With the exception of St. Helen's in Bishopsgate Street, Christ Church in Spitalfields, Wapping Chapel, and the parish church at Islington, Whitefield, on his return from Georgia, was excluded from all the London churches. A year ago, his popularity in London was enormous. Not only the pulpits of the churches just mentioned, but those of Cripplegate, St. Ann's (Foster Lane), the Tower, Ludgate, Newgate, Bow Church (in Cheapside), St. Andrew (Holborn), St. Antholin, St. Nicholas, and many others, were freely offered him. Now, nearly all were shut against him. Why was this? Perhaps it was partly occasioned by the imprudent publication of his two "Journals of a Voyage from London to Gibraltar, and from Gibraltar to Savannah"--journals full of devotion, faith, and godly zeal, but yet containing words, phrases, and sentences which it was unwise to print. There was nothing absolutely wrong, but occasionally there was a modicum of pious egotism, and there were rapturous expressions unfamiliar to Pharisaic ears, and which exposed the writer to the malignant shafts of inferior men, who were envious of the preacher's popularity and success. Another reason may, perhaps, be found in the fact that Whitefield and the Wesley brothers were known to be faithful and ardent friends. Though the Wesleys had not, as yet, encountered any serious opposition, their newly embraced doctrine of justification by faith only, and their intimate and open connection with the London Moravians, had been, to many of the members of the Church of England, an occasion of huge offence; and it is not improbable that Whitefield's exclusion from the London churches was partly on their account. And, further, though the terrible storm of persecution had yet to come and burst, there were already mutterings of its approach, and of its violence. As an antidote to Whitefield's doctrine of the new birth, the Rev. Tipping Silvester had published a sermon,[149] preached before the University of Oxford, the chief point of which was that men are born again in baptism. Further, in condemnation of Wesley's doctrine, that true faith in Christ is inseparably attended by an assurance of the forgiveness of sins, the Rev. Arthur Bedford, Chaplain to His Royal Highness Frederick Prince of Wales, had printed a discourse, delivered in the church of St. Lawrence Jewry, in which he strongly argued that, to profess to have received such an assurance, savours of spiritual pride, and cannot but produce bad results. It is a "grand enthusiasm;" "instead of bringing a man nearer to heaven, it sets him farther from it, for the whole tenor of the gospel is to teach us humility and lowliness of mind." "If," continues Mr. Bedford, "it pleased God, by His Holy Spirit, to give me such an assurance, I should think myself obliged heartily to bless His name for it in private, and humbly beg a continuance of it; but I should also think myself obliged, in conscience to conceal it, unless I was called forth to martyrdom."