Cennick acknowledged the letter was his, that it had been sent to Whitefield, and that he retracted nothing in it. The meeting got excited, and Wesley adjourned the settlement of the business to Kingswood on Saturday next ensuing. Here he heard all that any one wished to say, and then read the following paper:— “BY many witnesses, it appears that several members of the band society in Kingswood have made it their common practice to scoff at the preaching of Mr. John and Charles Wesley; that they have censured and spoken evil of them behind their backs, at the very time they professed love and esteem to their faces; that they have studiously endeavoured to prejudice other members of that society against them; and, in order thereto, have belied and slandered them in divers instances. “Therefore, not for their opinions, nor for any of them (whether they be right or wrong), but for the causes above mentioned, viz. for their scoffing at the word and ministers of God, for their talebearing, backbiting, and evil speaking, for their dissembling, lying, and slandering: “I, John Wesley, by the consent and approbation of the band society in Kingswood, do declare the persons above mentioned to be no longer members thereof. Neither will they be so accounted, until they shall openly confess their fault, and thereby do what in them lies, to remove the scandal they have given.” This is a remarkable document It was hardly two years since Whitefield and Wesley began to preach at Kingswood, and yet here we have a large number of their converts charged with backbiting, lying, slandering, and other crimes. “How is the gold become dim!” Were the former days better than these? We doubt it. Here we also have the first Methodist expulsion; not for opinions, but for sins; not by the sole authority and act of John Wesley, but “by the consent and approbation” of the society, whose refractory members were to be put away. Such was Methodism, at its beginning. Cennick, and those who sympathised with his sentiments, refused to own that they had done aught amiss; and declared that, on many occasions, he had heard both Wesley and his brother preach Popery. Wesley gave them another week to think the matter over. They were still intractable; and alleged that the _real_ cause of their expulsion was their holding the doctrine of election. Wesley answered, “You know in your conscience it is not. There are several predestinarians in our societies both at London and Bristol, nor did I ever put any one out of either because he held that opinion.” The result of the whole was, Cennick and fifty-one others at once withdrew, and the remainder, numbering about a hundred, still adhered to Wesley.[396]