did not care to go to their worship.[588] Their strictly organised discipline was in itself a great impediment to success among a people so naturally attached to liberty as the English.  In the middle of the century, their missionary enterprise secured them special privileges in the American colonies.  More than this.  At the instance of Gambold, who was exceedingly anxious that the Brotherhood should gain ground in England within the bosom of the Anglican Church, a Moravian synod, held in 1749, formally elected Wilson, the venerable Bishop of Sodor and Man, ’into the order and number of the Antecessors of the General Synod of the brethren of the Anatolic Unity.’  With this high-sounding dignity was joined ’the administration of the Reformed Tropus’ (or Diaspora) ’in our hierarchy, for life, with full liberty, in case of emergency, to employ as his substitute the Rev. T. Wilson, Royal Almoner, Doctor of Theology, and Prebendary of St. Peter’s, Westminster.’  It is further added that the good old man accepted the office with thankfulness and pleasure.[589] Here their success ended.  Soon afterwards many of the English Moravians fell for a time into a most unsatisfactory condition, becoming largely tainted with Antinomianism, and with a sort of vulgar lusciousness of religious sentiment, which was exceedingly revolting to ordinary English feeling.[590] After the death of Zinzendorf in 1760, the Society recovered for the most part a healthier condition,[591] but did not regain any prospect of that wider influence in England which Gambold and others had once begun to hope for, and perhaps to anticipate.

Warburton said of Methodism, that ’William Law was its father, and Count Zinzendorf rocked the cradle.’[592] The remark was no doubt a somewhat galling one to Wesley, for he had afterwards conceived a great abhorrence of the opinions both of the father and the nurse.  But it was perfectly just; and Wesley, though he might have been unwilling to own it, was greatly and permanently indebted to each.  The light which, when he read Law’s ‘Christian Perfection and Serious Call,’ had ’flowed so mightily on his soul that everything appeared in a new view,’ was rekindled into a still more fervent flame by the glowing words of the Moravian teacher on the morning of the day from which he dated his special ‘conversion.’  Nor was his connection with men of this general turn of thought by any means a passing one.  His visit to William Law at Mr. Gibbon’s house at Putney in 1732—­the correspondence he carried on with him for several years afterwards—­his readings of the mystic divines of Germany—­his loving respect for the company of Moravians who were his fellow-travellers to Georgia in 1736—­his meeting with Peter Boehler in 1738—­the close intercourse which followed with the London Moravians—­the fortnight spent by him at Herrnhut, ’exceedingly strengthened and comforted by the conversation of this lovely people,’[593]—­his intimate friendship with Gambold, who afterwards completely