Wesley declares that the Dissenters were now “choosing lads of the most pregnant parts, and were educating them at the public schools of the Church, as St Paul’s and others, with the intention to transplant them thence to Dissenting academies, and from thence into a martial phalanx to attack the Church with greater success than their predecessors” (p. 7.) In the 15th page, Wesley strangely enough “thanks God that the Act of Uniformity is not repealed, and that all the strength of the Dissenters cannot prevail to repeal it!” Remembering what his father and his grandfather were made to suffer by that Act, one cannot help but think that there is hardly good taste in this. Wesley says he can give the name of a famed Dissenting minister who was active in taking away all our legal securities, and caballed with those who were favourites at Court. He and his proselytes met at a house not far from the Poultry Church, whither many of the Dissenting ministers usually resorted. When Wesley had just returned to London from the university, those caballers used all the arguments they could think of to persuade him to join them; but he writes:—“I thank God I abhorred their proposals, and never saw them more, unless I accidentally met them,” (pp. 62 and 63.) Palmer, in his “Vindication,” had alleged that Benjamin Bridgewater, the Calves-head poet, learned to sing “To Puss, Boys” in Trinity College, Cambridge, thereby intending to cast a slur upon the reputation of the Church. Wesley replies:—“I am sorry they won’t suffer poor Ben (my successor in the favours of the party) to be quiet in his grave.” He then proceeds to show that poor Ben, for bad behaviour, was forced to leave Cambridge University some years before the song “To Puss, Boys” was published, and that when he came to London he took sanctuary among Dissenters, and wrote the anthems of the Calves-head Club, by which he became the darling of the party, and was entertained and caressed at their houses,(p. 65.) Wesley declares that up to the time that his “letter” was published by Clavel, and he published his “Defence,” his best friends were all Dissenters, but that now he had lost their favour, because he could not comply with their proposals to retract the truths that he had written concerning Dissenting matters. He writes:—“You cannot say but that my behaviour towards you has been inoffensive during the many years which have elapsed since I left you. I have received common civilities from some of your persuasion, and have, in my turn, obliged them as occasion offered. I never desired your destruction, but your reformation. I showed no great fondness to engage against you. It was a mere accident that occasioned it, and I sent you fair warning long before I began to write my defence. I am of no party that I know of, unless you reckon those to be such who desire you should neither distress nor overtop the Establishment,” (p. 73.)