and the next morning till noon, when the little commission and authority I had to exhort the students was quite taken away from me. As I preached in the chapel, an uncommon weight came upon me on a sudden, and it was not without much difficulty that I struggled under it through the rest of my sermon. As soon as the service was over, I retired to my room in very great heaviness and distress. I saw in the clearest light that I was not in my place, and must no longer preside in the College. From that time, I had no heart to speak to the students on the things of God. So clear and strong was my conviction that I mentioned it directly to Mr. Howell Harris, and that very evening to my lady, and to all the students on the next Wednesday; and as I concluded our morning meeting with prayer, I was led solemnly upon my knees to resign my charge to God, and to pray for a proper person to preside in my place.
“Nevertheless my high regard for my lady, and my love for the students, prevented me from being faithful to my conviction, and I would have quenched it, if I had been able. But several things happened which gave me courage to be faithful.
“Lady Huntingdon showed me a letter to Hook, which she had read to the students; and, though I admired the honesty and impartiality that appeared in it, I afterwards thought hard of that expression, that every one who held eternal justification must quit the College. This appeared to me as severe upon consistent Calvinists, as the like expression before upon consistent Arminians, as, I believe, every Predestinarian, who will not contradict himself, must hold himself eternally justified in God’s sight.
“I had reason to fear Mr. Shirley, that great minister whom I honour much in the Lord, had said he would oppose through the world the doctrine of the baptism of the Holy Ghost, which I am bound in conscience to maintain among all professors, especially in the College. From these different views of things, I saw difficulties would perpetually arise to her ladyship, the College, and myself.
“I was also grieved that when he tried his well-meant zeal (though it was not, in my judgment, zeal according to knowledge) to explode the baptism of the Holy Ghost, and laugh it out of the College, after having dressed it in a fool’s coat and called it Perfection, most of the students had tamely allowed him that Joel’s prophecy was entirely fulfilled upon the hundred and twenty disciples on the day of Pentecost, that believers are to grow in grace by imperceptible dews, and that we can do very well without a remarkable shower of grace and Divine effusion of power, opening in us the well of living water that is to flow to everlasting life.
“As it appeared to me they had, in a good degree, given up their little expectation of this Gospel blessing, and renounced the grand point which I apprehended was to be firmly maintained and vigorously pursued in the College, I did not feel the same liberty with them in prayer, and found that, as matters were and appeared likely to continue, my convictions and desires would rather be damped than cherished among them.
“Nor, indeed, did I see, upon this new plan, any advantage this College was to have more than the academy at Abergavenny, itinerancy excepted; so that I feared many would get into the habit of preaching by rote, and of talking of the power without heartily waiting for it, which made me give up my hopes that those who have not gifts should ever be useful preachers, as a day of Pentecost and power from on high can alone supply the want of them.
“My lady, likewise, appeared to me so excessively afraid of Perfection, that she seemed to take umbrage at a harmless expression I had used in a letter hastily written to a friend, ‘The fiery baptism will burn up self,’—an expression which I had caught from Mr. Harris, who frequently uses it, though no one will accuse him of befriending Mr. Wesley’s doctrine of Perfection. Whatsoever he means by it, I mean nothing but to convey the idea of a power that enables us to say, with a tolerable degree of propriety, as St. Paul, ‘I live not, but Christ lives in me;’ and I saw that, if I was faithful to my light, misapprehensions of the like kind, and well or ill grounded fears, would perpetually arise.