Kingswood school, as usual, was a trouble. It had been opened two-and-twenty years, and had had, during that period, eight classical masters, five of whom had obtained episcopal ordination, and now a sixth, Joseph Benson, had not only entered himself a graduate at Oxford, but had exchanged Kingswood for Trevecca. No wonder that Wesley, at the conference of 1770, asked, “How can we secure our masters?” The answer was, “Ask each, before he is received, Do you design to stay here? have you any thoughts of being ordained? have you any design to preach?” It is a fact worth noting, that, during the remainder of Wesley’s lifetime, there was only one more classical master who became an ordained clergyman, and that was Mr. Benson’s immediate successor, Isaac Twicross.[104] Wesley found, that some of his preachers were still engaged in trade; and, hence, it was now agreed, that those who would not relinquish trading in cloth, hardware, pills, drops, and balsams, should be excluded from the brotherhood; but that, if any of them, like Thomas Hanby, John Oliver, and James Oddie, had a share in ships, there would be no objection to that.[105] The conference of 1770, however, will always be memorable chiefly, if not entirely, for its doctrinal minutes. From the first, Whitefield, Howel Harris, and their friends, had been Calvinists; and so were many of the evangelical clergy, patronised by the Countess of Huntingdon, as Romaine, Newton, Venn, Berridge, Shirley, and others. At an early period of their history, the two Wesleys agreed, with the Methodist Calvinistic leaders, to avoid preaching on Calvinistic topics to the utmost extent possible. Charles Wesley afterwards endorsed the document with the words “Vain Agreement.” So indeed it was: in fact it could hardly be otherwise. Wesley, more than once, tried to meet his friends at a sort of halfway house; but the attempt was dangerous, it exposed Wesley to suspicion, and it issued in a failure. We have already seen that, in 1743, Wesley, for the purpose of terminating their disputes, made concessions to Whitefield, respecting unconditional election, irresistible grace, and final perseverance, which it was impossible to defend. Accordingly, at the conference held a few months afterwards, he honestly confessed, that he had “unawares leaned too much towards Calvinism;”[106] and proceeded to propound doctrines, which, in substance, were the same as those he now embodied in the theses of 1770. Twenty-six years had elapsed since then; but there was a striking resemblance between the two periods; and, substantially, the same cause for outspokenness. To say nothing more concerning Whitefield’s doctrines, it is important to bear in mind, that, in 1744, Moravianism, or rather Zinzendorfism, had turned the doctrine of justification by faith only into an antinomian channel; and now, in 1770, the same thing was practically being done by not a few who, at all events, were _called_ Methodists. Mr.