The great Methodist leaders were themselves separated from one another in A.D. 1741. Whitefield’s doctrine of grace and election was Calvinistic; Wesley’s Arminian.--From A.D. 1748 the =Countess of Huntingdon= attached herself to the Methodists, and secured an entrance for their preaching into aristocratic circles. With all her humility and self-sacrifice she remained aristocrat enough to insist on being head and organizer. Seeing she could not play this _rôle_ with Wesley, she attached herself closely to Whitefield. He became her domestic chaplain, and with other clergymen accompanied her on her travels. Wherever she went she posed as a “queen of the Methodists,” and was allowed to preach and carry on pastoral work. She built sixty-six chapels, and in A.D. 1768 founded a seminary for training preachers at Trevecca in Wales, under the oversight of the able and gentle John Fletcher, reserving supreme control to herself. After Whitefield’s death, in A.D. 1770, the opposition between the Calvinistic followers of Whitefield and the Arminian Wesleyans burst out in a much more violent form. Fletcher and his likeminded fellow labourers were charged with teaching the horrible heresy of the universality of grace, and were on that account discharged by the countess from the seminary of Trevecca. They now joined Wesley, around whom the great majority of the Methodists had gathered. § 169.5. The Methodists did not wish to separate from the episcopal church, but to work as a leaven within it. Whitefield was able to maintain this connexion by the aid of his aristocratic countess and her relationship with the higher clergy; but Wesley, spurning such aid, and trusting to his great powers of organization, felt driven more and more to set up an independent society. When the churches were closed against him and his fellow workers, and preaching in the open air was forbidden, he built chapels for himself.[510] The first was opened in Bristol, in A.D. 1739. When his ordained associates were too few for the work, he obtained the assistance of lay preachers. He founded two kinds of religious societies: The _united societies_ embraced all, the _band societies_ only the tried and proved of his followers. Then he divided the _united societies_ again into _classes_ of from ten to twenty persons each, and the _class-leaders_ were required to give accurate accounts of the spiritual condition and progress of those under their care. Each member of the _united_ as well as the _band societies_ held a _society ticket_, which had to be renewed quarterly. The outward affairs of the societies were managed by _stewards_, who also took care of the poor. A number of local societies constituted a _circuit_ with a superintendent and several itinerant preachers.[511] Wesley superintended all the departments of oversight, administration, and arrangement, supported from A.D.