This is a sweeping statement, and requires to be justified.  Let us, then, pass on at once from general statements to details.

The controversy seems to have broken out during Whitefield’s absence in America (1739-1740).  A correspondence arose between Wesley and Whitefield on the subject of Calvinism and collateral questions, in which the two good men seem to be constantly making laudable determinations not to dispute—­and as constantly breaking them.  The gist of this correspondence has been wittily summed up thus:  ’Dear George, I have read what you have written on the subject of predestination, and God has taught me to see that you are wrong and that I am right.  Yours affectionately, J. Wesley.’  And the reply:  ’Dear John, I have read what you have written on the subject of predestination, and God has taught me that I am right and you are wrong.  Yours affectionately, G. Whitefield.’

If the dispute between these good men was warm while the Atlantic separated them, it was still warmer when they met.  In 1741 Whitefield returned to England, and a temporary alienation between him and Wesley arose.  Whitefield is said to have told his friend that they preached two different Gospels, and to have avowed his intention to preach against him whenever he preached at all.  Then they turned the one to the right hand and the other to the left.  As in most disputes, there were, no doubt, faults on both sides.  Both were tempted to speak unadvisedly with their lips, and, what was still worse, to write unadvisedly with their pens.  It has already been seen that John Wesley had the knack of both saying and writing very cutting things.  If Whitefield was rash and lost his temper, Wesley was certainly irritating.  But the details of the unfortunate quarrel may be found in any history of Wesley or Whitefield.  It is a far pleasanter task to record that in course of time the breach was entirely healed, though neither disputant receded one jot from his opinions.  No man was ever more ready to confess his faults, no man ever had a larger heart or was actuated by a truer spirit of Christian charity than George Whitefield.  Never was there a man of a more forgiving temper than John Wesley.  ’Ten thousand times would I rather have died than part with my old friends,’ said Whitefield of the Wesleys.  ‘Bigotry flies before him and cannot stand,’ said John Wesley of Whitefield.  It was impossible that an alienation between two such men, both of whom were only anxious to do one great work, should be permanent.

From 1749 the Calvinistic controversy lay comparatively at rest for some years.  The publication of Hervey’s ’Dialogues between Theron and Aspasio,’ in 1755, with John Wesley’s remarks upon them, and Hervey’s reply to the remarks, reawakened a temporary interest in the question, but it was not till the year 1771 that the tempest broke out again with more than its former force.