The impartiality of history requires us, however reluctantly, here to notice the separation which to some extent now took place between Whitefield, and his old friends Messrs. John and Charles Wesley. Their mutual attachment in early life we have already seen, as also Whitefield's anxiety in Georgia to defend Mr. John Wesley's conduct against those who opposed him. Impartial observers, however, after a while began to remark, that on some doctrinal points, especially on that of predestination, a difference was springing up. On his passage to England, February 1, 1741, Whitefield thus wrote to Mr. Charles Wesley: "My dear, dear brethren, why did you throw out the bone of contention? Why did you print that sermon against predestination? Why did you in particular, my dear brother Charles, affix your hymn, and join in putting out your late hymn-book? How can you say you will not dispute with me about election, and yet print such hymns? and your brother sent his sermon against election, to Mr. Garden and others in America. Do not you think, my dear brethren, I must be as much concerned for truth, or what I think truth, as you? God is my judge, I always was, and hope I always shall be desirous that you may be preferred before me. But I must preach the gospel of Christ, and that I cannot _now_ do, without speaking of election." He then tells Mr. Charles Wesley, that in Christmas-week he had written an answer to his brother's sermon, "which," says he, "is now printing at Charleston; another copy I have sent to Boston, and another I now bring with me, to print in London. If it occasion a strangeness between us, it shall not be my fault. There is nothing in my answer exciting to it, that I know of. O, my dear brethren, my heart almost bleeds within me. Methinks I could be willing to tarry here on the waters for ever, rather than come to England to oppose you." Dr. Whitehead, in his "Life of John Wesley," has very wisely said, "Controversy almost always injures the Christian temper, much more than it promotes the interests of speculative truth. On this question a separation took place between Mr. Wesley and Mr. Whitefield, so far as to have different places of worship; and some warm and tart expressions dropped from each. But their good opinion of each other's integrity and usefulness, founded on long and intimate acquaintance, could not be injured by such a difference of sentiment; and their mutual affection was only obscured by a cloud for a season."