this by refusing that ordination to your preachers which would be readily granted to other teachers among the Dissenters.’[775] Berridge also thought that the Wesleyans would not retain their position as Churchmen.  In the very same year (1777) in which Wesley gloried in the adhesion of his societies to the Church, Berridge wrote to Lady Huntingdon:  ’What will become of your students at your decease?  They are virtual Dissenters now, and will be settled Dissenters then.  And the same will happen to many, perhaps most, of Mr. Wesley’s preachers at his death.  He rules like a real Alexander, and is now stepping forth with a flaming torch; but we do not read in history of two Alexanders succeeding each other.’[776]

But to return to Trevecca.  The rules of the college specified that the students after three years’ residence might, if they desired, enter the ministry either of the Church or any other Protestant denomination.  Now, as Trevecca was essentially a theological college, it is hardly possible to conceive that the theology taught there could have been so colourless as not to bias the students in favour either of the Church or of Dissent; and as the Church, in spite of her laxity, still retained her liturgy, creeds, and other forms, which were more dogmatic and precise than those of any Dissenting body, such a training as that of Trevecca would naturally result, as the Vicar of Everton predicted, in making the students, to all intents and purposes, Dissenters.  The only wonder is that Lady Huntingdon’s Connexion should have retained so strong an attachment to the Church as they undoubtedly did, and that, not only during her own lifetime, but after her death.  ‘You ask,’ wrote Dr. Haweis to one who desired information on this point,[777] ’of what Church we profess ourselves?  We desire to be esteemed as members of Christ’s Catholic and Apostolic Church, and essentially one with the Church of England, of which we regard ourselves as living members....  The doctrines we subscribe (for we require subscription, and, what is better, they are always truly preached by us) are those of the Church of England in the literal and grammatical sense.  Nor is the liturgy of the Church of England performed more devoutly in any Church,’ &c.

The five worthy Christians whose characters and careers have been briefly sketched were the chief promoters of what may be termed the Methodist, as distinguished from the Evangelical, movement, in the technical sense of that epithet.  There were many others who would be worthy of a place in a larger history.  Thomas Walsh, Wesley’s most honoured friend; Dr. Coke (’a second Walsh,’ Wesley called him), who sacrificed a good position and a considerable fortune entirely to the Methodist cause; Mr. Perronet, the excellent Vicar of Shoreham, to whom both the brothers Wesley had recourse in every important crisis, and who was called by Charles Wesley ‘the Archbishop of Methodism;’ Sir John Thorold, a pious Lincolnshire