The Methodist Body to which my parents belonged, and to which I myself belonged till I was twenty-one years of age, was the Old Connexion or Wesleyan Body. I was a local preacher in that Body, and was expected and requested to go out as a travelling preacher. But insurmountable difficulties lay in the way. In the first place, none could be received as travelling preachers, unless they were willing to go to whatever part of the world the conference or the missionary committee might think fit to send them, and unless they could _express_ their willingness to be so disposed of before they went out. This I could not do. It was my conviction that God had called me to labor in my own country, and to do good amongst my own people. I did not believe myself called to go to any foreign country to preach the gospel, and I did not therefore feel at liberty to offer to go out on the terms required. I felt as if I should do wrong to expose myself to unseen dangers and unknown trials and difficulties in foreign lands, without a conviction that God required it at my hands. And I could not think that I should be likely to succeed in missionary labors, unless I could enter on them with a belief that those were the labors for which God designed me. There was another difficulty. Conference had made a new law, establishing a new test of orthodoxy, and no one could be taken out as a travelling preacher now, who could not subscribe to the doctrine of the Eternal Sonship, as taught by Richard Watson and Jabez Bunting, in opposition to Adam Clarke. This test I could not subscribe. I cannot say that I altogether disbelieved the doctrine of the Eternal Sonship; but I was not in a state of mind to justify me in subscribing the doctrine. Whether the doctrine of the Eternal Sonship was right or not, I had not a firm belief in it: and that was reason enough why I should refuse to subscribe it. About this time Conference passed laws forbidding the teaching of writing in all the Sunday Schools. I disapproved of these laws, and was unable to bind myself to enforce them. I was obliged therefore to give up all thoughts of becoming a travelling preacher in the Old Connexion.