Benson had been dismissed from Trevecca, in the month of January, for defending Wesley’s minutes; and now Fletcher, the president of the college, informed the Countess of Huntingdon, that, if all Arminians were to be expelled, he must be expelled. This was a serious matter. Fletcher, at Trevecca, had been, according to Benson, “almost an angel in human flesh.” “Prayer, praise, love, and zeal were the element in which he lived. His one employment was to call, entreat, and urge others to ascend with him to the glorious Source of being and blessedness. He had leisure comparatively for nothing else. Languages, arts, sciences, grammar, rhetoric, logic, even divinity itself, were all laid aside, when he appeared in the schoolroom among the students. His full heart would not suffer him to be silent; and the students were readier to hearken to him than to attend to Sallust, Virgil, or Cicero. Soon, they were all in tears; and then he would say, ‘As many of you as are athirst for the fulness of the Spirit, follow me into my room.’” Away they trooped after him, and would continue praying, one after another, for hours together, till they could bear to kneel no longer; Fletcher, in the midst, so filled with the love of God, that, more than once, he cried, “O my God, withhold Thy hand, or the vessel will burst!”[124] Such a man in such a place was invaluable; but he was not the man to truckle in the presence of arbitrary power. Hence the following to Wesley. “MADELEY, _February 20, 1771_. “REVEREND AND DEAR SIR,--I fear we are going, or are already gone, from our plan of catholicism at the college. Mr. Benson’s affair has made me tell my mind to our Deborah, about bigotry, partiality, prejudice, and everything that seemed to me contrary to the Christian spirit in some late transactions. The answer was, that if one half of the things objected to by me was true, there would be room for the cruelty of my charges; but facts and words have been grossly misrepresented. Therefore, my mouth is shut so far. “This, however, I have insisted, and do insist, upon, if every Arminian must quit the college, I am discharged for one; for I cannot give up the possibility of the salvation of all any more than I can give up the truth and love of God. “Secondly, I will be no party man, nor give up my connections with any that fear God, much less with Mr. Wesley, who shall be always welcome to my pulpit, and I make no doubt will welcome me to his. “Thirdly, nobody shall prevent my following after an entire devotedness of heart to God, by baiting my Christian hopes and privileges under the name of perfection. “To this, I have received no particular answer; but, as I set out for the college to-day, I may get one _viva voce_. “Though no letter writer, I am and shall always remain, reverend and dear sir, your ready though unprofitable servant,