The conference pronounced the opinion, that Calvinism had been the grand hindrance of the work of God; and, hence, to stop its progress, all the preachers were requested--(1) To read, with carefulness, the tracts published by Wesley, Fletcher, and Sellon. (2) To preach universal redemption frequently, explicitly, and lovingly. (3) Not to imitate the Calvinist preachers in screaming, allegorising, and boasting; but to visit as diligently as they did, to answer all their objections, to advise the Methodists not to hear them, to pray constantly and earnestly that God would stop the plague. Was it wise to publish this? We doubt it; and so did Toplady, for he immediately, without note or comment, republished it in his _Gospel Magazine_, with the heading “Authentic Extract of what passed at a certain Confabulation, held at London, August 6, 1776.” The Isle of Man now began to attract attention. John Crook was the son of a Lancashire physician, who squandered his own and his wife’s fortunes, and then died a miserable and untimely death at sea. John was put apprentice to learn a laborious trade, and then enlisted to be a soldier; when he was sent to Limerick, where, at the age of twenty-eight, he was converted, in the Methodist chapel, in the year 1770. Having purchased his discharge from the army, he returned to Liverpool, where he became a classleader, and a local preacher. At the beginning of 1775, he went, uncommissioned except by God Himself, to the Isle of Man, and began to preach, and had the lieutenant governor, and his lady, and all the family, and the chief people in Castletown, to hear him. Numbers had been converted; and persecution had begun to rage. On July 16, 1776, the following episcopal bull was issued. “_To the several Rectors, Vicars, Chaplains, Curates, within the Isle and Diocese of Man._ “REVEREND BRETHREN,--Whereas, we have been informed, that several unordained, unauthorised, and unqualified persons from other countries have presumed, for some time past, to preach and teach publicly, and hold and maintain conventicles, and have caused several weak persons to combine themselves together in a new society, and have private meetings, assemblies, and congregations, contrary to the doctrine, government, rites and ceremonies of the Established Church, and the civil and ecclesiastical laws of this island--