"I am not a stranger to those causeless divisions among you, occasioned by Mr. Whitefield's doctrine, and others of his stamp, which have even drove some of you into despair, and have caused others (really pious and well-meaning people) not to be easy in themselves, but to think their eternal happiness forfeited, through a want of those feelings which he prescribes as the necessary ingredient for a good Christian. I shall leave it to you to think whether any doctrine, attended with such melancholic and frightful consequences, can be a means of promoting the glory of God and benefiting mankind. I doubt not but you will think in the negative. If so, let me exhort each of you, according to his power, to endeavour to suppress it. The only means that I can recommend to you is to work on those who are falling from you by gentle means; to remove from their minds all vain expectations of these new tokens of the Spirit, _pangs_, _feelings_, and the like; and to inform them that the only _fruit_ of the Spirit is righteousness; and always to keep up in them a sense that their services, being according to their best endeavours (though imperfect), will be acceptable with God, through the merits of Christ. This will preserve them from despair, and be the only means to prevent those frightful thoughts affecting the mind. But if they should at any time afterwards present themselves, let them always keep in memory our blessed Saviour's description of the particulars by which every man is to be judged at the last day, where there is no mention made of inward feelings, possessions, and the like; but _if he was hungry, ye gave him meat_," etc. (Matt. xxv 34-40). This was odd theology; but let it pass. There can be no doubt that the circulation of this well-printed, if not well-written, pamphlet created a prejudice against the young preacher; and that this, in connection with the other circumstances already mentioned, is quite sufficient to account for the surprising fact, that whereas, at the end of the year 1737, Whitefield, of all the preachers in the London churches, was the most popular, he was, notwithstanding this, almost universally tabooed at the end of 1738, and, with few exceptions, found all the churches closed against him.